I’ve been listening to the last four months of Marketplace Money on podcasts from MPR just to get my head around the scale and scope of the financial crisis. I’ve been watching little niggling things like the number of empty storefronts on Nicollet Avenue and the valuation drop on my house and that 30% of the people in the boat building industry were laid off last summer and big things like the amount of debt that the average family has and the amount of wealth concentrated is the few hands of the rich but it was today that it hit me how bad things are with the state forecast. In case you haven’t heard, we are about 13%-17% short on the state budget. To put things in perspective, about 40% of the state general fund goes to K-12 education, another 10% to higher ed, about 30% to health and human services, 10% passthrough to the cities and counties and about 10% to everything else (this is rounded). We could cut all state support to higher ed and not fix this problem. We could cut all the money that goes to cities and counties and not fix this problem. We could cut state funding for K-12 by a quarter and not solve this. Our future doesn’t just look bad, it looks beyond bad.
Why is this? There are lots of things that have happened to bring us to this point and I might do a separate post on my contemplations on that. To some degree it doesn’t matter what got us here – it now matters what we do from here. The federal government stepped in and has tried to fix some of the problems. It gave an enormous amount of money to the banks to lend to people but the banks are not lending. It seems that the banks don’t think that alot of us are creditworthy – something that the folks that do the state projections seem to think too. And many of us are starting to believe that about ourselves. Regardless of our situation today, we can clearly see a future that is less prosperous, harsher and more empty.
It is Friday and I have a toddler and a partner. I’ve somehow slipped from being a young hipster to being a married lady and a mom without really realizing it. Tonight holds staying home, giving the little one a bath and maybe a movie with the one I love. As I was walking to my car, I thought it would be nice to have a bottle of wine to go with the movie – something for the end of a long work week. I’m a fan of this J Lohr Wildflowers wine, about $11. Nothing that would break the bank – a cheap treat at the end of the work week. But today it seemed that the whole future was hanging there. Should I spend the $11, fearing that I may desperately need $11 someday? I have to admit that I suffer from Bag Lady Syndrome, the irrational belief that you are on the verge of becoming a bag lady no matter your circumstances. I’m well educated, have a union-protected job, no credit card debt and know how to live cheaply. $11 shouldn’t matter that much. But I’m afraid. And I think a lot of other people out there are afraid too. And the problem is that fear is a self-fulfilling prophesy. The more that people are afraid, the more that they hoard their money. The more they horde their money, the worse things get. The worse things get, the more that people are afraid. And it feeds on itself. But the rational thing to do is to hoard, to save, to sock money away in case that time comes when $11 is all you have.
I stood there today in front of my $11 bottle of wine, having to make a decision. What future would I believe in? Would I let my Bag Lady Syndrome come forward? Should I just walk on? Or should I ignore everything that seems to be happening around me and spend the $11? Well, I bought the bottle of wine. The guy in the store seemed grateful as things were obviously very slow. But I am still scared. And I hope fervently that there isn’t a day that I wish I had $11.
