My great-grandfather, born in the midst of the War Between the States, rose up through hard manual labor and modest investment from small farm subsistence to urban comfort, entering the 20th century with hope and promise. He was able to send my grandfather and also one of the hired men from the farm to university. At the age of 66, when he should have been able to enjoy the fruits of his labors, he was caught up in another age of speculation. From Wall Street to the White House, promises were made that sounded too much like those of our own times. 1929 brought an end to that era of speculation, and my grandfather moved from seeming wealth to poverty, home ownership to renting a portion of a farm house, doing odd jobs, and helping to fill the table from a backyard garden he tended until he was 93. Not the vision for his last 29 years that was promised by the developers and speculators.
But he was wise enough to see how he had been fooled. Wise enough to remind me, when I was a boy, that the only things you can really count on are the gifts of creation, the work of your life, and the wise use of what you produce by your own hands. Every thing else is speculation, no more real than a promised breeze on a sultry summer day.
Those are the multiple sources of a nation’s wealth.
The natural resources which a nation is heir. But more important than the resources themselves is the wise and careful stewardship of those resources.
The industry of a nation’s people. Once measured in territory held, and then in crops produced, and then in items manufactured, and now increasingly in information processed, the work of the people is a combination of these efforts to add to the commonweal from the energy of the individual.
The prudent investment of the income generated by resources and human labor. To use the gains from other sources to increase those gains, in a moderate fashion, enhances (but does not replace) the gifts of nature and the toil of people.
Nations and cultures which have understood these three elements of wealth have been stable sources of support for the welfare of not only their own people but humanity at large.
Yet, the history of the world is littered with nations and cultures which have faltered and fallen. Sometimes it is because they have exploited these sources rather than honored it.
But, most often, it has been because some other method was seen as a valid source of national wealth. Of course, war of conquest and oppression has been such a method used across the ages. Subjugation of people has been another.
However, the economic source most often used and abused has been speculation: the attempt to increase the wealth of people and/or a nation not based on resources, work, or investment.
Speculation relies on minimal use of resources and human energy to create a result significantly larger than prudent investment. It is based on assumption rather than work.
Every serious decline of our national economy can be traced to some form of speculation. Somebody or some institution tried to enhance their wealth without having to invest a significant portion of resources and work.
The lesson is here once again. If it looks like we are going to get something for nothing and if it looks like things will go our way too easily so we can announce "mission accomplished" with little effort or sacrifice, then watch out.
Speculation became epidemic with the drive to an "ownership" society in which individuals did not need to have the resources nor do the work (saving, budgeting, etc.) to qualify for home loans. It is reflected in inflated energy prices because speculators want us, the consumers, to pay for their lifestyles.
But, as they say, the chickens have come home to roost. Since the bubble of speculation is not founded on any real source of national wealth, it cannot be sustained. Ironically, when speculation is in the air, promoted from the highest elected leadership in the land, it is always those on the bottom rung on the economic ladder who will fall hardest.
The promoters fail, but they always pick themselves up to scam another day. But the people, the working people, the people who like my great-grandfather made their way up from poverty – when they fall it is a long, hard time until they can stand proud again.
What does this mean for us where we live? I believe it means that if we work hard and respectfully use the renewable natural resources of where we are, together we can find stability as a community.
But, if we become tempted by the quick and seemingly easy riches that require little of us, we speculating and in the long run that will only enrich someone else.
For me, I will choose hard work and natural appreciation. I hope we all, as a community and as a nation, will make the same choice.