Kersten's Economic Plan: Lower Your Expectations

Are you looking for further proof that the conservative right in Minnesota has run out of ideas? Well, look no further than the Star Tribune's wacko columnist, Katherine Kersten. Kersten has a plan for how to fix the housing crisis and get our economy out of recession. Does it involve investing in our decaying infrastructure? Fixing our educational system? Reducing the gap between the haves and have-nots?

Well, not quite. The trick is just to lower our standards by comparing our economy to the depression. Kersten writes:

Minnesotans with memories such as [the depression] remind us that hardship is relative. After all our struggles are tallied up, we still enjoy a prosperity that would dazzle those who came before us. Above all, we're reminded that our greatest resource is a "glass half full" perspective that says that a garage is a mansion.

That makes everything seem so much better! Just put our situation in a bit of perspective. Sure, our transportation system is falling apart, but at least we have paved roads. And maybe access to affordable higher education keeps getting worse, but at least our students can count to ten. So what if wealthy Americans are the only ones who are getting ahead? At least the economy is working for someone.

What is the point of this defeatist mindset? It seems like Kersten is trying to convince us that the best thing for our country is complete and total inaction:

...before we declare an economic emergency and demand a "New Deal" for the new millennium, let's remember a classic American resource that was in ample supply 75 years ago, when unemployment was not 5.1 percent, but 25 percent.... It was an attitude, a set of expectations -- the "glass half full" view of life.

But she's got it all wrong. Their "glass half full" attitude wasn't about looking at the positives and ignoring the negatives, as Kersten asks us to do. It was a "can do" attitude that made FDR and other great Democrats say "we can fix this." They recognized problems, put together a bold solution, and got results. The irony here is that Kersten is looking at one of the most idealistic eras in our nation's history, and asking us to learn a lesson of complacence and inertia.

Under the Kersten plan, there would never have been a New Deal. We would have just had a "glass half full" attitude, and thanked God that we were better off than Americans during the Civil War.

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