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Hello, Depression
By Gordon Francis Corbett

    Until recently, the news companies were telling the average citizen that the economy was wonderful, except perhaps for where he lived.

    Now, even Tom Brokejaw and his colleagues are starting to admit what the rest of us have known for decades:  that we are in a depression.

    People know the state of their local economy.  They know whether local businesses are hiring or firing.  They know that other places are depressed only if friends or relatives tell them.  They know if they can safely buy a new television set, or if, instead, they should save that money for a soon-to-be-expected rainy day.

    When the last acknowledged depression began, America had no welfare state.  Millions of Americans lost their jobs, and two phenomena sprang up all over the country:  bread lines and soup kitchens.  You can still see them in documentary films.

    Today's depression is different.  Many Americans are on the dole, but they use food stamps.  Those stamps make every line, at every check-out counter, in every supermarket, a bread line;  and they make every welfare client's kitchen, a soup kitchen.  Little distinguishes them from their more fortunate fellows;  consequently, we do not perceive the depth of the depression gripping us.

    Our local depression results from regulation.  Some rules have  padlocked almost every lumber-mill;  others have so crippled our fishing industry that our fishermen are selling their boats to a "generous" government.

    We know what caused our local depression:  regulation.  Other rules, from other bureaucrats, cripple other parts of our country.

    Somebody once said, "A recession is when your neighbor is out of work.  A depression is when you are out of work."  If we elect enough candidates to put the regulators out of work, our recovery will  be just around the corner.