Falling off the turnip truck

I took a trip downstate this last weekend and found myself in a shopping mall in Troy on Saturday afternoon. I hadn't been to a genuine mall with more than 100 stores and a food court in several months.

It's funny because that used to be a regular part of my suburban life in Atlanta. Now, when I enter these wondrous palaces of commerce and affluence, I feel like a country bumpkin.

My first taste of "otherness" came in Nordstroms. Fancy stuff, big prices. I stopped at a rack full of shirts, touched the fabric on one of them--a nice garment--and searched in vain for the price. A most efficient gentlemen came over, glanced at my appearance--my well-worn 30 dollar jeans, my 12 dollar shirt from Walmart, my slightly muddied shoes, my unkempt hair--and informed me, barely hiding his contempt, that this lovely shirt on the rack retailed for 165 dollars.

I thanked him and moved on, calculating in my head that I could buy 13 Walmart shirts for the price of that one garment, and I'd still have money left over to buy a latte.

Speaking of which, I found the Starbucks next. Is there a mall anywhere on earth that doesn't have a Starbucks? In any case, I arrived there and found that the line went out the door. Twenty people in front of me awaiting their special cup of 4 and 5 dollar coffee.

The entire mall, in fact, was filled with shoppers, most of them loaded down with bags of recently bought goods. This, in a suburb of Detroit which the rest of the nation has come to regard as the center of a near economic depression.

Sure didn't look that way to me. Shoppers looked happy and prosperous.

The most astounding sight was the Apple Store. It was absolutely jammed with shoppers trying out and buying the latest in iPads, iPods, iPhones, and iDon't know what else. I felt like I was at a crowded party, forging a path for myself between shoppers, and constantly saying, "Excuse me...Excuse me..."

One other remarkable phenomenon about this mall: nary a book store. Apparently they don't exist in malls anymore. Talk about a sign of the times--Apple is thriving, book stores don't exist.

So after 90 minutes of window shopping and sipping my 4 dollar latte, this country bumpkin, emptyhanded, left the mall and headed back to the UP.

Yeah, I had felt out of place, but I was also relieved at what I saw. It looked like my fellow Americans had regained their confidence and their need to buy and consume.

Me? I kinda like my 12 dollar shirt.

Giant Credit Card

I wouldn't say I'm undergoing a political conversion, but I would say my views, which have always trended toward the liberal, are evolving about government spending.

Clearly, as a nation, as a state, and as communities, we're spending more than we're taking in, and it doesn't look like that balance is going to shift anytime soon. And increasingly, I think, we need to worry about another possible financial disaster looming ahead of us.

The giant credit card is coming due.

One caveat: This doesn't mean we need less government regulation. Inadequate government regulation, mixed with a healthy dose of greed, is what got us into the financial mess of the last two years, and also into the mess in the Gulf of Mexico.

A second caveat: The Tea Partiers, who've made government over-spending one of their guiding principles, lose credibility because they didn't say a thing about our rising debt until President Obama took office.

But, regardless, we can't afford to keep spending money the way we've done over the last decade or two.

Of course, we all seem to agree with that principle, but then where do you start?

With the schools? Michigan teachers say you can't do that--they spent a full day protesting the cuts earlier this week. Could we eliminate sports programs or the extra-curriculars? Nope, those are too important. Forest Park parents objected loudly to any such cuts at a meeting on Monday.

Should we let the roads and bridges go without repairs? No, can't do that. It's unsafe.

How about reducing the police forces? Heavens, no. Just look at what happens every time Michigan tries to close State Police posts.

Reduce prison costs by letting out some of the less dangerous inmates? No! Absolutely not.

Close libraries or museums? This might draw some support because probably only about 20 percent of us regularly use them, but what would their closure say about us as a society?

Put off Medicare and Social Security eligibility for a few years? Reduce government and teachers' pensions? Good luck on that.

Bottom line: We all want to reduce government spending, just as long as it doesn't affect us. It's another version of NIMBY---Not In My Back Yard.

But we've got to grow up, we've got to make difficult choices. Our county, state and federal governments can't do everything for us.

You want sports in schools? Pay for it. You want the extra courses, beyond the basics? Pay for them. You want city parades? Pay for them. Teachers aren't happy that they have to pay more for their benefits? Tough. That's the way it is in the private world. You like your Medicare benefits just the way they are? So would we all, but the times have changed.

Unfortunately, despite all the heated rhetoric out there about government overspending, there doesn't seem to be the political will out there to do anything about it. Nobody wants to be the first to make a serious and drastic cut.

And we continue marching inexorably toward financial catastrophe.