< PREVIOUS ] [ 1992 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Last week I felt elevated because, like thousands of other Coloradans, I have shaken hands with Roy Romer, the Governor Who Argued With The President.
The script called for George Bush to present his usual
blather before the TV cameras. Around him, the nation's
governors would all nod in unison as they silently chanted
Yes indeed, Mr. President, this is the finest statement
of public policy since the Emancipation
Proclamation.
Romer apparently did not care to be caught up in that particular lie, so he publicly dissented, which instantly made him a national figure.
Our governor was quite right to be skeptical about any economic plan from any Republican president. They all fight inflation. That sounds admirable, but the truth is that inflation is good for Colorado and the Mountain West.
One reason is that our region imports capital -- we run on borrowed money. Inflation is good for borrowers, because it means you pay back loans with cheaper dollars than those you borrowed. For instance, if you borrow $1,000 when wheat is $1 a bushel, you need 1,000 bushels to repay the loan. If wheat inflates to $4 a bushel before the loan is due, then you need only 250 bushels for the banker, and you've got 750 for other expenses and profit.
Conversely, if there is a Republican president who reverses inflation, wheat could drop to 50 cents. Then you'll need to work twice as hard to produce 2,000 bushels to satisfy the banker.
Inflation also helps the West's economy by raising the prices of not only crops, but the other commodities we sell.
Go back to 1980, when inflation was roaring along at double-digit rates. Molybdenum sold for $30 a pound then; Climax employed 6,000 miners and millhands at good wages at two huge mines. Now it's about $2 a pound, and that employment is less than a tenth of what it was.
Back then, gold was $800 an ounce, and silver over $20. All over the mountains, mines and mills not only re-opened, but expanded. Oil was pushing $30 a barrel. Denver filled with well-paid geologists and landsmen, and Exxon was spending $1 million a week on the Western Slope to develop oil shale. Similar tales could be told in Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Arizona and New Mexico.
Any Bush economic plan that does not include a healthy jolt of soaring inflation is a bad plan for the economy of the Mountain West, and Romer must know that.
But not many other people here do. Ronald Reagan, a fearless foe of inflation, got 52 percent of the national vote in 1980; he got 62 percent of the Mountain West's vote. In 1984, with our economy collapsing on all fronts, we certainly should have known better, but Reagan got 67 percent of our vote, as opposed to 59 percent nationally. In 1988, Reagan's heir received 54 percent of the national vote -- and 59 percent of the region's vote.
These numbers make it clear that no region has supported the Reagan-Bush regimes more enthusiastically than the Mountain West, even though no region has suffered more from their policies than the West.
Obviously, most voters in the West are too stupid even to vote their pocketbooks, which means Romer really should turn his attention to educational reform before he again criticizes Bush's economic policies.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1992 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >