IN MISSOURI, THE EASY ANSWERS ARE WRONG

The difficulty with all those nagging problems that face our elected officials in Jefferson City and Washington is not that they are unsolvable. Science long ago proved that for every problem, there is a solution, and in certain areas such as medical research, men in white gowns are looking for problems that don't even exist at the moment. No, the difficulty is not that our state and national dilemmas can't be solved --the problem is that most of the popularly held solutions for these nagging difficulties really don't -- and won't -- work.

Let's start at the federal level and deal with what the Clinton administration believes is the key to a better economy: deficit reduction. Ask your next door neighbor which problem in Washington he or she would like solved, and chances are the answer will be reducing the deficit. Aside from the fact that many citizens believe cutting the deficit and reducing the national debt are the same thing, probably the worst thing our elected officials could do at this moment is reduce the deficit. Forget the national debt, since it's a far step from cutting annual overspending and is a problem that will take years just to approach. Balanced budgets have to come first.

While I'm all for reducing the deficit, the truth is that the methods available at the moment are limited. We can either add new taxes, which we have already done, and hope that the additional revenue in Washington will be utilized in some degree to cut the difference between available cash and necessary expenses, or we can cut expenses.

The trouble is that neither answer provides a satisfactory solution. Increased taxation is only a transfer of funds from the private to the public sector, and tax money expended for the goal of cutting the deficit reduces in direct proportion the ability of companies to expand profits and thus pay more taxes. Corporate America is currently downsizing for a very good reason: executives see the only path to increased profits through lowered production costs even when this means lowered market share. When you downsize companies such as IBM, Kodak and other major corporations, you lower their ability to send money to Washington. That means less to cut the deficit.

The other answer -- cutting expenses -- has been going on for months, in such instances as the reduction in military spending, with no discernible degree of difference in the size of the deficit. As a matter of fact, that statistic just keeps getting larger even as we excise billions from the Pentagon's budget. As for cutting such concrete-implanted programs as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the benefits are greatly exaggerated, since lower entitlement checks simply bring about increased welfare checks.

Any reasonable economist will agree that the U.S. government is not about to go bankrupt. Only 12 percent of the public debt is foreign-owned; the rest is our own. We, as citizens, owe each other. In 1991, 38 percent of the debt was held by governmental entities: the Social Security system, the Treasury, military retirement and various state and local governments. The Federal Reserve System held 7.5 percent; banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions held 35.5 percent, and individuals, 7 percent. Hence, most of the servicing of the debt, now and in the future, amounts to taxpayers circulating their tax dollars to other individuals and entities. Except for the persistent trade deficit, we are not living beyond our national means. In no sense can the economic condition of America be improved by turning to Spartan living. We are not fully using the resources at our disposal, and appreciable portions of our labor force, industrial plants and even investment funds are not being utilized. Until this comes about, no economic policy can reduce the deficit.

As for incorrectly labeled easy answers to hard problems, our state government follows the pattern consistently set by Washington. In this year's earlier legislative session, the principal problem of Missouri was designated early on as inadequate revenue for public schools. To prove this point, our political leaders pointed, correctly we might add, to the precarious financial problems in countless school districts. The way to make better schools, and thus brighter students, is to improve teachers' salaries, add new computers and make school officials more "accountable." Or so the argument runs.

Granted, teacher salaries should be increased because many, but certainly not all, of these splendid men and women are receiving too little for their training and experience. But a better paid teacher does not necessarily improve student performance. It makes the teacher feel better but it doesn't help Johnny one whit if Johnny isn't motivated to learn and if Johnny has no support when he leaves or returns from school.

Johnny doesn't learn and neither does Jane. Neither one, whether at age six or age sixteen, has any appreciation of the urgency of education, and neither Johnny nor Jane cares one iota whether 9 x 9 really equals 81 or whether it equals 181. If neither Johnny's nor Jane's parents instill any urgency in learning or appreciation for educational advancement, where is the child supposed to get it? Only the rare teacher instills such desire in a classroom, and these are far and few between. It has to come from the parents, and If Dad and Mom ~(hopefully both are present) would rather watch TV than do 8th grade math with the kids, why should Johnny and Jane worry?

We have made teachers and principals and superintendents much happier with the passage of SB 380, but we have not solved the challenge of providing our children with a desire to learn and a better education. The reason we can't do this is because money is not the seed of intellectual growth. If it were, Kansas City would have the state's brightest students, since billions are being spent in that city and St. Louis to improve educational performance. This solution has produced zilch, and there is little to indicate this easy answer will have any appreciable effect in school districts in the rest of the state. More money is only one part of the solution.

Society's other tough dilemmas, such as poverty, drug addiction and crime, are all proffered easy solutions. Like deficits and dumb students, the answers offered are simple. And, most often, dead wrong. Maybe we just don't want to trouble ourselves by thinking clearly about our troubles.