The mystery of economics
In high school, my economics teacher successfully encouraged me to drop his class—because I apparently just didn’t get it. And now, more than five decades later, it still boggles my mind.
Last week I read about a couple of Wyoming men who retired from the US Forest Service but still drive around taking care of things in the forest. Without pay. They love the territory, and it grieves them to see the neglect resulting from a serious reduction in staff.
They don’t fix every broken fencepost—just the particularly dangerous things that might maim or kill a visitor. Their rationale for not fixing everything—even if they could—is that they don’t want the government to presume things will get done without pay. It’s not some partisan political ploy—one of them is Republican, and the other a Democrat—but they do distribute congressional phone numbers, hoping people will call for a boost in forest service personnel.
According to the Washington Post, “…since the start of the year, the Forest Service has lost nearly 6,000 staffers through firings, resignations and retirements encouraged by the Trump administration. By summer, some of the agency’s regions were missing three-quarters of their trail and recreation staff — and some forests and districts had none at all.”
This little piece of economics confuses me. Is the nation so broke we must rely on retired forest service personnel to care for our national forests?
Next on the economics hit list was an email from Representative Steve Womack tooting his horn for sponsoring the “Tipped Employee Protection Act,” which, as far as I can tell is actually the tipped employees employer protection act. It protects restaurant owners from having to pay minimum wage to servers. They’re allowed to skimp on hourly wages as long as employees’ tips plus hourly pay match or exceed the minimum wage. In other words, customers make up the difference. And since tips aren’t taxed, the public purse is losing money.
If other businesses must pay their employees at least minimum wage, and all those wages are taxable so the public coffers are filling, why would restaurateurs be any different? Why must I, as a diner, pay the lion’s share of my server’s salary and America not receive any benefit? No wonder I had to change classes in high school—this doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.
It might make sense if our elected representatives had to rely on tips for their income. Then I could decide whether or not their legislative offerings were worth paying for. As it is, they’re paid out of the very national treasury they protect some business owners from having to support.
Next, I learned Marjorie Taylor Greene is resigning.
I never imagined I would say this, but I almost hate to see her go. She’s resigning because Trump, whom she supported through thick and thin, has cut her loose. She—a MAGA Republican—had the courage to publicly suggest that Trump focus more on things in our own country than overseas. And during the shutdown, she broke with her party by supporting an extension of Obamacare subsidies.
She’s not resigning until January 5, however—when she will be vested in the federal retirement system, qualifying for a lifetime congressional pension and generous health care benefits. She’s good at economics.
I don’t blame her. Probably most of us would do the same in her shoes. But the next time you’re out to dinner paying the wages that the restaurateur doesn’t have to pay, with money that won’t contribute to the US treasury after it leaves your hands, maybe you’ll wonder where the money is coming from to pay MTG’s retirement—while the national forests decline. The mystery of economics.