According to the trickle-down theory of economics, the wealthy invest in the economy when barriers, like taxes, are eliminated and the production of goods and services takes place.
Grow the supply of goods and services and the economy will grow, the rich will get richer and those at the bottom of the heap will get their trickle.
The way it works is more like crumbs from the table than sharing.
Will Rogers put it succinctly and cynically when he wrote in the Great Depression that “the money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.”
Here's a variation on the theme: The 2016 recession in rural Alberta is jumping across fencelines and travelling like wildfire.
It moves fast but is invisible to the politicians.
James Quantz, the Didsbury Will Rogers of this philosophy, digs basements for houses, clears well sites for drilling rigs and does other dirt-moving projects that require his heavy equipment.
If his neighbour who makes survey stakes for the province isn't busy, that means that the surveyors for Quantz's basements and well sites aren't working and when his current jobs are finished, Quantz and his heavy equipment operators won't be working.
Already the recession has jumped two fences.
Now if the Quantz family isn't excavating basements, soon the carpenters who frame the houses won't have work.
If the carpenters don't frame the walls, the drywallers, electricians and plumbers will be idle.
Several more fences have been breached.
In good times, off-farm incomes like school teaching, oil well operations and such subsidize the farm.
In tough times, the farm subsides off-farm businesses. The healthy part of the Quantz operation this winter is Quantz's 120 Angus cattle.
There is an urban parallel to the way rural Albertans are finding income alternatives.
The loss of Alberta corporate oil jobs, numbering 78,000 in the past 14 months, has been cushioned by the entrepreneurial dreams of the unemployed who are creating new businesses at a record pace. This is offset by the creation of 35,000 part-time jobs. The numbers are from agencies such as Statistics Canada.
The job damage in the urban economy is sheltered by hopes and dreams that may become a diversifying force in what has become a one-note economy.
However, there is desperation to these hopes and dreams and vulnerability to new business plans such as the increases to the minimum wage.
As has been said in this paper several times this year, the price of crude oil, today at US$27 for West Texas Intermediate and US$15 for Western Canadian Select, isn't going anywhere soon.
If that forecast is wrong it's too high.
Cattle and grain prices and yields may be of some help, however already the experts are dampening down expectations.
The recession will continue to gallop and leap fences in 2016.
After the community accepts and adjusts to tough times, the test will be how we jump fences and take care of each other.
Frank Dabbs is the editor of the Didsbury Review.
