Who can tell?

Where the economy is heading

AT LAST report, which keeps changing, folks in Arkansas are as busy as the state’s bees, who are busy indeed. Figures on the unemployment rate in the state’s hives are unavailable. But the humans in these parts are definitely buzzing. The state’s jobless rate has fallen to an all-time low of 3.6 percent, the lowest point since economists began recording it in the last century. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which does its best to keep up with the not-easily-measurable unemployment rates in the various states of the Union, finds more jobs available than worker bees willing, able and qualified to fill them.

(As for the King Bee of this human hive, His Majesty Elvin Bates, he’s doing more than his part to keep the good times rolling. We saw in the Style section that he’s got about 100 hives on his 250 acres near Monticello, and each of those hives churns out 40 to 45 pounds of honey per annum, which he in turn sells around town at what he describes as “a little mark-up.” In his own colorful way, Elvin Bates’ success mirrors that of the American economy, at least for the ever changing moment.)

Listeners waiting for the dally summation of economic news on NPR might find themselves at a loss to choose a suitable musical accompaniment for the latest stock-market quotations. Would it be “Happy Days are Here Again” or “Stormy Weather”? Or one after the other? If Alert Reader finds himself undecided between humming “Blue Skies” or “I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good,” all he need do is wait for a while and the other tune will be the one that better fits the economic times. Because what goes up must inevitably come down. And vice versa.

Alert Reader could line up all the economists in the world and they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion. Alan Greenspan, the much adored and then much deplored chairman of the Federal Reserve, was probably best at the kind of double-talk going on triple-talk that impressed the uninitiated when he and the economy were riding high. But soon enough he earned the public’s contempt, or maybe just pity, when things took a tumble. Both judgments tended to be as misguided as they were hasty. Nevertheless he was honest enough to confess: “I guess I should warn you [that] if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.” His was a tragic case of someone who fell for his own undeserved mystique. And concealed his misjudgments in the most orotund prose. It’s a well-known literary genre by now that might best be summed up as Nonsense on Stilts.

The same style is not unknown here in this small, all too wonderful state. Just listen to Michael Pakko, who heads the staff of economists at the grandly titled Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who can make the obvious sound profound. As in: “So we’re seeing improvement in employment growth and a decline in the unemployment rate simultaneously.” Will wonders never cease? Answer: Probably not. And those prepared to be surprised by them probably will be. There’s a sure way to keep this economic seesaw from operating, and that’s to firmly plant one’s bottom on it with both feet on its sides and bring everything to a dead stop. Let’s hope none of our economic masterminds suggests such a course.

The big trouble with such analyses is that they come with more reservations than a good-sized hotel in Donald Trump’s glittery chain of hostelries. All the reader may get in the end is a species of on-the-one-hand-this and on-the-other-hand-that pronouncements that befuddle the innocent. The style was well known even by Harry Truman’s time, for it was he who said he yearned to meet an economist with just one hand.

AT THIS fast vanishing point in the state’s economic history—for like everything else in the world it remains in flux—let’s hope a kind of geographically and economically trickle-down effect will come into play, and salaries will start to rise as the state’s economy does. As they already have done. For the one unmistakable conclusion from this mass of wriggling facts and figures is that Arkansas remains a state on the grow. Granted, the more rural parts of the state continue to struggle, but the signs of prosperity are unmistakable both in far northwestern Arkansas in and around Fayetteville and in the state’s urban center spreading out from Little Rock and its bedroom communities.

But beware the all too common assumption that the future will just be an uninterrupted extension of the present. When instead the future turns out to be not just a projection of the present but an equal and opposite reaction to it, the change into reverse gear can be sharp and abrupt. Just the sound of the gears grinding could be enough to give a man an earache. Here’s hoping the state’s airbag, unlike those in some reconstructed cars, will inflate properly and safely—instead of going off with a bang that could prove dangerous, if not fatal.

But if you’re not keen about listening to such prophets of doom, you can follow the sage advice of Will Rogers on how to invest: “Don’t gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don’t go up, don’t buy it.”