The holiday season is a time for festive events and celebrations. It is a time for parties, presents, parades, pageants, pastries, and peace. In the midst of this ado, it is also a time when we, on occasion, pause to reflect on our blessings. From my vantage point in the misty clouds of economics, let me suggest just a few.
We are blessed to live in a place that offers us a cornucopia of opportunity. Our outstanding infrastructure, educational systems, and public safety networks create an environment in which all of us can strive to be better. Through improving our skills, working harder and smarter, taking intelligent risks, and being creative and innovative, we can reap great rewards from our efforts. Our economic system certainly doesn’t guarantee the outcome of any endeavor, but it does provide us with a pretty much unfettered opportunity to try. What more could we really ask for?
We are equally blessed to live in an age in which major technological marvels seem to surface anew every day. They enhance the quality of our lives, make us more productive, entertain us, clean up our air and water, give us greater access to the world around us, produce more and safer energy, and bring us new advances to improve our health and longevity. As long as markets provide substantial returns for their endeavors and governments support the underlying basic research, this glorious bounty will only expand in the future as our innovative spirit ascends to new heights.
Our blessings also extend to the most incredible production complex in the history of the world. From bread to steel to toys to computers to spaceships, we make things great and small with great efficiency. In the process, we employ millions of people and despite occasional interruptions the number continues to grow. As our workforce rises in magnitude, it also exhibits higher skill levels and greater adaptability to a dynamic economic complex.
We would be quite remiss if we didn’t include the blessing of an information system of unparalleled proportions. One of the most remarkable fruits of this progress is a democratization of credit availability, thus making the once unattainable dream of homeownership a reality for millions and expanding the options of countless others. It has also brought us an amazing ability to communicate instantaneously with friends, family, and business associates wherever they may be.
Our list of blessings would not be complete without at least some mention of the deregulation and the ongoing opening of global markets in recent years. These phenomena have brought us reduced shipping costs, cheaper and more ubiquitous telephone service, lower airfares and expanded routes, cheaper electricity, more extensive financial services, and an increased capacity to sell our magnificent, sophisticated goods and services across the vast expanse of the continent.
A final economic—and perhaps most important—blessing is merely the fact that we have increasingly benefited from these other gifts over time, and they will both persist and accelerate in the coming years. Thus, future generations can look forward to even greater opportunity; our kids and grandkids will be able to pursue their dreams in a framework well suited to accommodate their abilities and desires.
I realize this view of the world may seem a bit fanciful to those of you who don’t always see things through the lens of an economist. I can assure you, though, that it is both accurate and a source of great joy in this season of good tidings. These blessings do not compare with love of family and friends, but they beat the heck out of an ugly tie or a toaster. Happy holidays to all of you!!!