Well, I’m not an economist. If I could even use simple arithmetic I would never have run up my cell phone bill. But I’ve been watching the Dow-Jones Average for years.

During the Bush years it shot up over 14,000. Greed is good. Let’s raze some more Amazon Rain Forest, or a few city blocks of working people’s apartments. Let’s put out a new pharmaceutical and cure…oops, let’s take it off the market and call the lawyers. Let’s use eminent domain to bulldoze some nice beach property. We got the Supremes in our pocket, we put them there, they owe us. Bush never got the Uncle Ronnie geniality, but he did a nice Dirty Harry imitation. Essentially, it was the same script. So every time the market shook, I said–‘Die, capitalist pigs!’

All the time I knew I was cutting off my nose to spite my face. That was my kid’s college fund. I wish we had stuffed it in the mattress, but we cashed in before we lost too much of what we saved from each paycheck. That is my retirement fund, if by the grace of the gods I am around to spend it. That is my church endowment, and it is the wealth of many worthy institutions that we depend on. But the expanding blob of greed was so scary that I wanted it to hit a concrete road-divider. Exuberant glee at infinite expansion is not reality-based.

I know that because I took General Science at Rhode Island Junior College in 1970. One thing the teacher said is that you can’t get something from nothing. Another is that a positive feedback loop is a bad thing. You see, a negative feedback loop is like a thermostat. When it gets too hot, the thermostat turns off the heat. A positive feedback loop is like addiction– the more you get the more you need. Or global warming when the ice melts and the bare ground absorbs more heat thereby speeding up the warming and melting more ice.

So while smarter people than me were speaking a language I don’t understand, I knew this– what goes up must come down. Furthermore–take this from an old earth witch– There is no such thing as a cosmic free lunch. Wall St., Prosperity Gospel or New Age– you’re not going to break the first law of thermodynamics. You don’t get something from nothing.

The Dow tanked at a strategic time. It moved the American Anxiety Index from terrorism to the economy right before the election. If the market had plunged six months later progressives today might be praying fervently for the health of President McCain.

Today the Dow passed 10,000.

That’s a good thing, because you can’t repair the foundation of the house when the water is up to the second floor. But as the market recovers, we need to look at other Measures of our Nation’s Economic Health.

The Disabled Panhandler Index is up– a bad sign. Although the panhandler almost certainly made ‘bad choices’, that missing leg is not special effects. If you take her out of the intersection there has to be a place for her to go. Unless legless beggars at intersections are a feature of the new America we are supposed to settle for, we need to work on this one.

Vacant Storefronts Up— bad sign. Obviously. Affordable health insurance would put a safety net under entrepreneurs and their employees. And the man in the grey flannel suit just got laid off. But free-enterprise is a threat to Capitalism, because it challenges the positive feedback loop of money and power.

Rents Down, Homeless Up— Bad for everyone.

I’m looking for employment to go up. One enterprise that would generate employment is health care. It’s a very labor-intensive segment of the economy if the job is done right. I saw something in the New York Times about how medical practice groups could save money by outsourcing doctor’s office scheduling to India. Fine. Instead of talking to Debby, your doctor’s receptionist who helped you last week when you were in the waiting room and she had to get you seen fast because your back couldn’t stand it and now you need an appointment asap because the pain medicine is giving you a rash– save it. Your call has been sent to another hemisphere. Press 911. Debby has been laid off. She’s hoping she can do the COBRA thing.

Back in this hemisphere. We are Americans. We can do it. A decent standard of living, a job, health care, clean air and water, protection for citizens and rule of law. Yes we can.

Or we can measure our prosperity by the excesses of the richest, aspire to be like them, despise everyone who falls off the money train, and hope it’s not us next.