Chicken and Egg

Chicken and Egg

Three score years plus seventeen I've been a father on this planet even though I had no planning nor training for this august assignment. Rutting early in life's calendar pays large dividends to the planets population but does little for the resulting offspring's secure emotional introduction into life's pageantry. In spite of immature parents, children, by in large, make it successfully into adulthood and become parents in their own right. Yes, the Earth's limited resources will be further depleted as more and more population arrives to demand their God given slice of terra firma.

Here now, children must be wondering, what's going on in this place I've been born into ? I did good in school, but, there are no jobs for me to get so I can get started on my own. My parents told me, in our family, every generation did better than the last one. What's wrong with me ? What did I do to break the tradition ? 

Both contender and sitting president lament the lack of good jobs as they travel the country seeking voter's acceptance. Each has a plan, Romney wants private companies to hire more workers ; Obama wants congress to implement an infrastructure bill which will not only put people to work but in doing so will refurbish the countries crumbling roads and bridges, railroads and canals, our airports and ports, and the country's aged sewer and water systems.

I know the country is "going to hell in a hand basket" as the old Duchies would say. I just look at the decay festering in our towns and in our cities and I imagine this extent magnified in places less fortunate than we are experiencing. It is hard to ride out into the country and not come upon a road closed sign telling of a century old bridge needing replacement. The sad fact is they are not being replaced because of financial restraints on counties. A passed infrastructure bill could remedy this.

Mitt Romney's plan seems reasonable on the surface until inspected more closely. Ask yourself, why would a company hire more workers to make more goods to sell at what price to customers who have no extra money to spend ? It's the old "Chicken and Egg" conundrum, which comes first ? Excess demand has always been the driver behind increased production.
Would Mitt have government stimulate production so new workers could be hired even though newly manufactured products wouldn't be immediately sold and would just flow into inventory. Lag time, the time necessary to balance a marketable inventory with continued production, is endemic to the successful operation of the manufacturing industry. 

Under financial duress newly hired workers, I doubt, would have deposable income to buy "widgets" for some time after they get a job. Paying off overdue bills seems a more urgent use of new found monies.
Somehow the pump must get primed, if not by government, maybe then from Mitt's 1%'s showing off their newly found patriotism. 

 "We The People" are caught in the cross hairs of history dammed if politicians don't, damned if they do. A few decades ago Derek Mahon wrote in his poem, America Deserta, an image of our possible future :

"Not long from barbarism to decadence, not far
from liberal republic to defoliant empire
and thence to entropy ; not long before
the great money scam begins its long decline
to pot-holed roads and unfinished construction sites,
as in the dark ages a few scattered lights -"

This question begs : Under which presidential contender is this vision more likely to come to fruition ? 

Ronald C. Downie