Colorado Scattershots

Ask a child what he or she wants to be when they grow up, and you’ll probably get a standard answer: firefighter, doctor, teacher – all occupations we learn to recognize at an early age. Rarely do you hear a young one say, ‘I want to be a writer.’ I don’t recall ever saying it. Yet here I am, with writing as one of my several occupations.
It may have been my very early love of reading and feeling the rhythm of the words on the page that put me on this road. One my real influences was the legendary sportswriter Blackie Sherrod. For decades he wrote a column for the Dallas Times Herald and later the Dallas Morning News. Reading him made me think of being a sportswriter, although that kind of writing is now is the farthest thing from my mind. But I did pick up a lot of style and storytelling tips from Blackie’s columns.
Blackie usually focused on one subject, but on occasion he would do what he called ‘scattershooting’ instead. The column would be a series of short paragraphs with no connection to each other and in no particular order. I loved those days. To me, they were a kind of sports buffet that let me sample a little bit of everything.
Today’s letter will be my version of Blackie Sherrod’s scattershooting. I’ve been in Colorado with Shane all week. Beaver Creek is stunningly beautiful in the summer, so it’s been hard to keep up with the news or check email.
Instead of delving deep into one subject, I’ll give you my quick thoughts on several different items. They aren’t connected to each other, nor do they build up to any sort of conclusion. They’re just what is on my mind as we wrap up summer 2017.
Now, let’s go scattershooting.
Economic Storm
The top-of-mind news is the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Harvey on South Texas and Louisiana. Houston is getting most of the publicity, but the affected area is much larger. As a lifelong Texan, I have many friends in that region. They’ve lived through many storms and normally take what natures throws at them in stride. Not this time. I am seeing headlines calling this a thousand-year flood. It seems that over 100,000 homes in Houston alone were flooded. Harvey meant business. Recovering from this storm will take a long time and a lot of resources.
Economically, Harvey will likely be big enough to actually show up in national data. The weird part is it may eventually look like growth instead of destruction, because of the way we measure GDP. Gross domestic product looks at what the nation produces. It doesn’t matter if we lost something else on the way there and are merely rebuilding to get it back.

This post was published at Mauldin Economics on SEPTEMBER 2, 2017.