Robert Dighton:
The Paintress of Maccaroni's
(1770)

"May we choose to choose more wisely this time."

Prosperity cannot be accurately measured in any present sense. Current conditions can only hint at prospects. Because Prosperity must be relational, it cannot be possessed by a person or a time period, though history often misleadingly associates it with specific people and times. A prosperous person possesses a promising future, not merely a temporarily rewarding present. They might accumulate wealth, but not only for themself. They interpret freedom and liberty as associated with family, community, and nation, rather than merely governing an individual’s unbounded choices and personal portfolio. Prosperity might be ninety percent aspiration. It provides the motivation to continue creating, for reaching across space and time, beyond mere space and time. Prosperity manifests in opportunity. Not born-with-a-silver-spoon advantage, but the ability to take reasonable chances, investment rather than raw speculation.

I came of economic age during the infamous Reagan Devolution, where our country’s Prosperity was mortgaged for considerably less than a handful of magic beans. It was bartered away for petty political advantage, a ruinous and unprosperous prospect that discouraged many more than it ever enabled. It did leave over 70 of his loyal foot soldiers in Federal prison, so the time was not without uplifting social payoffs. But it plundered the poor and emboldened the wealthiest, betraying promises made to a generation poised for, if not necessarily greatness, at least a budding Age of Aquarius that could have further ennobled us all. Instead, that spare handful of beans left us divided and essentially powerless. Our economic prospects seemed hopeless. Adding the Bush Sr. extension to Reagan’s devolution, those dozen years left our economy nearly bankrupt, and encouraged and emboldened a fresh generation of scoundrels who would continue disempowering everyday Americans even while Clinton balanced the beleaguered Federal budget, bringing the promise of a Prosperity few would ultimately see, after our Supreme Court overstepped its bounds and declared another anti-Prosperity candidate President in G. W. Bush. It’s no wonder 9/11 happened.

Prosperity has been an elusive, fictional entity through most of my economic life. The telephony recession at the turn of the century erased much more wealth and laid off more people than the Great Depression. We hardly noticed, distracted by an “imperative” War on Terror. Layoffs became part of the American lifestyle as a new form of capitalism came into fashion. The most successful in terms of valuation tended to show little to nothing in incoming revenues, making up in volume, I guess, what they couldn’t attract in actual sales transactions. We inhabited an economy floating on something remarkably similar to thin air, though it sure seemed thinner than air had ever seemed before. We re-discovered leverage and junk bonds, and all sure seemed right with the world until it didn’t any longer. What went up without very many paying close attention came down faster, with nobody able to look away. The Muse and I went bankrupt and entered our exile.

Prosperity might have made a difference, but it had successfully eluded me. My son and daughter managed to find alternative ways to pay for college, since mom and dad had contributed what would have been their college fund to pay for that 15% mortgage and the associated rampant inflation. Our landlord raised our rent by the monthly Federal cost-of-living increase. That drove us to buy a home at the top of a market that would lose 20% of its value over the following decade. That was the Trickle Down Prosperity the conservative devolution actually delivered. It proved equally ruinous for almost everyone in the rapidly evaporating middle class. An underclass was born. One without prospects. The billionaire class didn’t notice. The rest of us couldn’t help but notice our chance at Prosperity going the way of the Dodo Bird.

The radical economic policies of our current incumbent might successfully repel Prosperity for another generation. The Repuglicans, who successfully ran against what they terms “tax and spend liberals,” perfected the spend without paying for it politics that have devastated virtually every industry. They hold taxing as the sole original sin and deficits as, predictably, a secret essential magic they never seem to want to talk about, or they’d blame on liberals. They focused on speculation rather than investing in what might encourage and enable actual Prosperity on any horizon. The cynicism behind their policies proved to be communicable, rendering those who used to hopefully aspire feeling wasted and deeply disconnected, ripe to embrace an authoritarianism also incapable of delivering Prosperity, but maybe capable of somehow getting even, whatever perversity that might entail.

Freedom was never just anything, let alone another word for nothing left to lose. It might have been a viable path toward a Prosperity for everybody, but the white racists and misogynists of the so-called religious right opted for the Drag ‘em Through Hell rather than the Heaven on Earth option. They undermined our relations to transform our Prosperity into a petty transactional economy, where every man is a debtor, and one man insists he’s king. Prosperity means that every man gets to be the king of his realm and every woman her own queen, and that no realm is an Epstein Island unto itself, beyond decency and justice. Prosperity almost exclusively inhabits our future, though its forebears walk among us in the present today. Their Posterity, by which I mean ours, depends upon the choices we make today. As usual, that choice remains between economic illiteracy and the simple wisdom embodying widespread Prosperity. May we choose to choose more wisely this time.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz