“The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is a 30-year bestseller by Stephen Covey. Habit #2 advises, “Begin with the end in mind.” As we step into a new decade, we may not agree upon the path, but can we least agree on where we would like this decade to end?
Some people’s end goal is to be left alone. Maybe they believe in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ideal, a primitive paradise where everyone lives in harmony. Or maybe they simply care only about themselves. Either way, hiding out in the outback, not participating, just lets the power-hungry move in and take over. It lets lobbyists write laws to make the 1 percent ever richer. It lets corporations pollute our planet. It is not the end most of us desire for a freshly hatched decade.
Adventists have a different goal. They believe that tumult presages end times. Social breakdown speeds the Rapture, when they shall rise to heaven, abandoning the rest of us to hell on Earth. It is not an outcome most of us seek.
Frugality is the goal that dominated the decade we just waved goodbye to. If only we spent less, our state would attract employers with lower taxes. It has been an incessant mantra of one party. But where did that goal leave us?
For families touched by addiction and suicide, the past few years may well have felt like hell on Earth. Much that led to the decade’s initial trauma was beyond our control: a bursting housing bubble, crashing banks, pharma fraud and recession. The state had no choice but to slash budgets, including mental health, as the decade began.
The problem was, as years passed, our state legislature never changed course. Like a dieter who’s become bulimic, they further starved communities, already lean.
While other states helped individuals hardest hit to regain buying power, NH focused on cutting business taxes and lowering spending on social service, infrastructure and education. They forced layoffs and pension cuts that reduced consumer buying power.
This magnified the recession’s impact. Neighboring states’ growth accelerated mid-decade. Our own growth rate did not catch up until three years later, when other states, fully recovered, slowed to normal.
Not surprisingly, our population fell. Without good schools and broadband, rural towns lost residents. Hopelessness, depression and deteriorating mental health supports added to addiction and suicide rates. Dwindling family support staff left kids neglected, or worse. Inequitable property taxes, increased by state downshifting, caused seniors to give up their homes. Pitiful university funding, high college debt, rising property taxes, and the slower recovery of New Hampshire’s construction industry led to workforce and housing shortages. And the climate crisis remained too disruptive for those in charge to even admit its existence.
But the stock market soared, as did executive compensation and business profits. Affluent retirees moved in from surrounding states. The decade was a success for the successful. And the short-sighted.
So, where shall we set our sights for 2030? Do we want to hurry the end times? Let everyone fend for themselves? Or continue on our current path, sundering us further into haves and have nots, as the oceans rise and acidify?
Why not try a new direction for a new decade? Re-grow the middle class in a sustainable way? Educate our youth without crushing debt? Seek affordable healthcare? Improve faltering schools and attract more workers? Spur innovation and build new industries? Prioritize parents’ role in raising strong families? Secure our communities’ clean air and water? Adopt energy systems that reduce climate change and increase resilience?
Frugality proponents will say this is impossible. But one of the first things an early business mentor taught me was that you cannot grow a company by cutting. I was raised by frugal parents who survived the Great Depression. My brother still refuses to buy his wife a cell phone. But I had to move beyond that mentality to build a future for my business, and we must do the same to build a future for our state.
We know that steering money toward people who need it causes retail revenues to rise. And rising demand only causes inflation to surge if production capacity is insufficient, which is not now the case; our manufacturing output is falling. Investing in infant health, education, and energy conservation improves our future competitiveness and saves millions that can be put to better uses. A healthy society creates a healthy economy.
So why not begin our decade with this end in mind: Let us work toward a sustainable prosperity that reaches to all our borders and all our people.
Hopefully, this is a goal nearly all of us can agree on. And that is the first step toward making it happen.
Jeanne Dietsch of Peterborough is the state representative for District 9, Vice Chair of the Senate Education & Workforce Committee and a member of the Senate Ways & Means Committee.