On Monday, Mark Dayton officially became Minnesota’s Governor.  He joins many new governors around the US who started this week with their swearing-in and are likely to end it with a swearing-at.  The job isn’t easy with the river of red ink confronting nearly every state, and we are no exception.  The size of the gap for the next two year cycle (2012-2013) is 6.2B$, which is to say about 16% of the total General Fund Budget for the same time period.

The festivities surrounding the new Governor’s official acceptance of this responsibility are probably the last time we’ll have a chance to reflect back on what might have been before every politician in the state rolls up their sleeves and gets to swinging their fists … er, gets to work.  It’s as good of a time as any to remember that 12 years ago we started handing out what would be known as “Jesse Checks”, the sales tax rebate that totaled $2.6B over a three year period.

What would the Legislature do with that money now?

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If’ you pay any attention to the things you are buying this holiday season, you’ve probably noticed that very little of it is made in the USofA.  That’s been true for an extremely long time – for many of us, our entire lives.  We simply don’t make much stuff in this country anymore.

We don’t have to speculate as to what that means over the long term because we have been living the long term.  We have run a net deficit against the rest of the world almost continuously for 30 years. Some have speculated that this is a good thing, as the rest of the world can make products cheaper than we can – why not run through their resources rather than our own?  The Depression that we are in, this Managed Depression, explains just how wrong that is.

But if you want some data to show the problem there is plenty.

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