There are a lot of analogies out there about how the American economy is a train headed for a cliff and Congress is arguing about how to stop it from going off the cliff. I think I’ve got a better one.
Once upon a time there was a train. It had two conductors, Ronny and Donny, and every now and then the passengers would change their minds about which one of them should be guiding the train. Now the train was climbing a mountain, because it seemed that this led to (ahem) a higher standard of living then if it remained on the ground. (The farther up they went, the more wood from trees it took to keep the train going, but they just kept going farther up the mountain to get more trees.) Soon the train was very, very far up the mountain. The air was foggy, and they couldn’t tell how much higher the mountain went, but they knew that eventually they would get to the top and that the train tracks ended there, and there the train would crash. So the passengers built a catapult on top of the engine, and had Ronny and Donny launch a big boulder that landed somewhere ahead on the tracks, figuring that they would stop the train when they got to the boulder.
Sooner or later the train approached the big boulder. The passengers told Ronny and Donny that they wanted to keep going up the mountain for now, so they chose one of them to pick up the boulder and launch it farther along the tracks. This continued on for several years, and sometimes the passengers would change their minds about who should be in charge of kicking the boulder along the tracks, too.
One day while Donny was conducting the train and Ronny was in charge of the boulder, the train got close to the boulder again.
“Go move the boulder, Ronny,” Donny said.
But this time Ronny got really agitated and said, “I’ve had enough of this! We need to slow this train down or we’re gonna get to the top of this mountain and crash!”
“Oh, come on!” Donny said. “You’ve moved the boulder every time you were in charge. You even moved it when you were in charge of conducting at the same time, and if I recall, you were pushing this train as fast up the mountain as you could, too!”
“So I was wrong back then. I don’t want to move the boulder anymore.”
“Now, look, we know the top of this mountain is coming somewhere, but it’s not even very steep right now, so that means we still have a ways to go. Besides, if you don’t move the boulder right now, we’re going to crash into it anyway, and isn’t a crash what you want to avoid?”
“Well, yeah, but maybe crashing now would be better than crashing even farther up the mountain. Nah, I’m just kidding. I’ll move the boulder, but only if you slow down the train.”
“If I slow down the train, the passengers will get whiplash and they’ll get mad at us again. I know we need to slow down the train, but…. not yet.”
So Ronny and Donny got into a heated argument about how much they needed to slow down the train and when, and all the while they got closer to the boulder. Some of the passengers hyperventilated that if they didn’t move the boulder now, not only would the train crash, but the impact would reverberate across the mountain and make it steeper even if they decided to move the boulder afterwards. Some of the passengers – especially the ones with good seatbelts – told Ronny not to move the boulder no matter what. Some of the passengers just laughed and laughed at Ronny for changing his mind about the boulder, and they wouldn’t stop laughing.
Then, suddenly….
TO BE CONTINUED.