Dorothy is a girl who lives in a farmhouse in Kansas with her Uncle Henry, Aunt Em, and little dog Toto. One day the farmhouse, with Dorothy and Toto inside, is caught up in a tornado and deposited in a field in the Land of the Munchkins in the Land of Oz. The falling house kills the ruler of the Munchkins, the Wicked Witch of the East. The Good Witch of the North comes with the Munchkins to greet Dorothy and gives Dorothy the Red Shoes that the Wicked Witch of the East had been wearing when she was killed. In order to return to Kansas, the Good Witch of the North tells Dorothy that she will have to go to the "Emerald City" or "City of Emeralds" and ask the Wizard of Oz to help her.
On her way down the road paved with yellow brick, Dorothy frees the Scarecrow from the pole he is hanging on, restores the movements of the rusted Tin Woodman with an oil can, and encourages them and the Cowardly Lionto journey with her and Toto to the Emerald City. The Scarecrow wants to get a brain, the Tin Woodman a heart, and the Cowardly Lion, courage. All are convinced by Dorothy that the Wizard can help them too. Together, they overcome obstacles on the way including narrow pieces of the yellow brick road, Kalidahs, a river, and the Deadly Poppies.
When the travelers arrive at the Emerald City, they are asked to use green spectacles by the Guardian of the Gates. When each traveler meets with the Wizard, he appears each time as someone or something different. To Dorothy, the Wizard is a giant head; the Scarecrow sees a beautiful woman; the Tin Woodman sees a ravenous beast; the Cowardly Lion sees a ball of fire. The Wizard agrees to help each of them, but one of them must kill the Wicked Witch of the West who rules over the Winkie Country.
As the friends travel across the Winkie Country, the Wicked Witch sends wolves, crows, bees, and then her Winkie soldiers to attack them but they manage to get past them all. When the Wicked Witch gains one of Dorothy’s silver shoes by trickery, Dorothy in anger grabs a bucket of water and throws it on the Wicked Witch, who begins to melt. The Winkies rejoice at being freed of the witch’s tyranny, and they help to reassemble the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. The Winkies love the Tin Woodman and they ask him to become their ruler, which he agrees to do after helping Dorothy return to Kansas.
When Dorothy and her friends meet the Wizard of Oz again, he tries to put them off. Toto accidentally tips over a screen in a corner of the throne room, revealing the Wizard to be an old man who had journeyed to Oz from Omaha long ago in a hot air balloon.
The Wizard provides the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion with a head full of bran, pins, and needles ("a lot of bran-new brains"), a silk heart stuffed with sawdust, and a potion of "courage", respectively. Because of their faith in the Wizard’s power, these otherwise useless items provide a focus for their desires. In order to help Dorothy and Toto get home, the Wizard realizes that he will have to take them home with him in a new balloon, which he and Dorothy fashion from green silk. Revealing himself to the people of the Emerald City one last time, the Wizard appoints the Scarecrow, by virtue of his brains, to rule in his stead. Dorothy chases Toto after he runs after a kitten in the crowd, and before she can make it back to the balloon, the ropes break, leaving the Wizard to rise and float away alone.
The Soldier with the Green Whiskers advises that Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, may be able to send Dorothy and Toto home. They, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion journey to Glinda’s palace in the Quadling Country. Together they escape the Fighting Trees, dodge the Hammer-Heads, and tread carefully through the China Country. The Cowardly Lion kills a giant spider, who is terrorizing the animals in a forest, and he agrees to return there to rule them after Dorothy returns to Kansas.
At Glinda’s palace, the travelers are greeted warmly, and it is revealed by Glinda that Dorothy had the power to go home all along. The Red Shoes she wears can take her anywhere she wishes to go. The Red Shoes are lost during Dorothy’s flight and never seen again.
Wikipedia’s description of the story of ‘The Wizard of Oz’.
One day perhaps someone will be interested enough to trace the point at which the journey into fog began. There can be no respect for the truth without respect for the language. Only when language is alive does truth have a chance. As the powerful in legend turn the weak or the vanquished into stone, they turn us into stone through language. This is the essential function of a cliche, and of cant and jargon; to neutralise expression and ‘vanish memory’. They are dead words. They will not do for truth.
"Death Sentence – The Decay of Public Language" by Don Watson, 2003.
PROLOGUE
The yellow brick road in the novel ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ is a mythical journey of discovery, overcoming obstacles, and restoring the personal deficiencies of the three supporting characters – the Cowardly Lion lacking courage, the Scarecrow without a brain, and the Tin Woodman lacking a heart. Good government and good governance requires a blend of all three to achieve recovery in current circumstances, with sustainable progress as an achievable possibility.
