I recently caught up with a friend of mine that I had originally met in Yemen. She’s the rare breed of person that really enjoys my econ writings and she’s encouraging me to keep at it. She’s also encouraging me to apply to the State department, but more on that later…
Here’s the thing, I haven’t been writing much recently, and it feels nice not being so negative all the time. I had originally thought that this particular administration was the root cause of all of my angst, but that really isn’t fair. I was just as upset with Dubya’s reign, and I’m sure that I will be as upset with anyone else that comes and would have been as upset with any previous administration. I have to keep reminding myself that administrations do what they do not for economic reasons, but for political ones. I also have to keep reminding myself that good economic policies won’t benefit any particular group (even if the population as a whole benefits) and so will never gain any political traction.
Politics is, and will always be, a trading of privileges and powers. If you spend any time at all wallowing in it and have a conscience you will get angry. The only politicians I could ever hope to support and be positive about are ones that advocate the lessening of government influence and it’s unlikely that anyone like that will be in the news any time soon.
So I will continue to write about economics, but I am going to try really hard not to get sucked into the political end of things. That’s not a promise, but I really am going to try…