Over the past 50 years America’s cities and metropolitan areas, as well as many outlying rural areas, have pursued the dream of driving away grimy factories, sweaty workers, and belching smokestacks in favor of clean, quiet and—until recently—lucrative local economies built around the pillars of Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. The so-called FIRE economy that, in conjunction with its symbiotic partners in high tech and higher education, was supposed to spew unending wealth from a matrix of glass-enclosed office complexes full of corporate fitness centers, soaring atriums, and steaming cappuccino machines is now dying a hard and ugly death.
Our national landscape of empty office buildings, mass layoffs, and stark urban decline, all of which are being exacerbated by Leftist politicians who both refuse to believe the fiscal party is over and are addicted to Woke priorities and policies that make our nation’s greatest cities virtually unlivable, is a symptom of change that we must not—and cannot—ignore any longer. Trapped in their own ideological cages, our current crop of national leaders seem unable to do anything but howl and blame others for their myopic over-reliance on businesses built on paper wealth.
The manufacturing, farming/ranching, transportation, and energy sectors are the foundation of any sound economy; the true wealth of any nation is directly related to how much grunting is necessary to produce it. Unfortunately, this simple fact is distasteful to our country’s effete intellectual class, who find the noise, dirt, and grit involved when workers with calloused hands grow our nation to be positively distasteful (unless it involves building expensive new condominiums) because it might ruin a scenic vista, spew some smoke into the air, or provide a paycheck to a Republican household.
Learning to code is great, but we also need people who know how to weld steel, how to plow the earth, and how to repair a diesel engine. The illusion that we would suffer no harm from allowing so much of our basic industry to migrate overseas so that corporations could squeeze out a few pennies more of profit by underpaying foreign workers—while we tapped happily away on our computer keyboards here at home—has been exposed for the farce that it always was, one built on accounting gimmickry, government handouts, inefficient tax breaks, and wishful thinking.
Moreover, believing in the beneficence of a global economy that is full of implacable global enemies is a disaster for America. Biden administration policies that have, for example, crippled our domestic production of oil and gas are leaving us frighteningly dependent on the good will of countries who wish us only ill will. By the same token, forcing our automobile and trucking fleets—or, worse yet, our military—to switch to electric vehicles when so many of the minerals necessary to create this Green New World originate in nations who are actively hostile to our interests is simply suicidal, but it fits in nicely with the philosophy of those who also prefer that we own nothing, never cut down a tree, and eat a bowlful of bugs for breakfast.
The common sense of businesspeople, who are happy to play along with ideologues only insofar as it does not cut into their profits, is already driving changes that are de-emphasizing the FIRE economy, but this transition will be impeded by environmentalists who are allergic to farms and ranches (what they expect us to eat, I have no idea) and factories that dare to emit a puff of smoke into the air (unless they are building windmills or solar panels, I suppose).
Politicians, encouraged by corporate lobbyists and campaign donations, will try to protect industries that should be allowed to suffer the bumps and bruises of a competitive marketplace and rightsize for a new economic reality. Government largesse, most of it in the form of yet more disastrous borrowing and debt, that rains down of the owners of empty office buildings, unprofitable financial conglomerates and insurers, and their fellow travelers in higher education and Silicon Valley will only forestall a rough day of reckoning that is sure to come. Closures, consolidations, bankruptcies, and restructurings are already in progress, and it foolish for our current leadership to presume these can be stopped.
Although the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate businesses, as well as higher education and high tech, are necessary adjuncts to a productive American economy, they cannot be its focus. An over-reliance on them tends to produce speculative excesses in the pursuit of the wealth that is not being produced by factory workers, oil and gas drillers, transporters, and farmers/ranchers who must be the four cornerstones of our economy.
Watching today’s implosion of our nation’s commercial real estate sector and the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, we must now learn necessary and overdue lessons about the illusory nature of wealth based on a spreadsheet. If we are to continue to be a leader in the world, we must first be leaders in shrugging off our mindless faith in businesses that merely shuffle money in favor of those that actually produce it. Only in this way can we build a nation that is strong, confident, and ready to ride out the storms that lie ahead.