ON THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD TO RECOVERY AND PROSPERITY
The story of the ‘ Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ which became the 1939 MGM movie is a useful metaphor for thinking about the coming economic recovery. Dorothy represents the optimistic heroine who inspires three lost souls…. one lacking courage, one without a brain, and one without a heart. Dorothy’s journey overcomes significant obstacles, but good and positive attitude gets her through, and achieves desired results for her fellow travellers. The impediments to progress led by the force that is the wicked witch are dispatched to the dust-bin of history.
The collective personnel that gave the developed world the ‘global financial crisis’ to us is the personification of the wicked witch – a composite of characters like Fannie & Freddie, Mr Greenspan, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, Goldman Sachs, the ratings agencies, Wall Street, various governments in Spain, Greece, and Ireland etc etc. These forces between them had little regard for truth and consequence and deviated sharply, sometimes fraudulently, from the simplicity of ‘what makes good common sense generally makes good economic sense’. The disequilibrium that is the US twin deficits have now become major structural issues that can only be met and overcome with brain, courage, and heart.
Our local election has mimicked the dysfunctionality of the American political system and weasel words concocted by professional spinmeisters have mitigated against sensible debate. Through the abuse of language and the portrayal of lies as facts our politicians have become embroiled in a ‘race to the bottom’.
AN ENDURING LESSON OF ECONOMICS
The law of opportunity cost: That in a world of limited resources and unlimited wants and needs, the cost of doing one thing is the opportunity foregone to do something else. The cost of building a nuclear bomb is the lost opportunity to build, say, a hospital. Governments have to spend taxpayers’ money wisely, set priorities, seek a balance between the private sector and the public sector.
CONCLUSION
The restoration of pervasive prosperity Dorothy would say requires that government in a collective sense needs a brain (the capacity to think), courage (a penchant for truth and persuasion) and a heart (to help the genuinely disadvantaged).
Let us hope that Saturday in Australia is the beginning of that process for us and that the US mid-term elections might restore some balance in the United States of America. Let us hope that the spirit of Dorothy and her mates still resides in the wonderful world of Oz.
BALANCED FREE ENTERPRISE
Ecinya has long suggested that the expression ‘beneficial trade’ should replace ‘free trade’. The expression ‘balanced free enterprise’ should replace ‘capitalism’. Though ‘socialism’ has placed China on the yellow brick road to democracy and balanced free enterprise it is not a political and economic system that will survive. China will soon need to join the developed world and delete "Communist" from its party political name and manifesto.
It is clear that there is a role for government in relation to matters economic. The days are past when unfettered capitalism was a useful description of the way developed economies work, or a reliable framework for poorer economies to attain sustainable prosperity. The recent exotic debt implosion and the previous dot com bubble/bust are contemporary examples where capitalism has clearly failed. In each of these busts the government was found wanting. It is axiomatic that ‘socialism’ has failed, but the welfare state is far from dead. The challenge for free enterprise economies is to define the limits of government involvement, and the scope and manner of intervention. We have a target for inflation in Australia, why not a target for taxation and government spending as a proportion of gross domestic product.
Prosperity is the tide that carries us all to realisation of our material and social aspirations and trade is an aspect of the attainment of prosperity. It is axiomatic that an effective trade policy requires a strong and balanced domestic economy. ‘Balance’ requires a viable and progressive tax system. Ecinya has suggested whileever we exempt food from GST we cannot achieve real tax reform that delivers reward for merit and also provides an appropriate social safety net within an efficient and targeted welfare system.
Leadership is an important issue in progress and even good leaders have been beguiled by the fruits of success and succumbed to the siren call of various wicked witches and used taxpayers’ money in an attempt to purchase an additional term of office, sometimes with great success. When having the job becomes more important than doing the job… it is time to go. That happened to Bob Hawke and John Howard. It was also the fundamental flaw in Kevin Rudd’s tenure before and after he became Prime Minister.
The editorial in The Australian today said: "One thing is abundantly clear, however: Kevin Rudd’s big-government experiment was a disaster. Whichever party is returned, this ugly revival of old-style central planning must be buried and cremated. The Australian regrets taking Mr Rudd at his word in 2007 when he presented as an economic conservative who believed governments step in only when markets fail. The trouble was markets were deemed to have failed when Mr Rudd decided they had failed, and that was often. Long before the global financial crisis, the dead hand of government was touching the private sector in inappropriate places, and its behaviour grew steadily worse. GroceryWatch and FuelWatch were early signs of the hubris that resulted in the atrocity of a mining tax ."
An unknown source to which we constantly refer in similar vein said it thus: "No man or woman is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own ability to take responsibility for our own lives.’"
This is in no way a statement that says we should not look after the genuinely disadvantaged. Of course we should. Civilised society demands a viable heart.