Liberal, explained.

Hey! this is a lot of fun! When I first moved down here to Oklahoma, I knew I would be a rare Liberal in a redder than red state. They haven’t rode me out of town tarred and feathered on a rail yet. And they let me vote in the last election, too.

I get lots of funny looks when I openly admit to being of the Liberal persuasion, since nobody down here seems to understand what that really means. I don’t have a tail or horns, and if you see me with a pitchfork it’s because I’m helping a farmer with his hay.

I find it more than a little amusing, because over fifty years ago, when the old folks still remembered the Great Depression, Conservatives were despised for causing it, and the people elected the same Liberal president four times, even though he raised taxes and increased the size of the Federal government hugely. I think the old folks understood something that younger generations have forgotten, or more likely, never been taught.

My father-in-law Dan Wright was fond of saying, “I may go to Hell, but it won’t be for voting Republican!” They found out the hard way that capitalists were not in business to make working people rich. Quite the opposite - any good conservative capitalist pays the lowest wages he can to the fewest workers possible and charges the highest prices he can in order to maximize the return on investment.

Before the Great Depression, working people were not allowed to organize into a union and bargain for better wages, working conditions and retirement programs. Companies hired gunmen to patrol the streets and prevent any meetings or organization at all. In the teens and twenties there was an actual war between labor and management, using machine guns, snipers, bombs, and lynchings to keep workers from  organizing. 

After Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected, he worked hard to get legislation passed legalizing union organizing, and requiring companies to bargain in good faith with their employees. He advocated for a living wage, not just a minimum wage. He raised taxes tremendously on people with a lot of money, and increased the inheritance tax, so one person could not keep enough money to support the next ten generations of idle rich descendants. 

Tax and spend Liberals, they say! Absolutely, I say. 

First off, Liberals know that the government does not actually spend money. They print it and circulate it - a basic function of any sovereign government. If the government doesn’t keep enough money in circulation, it becomes scarcer  and more valuable, (austerity), and you get a recession or depression. People who already have a lot of money like this. They get richer just sitting there and watching their money become more valuable.

To get more money in circulation, the government must either print more money, which can cause inflation (too much money becomes less valuable), or raise taxes. People who already have a wad of money hate inflation. Now they are losing money just sitting there.

The other way to get more money in circulation is to tax the people who have a lot of money, and force them to put it back into the economy. Franklin D. Roosevelt made owning gold illegal (you had to sell it to the government at a set rate) and he raised taxes of rich people up to 90% if you made over a million bucks a year. (It might have been half a million bucks - I forget - but none of them went hungry).

Millions of people had jobs again, because companies expanded, hired more workers and increased pay scales and benefits to avoid those high taxes. Conservatives have it exactly backwards! If you want more prosperity for everybody, raise taxes. If you want more prosperity for just the rich people, lower their taxes. Trickle down has been proven so wrong so many times they should rename it tinkle down.

With the prosperity that came with high taxes, we paid for the last war we actually won (WWII) paid for millions of those GIs to go to college free, built many thousands of miles of freeways connecting the country coast to coast, developed the best education system in the world, and sent men to the moon.

Reagan cut those taxes in the 1980s. Now millions of working people can’t survive without government assistance to buy food, our roads are potholed, our bridges are falling down, and our school teachers have classes of forty students, having to buy their own teaching supplies, using books that were out of date ten years ago, and work in leaky drafty buildings that should have been replaced years ago. But, Hey! Look! Our taxes are low!

But enough about other people. Let’s talk about me. Today I had more fun than I’ve had in a long time.

I walked into the office of the manager of Featherstone Assisted Living Home, and asked to talk. When she asked, “What about?” I told her I wanted to go back to the original arrangement we had when I first rented a room for Carolyn back in June 2016. 

She looked a little confused. I wish I had had a camera when she realized what I was asking for.

Finally, after a few seconds she asked,”Are you asking to raise the rent?”

“Yes, I am.” I responded.

“Why?” she queried me.

I need to explain something here. This is the story. We had agreed on one price for the rent, and I paid that price for four months until my savings ran low. I had not been able to sell the ranch yet, or find a way to get out from under my timeshares, which we really enjoyed but now were unable to use, and I had big car payments which was OK until the Alzheimer’s hit.

So I came in then and gave her notice that I could not make the next month’s rent, and we would have to move before the first of the month. The next day she called me in and offered to adjust my rent lower if I could stay. With a lot of relief, I agreed to stay. I have never forgotten her act of Christian kindness to us.

In the ensuing months, I negotiated an end to our WorldMark timeshares through a program that company developed to help people as they age out of the vacationing population. I thought they were very gracious and generous with me. 

Next I sold off the ranch in Nevada with the able help of Tamara Nordmeyer of Cowboy Country Realty in Winnemucca, NV. I made about the amount of money I put into the ranch when I bought the buildings and land many years ago. It is a comfortable nest egg, and it’s growing even on the low interest I get at my credit union savings account.

So I am living easily on the income I have from Social Security, a small VA disability, and the retirement I get from the years working a good union (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) job at Sierra Nevada Power. And I have enough stashed away for funerals and burials for Carolyn and I, and a little more for emergencies.

“I have never in 24 years had somebody ask to raise their rent,” she said. “Why?”

So I explained that I am a certified soft headed Liberal, and also that I had not forgotten the help she gave me when I desperately needed it. I also told her I really like the work she is doing to expand this facility to include 16 memory care units in a new wing in the back of the building, and I want to help. 

Shaking her head in wonderment, I think, she said “Okay”. 

I didn’t say so, but I also really appreciate the extra people she has hired this week for better weekend coverage. Last weekend was a big improvement.

So here’s another bit about Liberals that many people don’t know. If I have lived my life just right, on the day I die I want to spend my last penny and die broke. 

You can’t take it with you.