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The first time I remember reading the phrase War on
the West
was about 20 years ago, shortly after Jimmy
Carter took office.
Pledged to efficiency in government, the Carter Administration examined the Interior Department budget and found some pork-barrel water projects whose alleged benefits came far short of their costs. The administration decided not to support funding for these dams and canals.
In Republican hands, this inventory of worthless
projects became a Hit List,
part of Carter's War
on the West.
And when Ronald Reagan ran for president
in 1980, he promised to end the War on the West. The
conflict apparently resumed with the election of Bill
Clinton in 1992, because even my own congressman, Scott
McInnis, was out stumping last month with explanations of
how Bob Dole and Jack Kemp would end the Clinton
Administration's War on the West.
So, we apparently have two conditions: War on the West, which we'll call WOW, and Peace on the West, which we'll call POW. Presumably we suffer during WOW and thrive during POW.
But if so, the suffering is not economic. In 1990, annual per-capita income (in constant 1992 dollars) in the Mountain West was $18,497, or 88 percent of the national average. In 1995, after a couple years of that WOW barrage, the Mountain West was up to $19,433, or 92 percent.
Contrast that to the 1980-1990 era of POW during the Reagan and Bush regimes. In 1980, the Mountain West's per-capita income was $16,162 (1992 dollars again), 95 percent of the national average -- and it dropped to 88 percent by 1990.
During that decade of POW, 27 of Colorado's 63 counties lost population, and most of those loser counties (my own among them) had economies based on agriculture or mining -- the traditional industries that POW was supposed to encourage.
That population decline seems to have reversed during the latest round of WOW. Of the 10 fastest-growing states in the country, six (Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico) are in the Mountain West.
So WOW increases income and population, while both decline under POW.
Those who bemoan WOW often speak on behalf of the mining industry -- but that industry didn't fare very well during the Reagan-Bush peacetime years. In 1982, American mines employed 1,114,000 people and produced $250 billion. A decade of POW did not lead to prosperity -- in 1992, mining employment had dropped to 637,000 and production to $162 billion.
This pattern extends to other traditional Western industries -- agriculture, petroleum and forestry employment and production dropped during the POW era, even though the administration in Washington was supposedly pledged to making us Westerners prosperous.
This analysis could continue indefinitely, but the point
should be clear by now. The Mountain West seems to thrive
and prosper during those times when there's an alleged
War on the West
being conducted by the evil masters
in Washington, and when solid rock-ribbed conservatives are
in charge there and there's Peace on the West,
then
the Mountain West suffers.
It is my fervent hope that War on the West
will
henceforth become as obsolete as Free and Unlimited
Coinage of Silver
or The Utes Must Go
in the
Colorado political lexicon, and that we might start
discussing something real, like the War in the
West.
Consider the recent declaration of the Escalante Staircase National Monument in Utah, despite the presence of rich coal seams there. That's actually a transfer of land use from the $162 billion mining industry to the $400 billion tourist industry -- that is, market forces at work in government policy, which should be no surprise.
There's the WOW argument that mine jobs pay better than tourist jobs -- and they do. But that's not because mining companies are run by philanthropists and humanitarians. Whatever miners have is the result of 50 years of brutal and bloody industrial warfare, and those who profess concern for the working class in the West should be supporting strong, militant and aggressive unions for burger flippers, bed makers and lift attendants.
Of course, if they were paid better, they might be able to afford to live near where they work, and part of the cachet of world-class resorts is that not just anybody can live in one.
This emerging Third-World social stratification -- small upper class, huge lower class, no middle class -- is something we should worry about in the West. But it seems to be happening whether there's a WOW or POW underway, and maybe it's time to have a COW -- an informed Conversation in the West, rather than the bumper-sticker slogans.
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