By Morf Morford

Tacoma Daily Index

The phrase “A rising tide raises all boats” is one of those sayings that is close to Gospel for people in business.

I have not heard a concise proverb for the opposite premise – that a tide that goes down, lowers all boats.

I’m guessing that we don’t have that corollary proverb precisely because we all know it isn’t true.

War, recessions and natural disasters are ruinous for some – but a financial bonanza for others.

Every culture and economy has what could be called “conveyor belts” – those pathways that our parents and upbringing have given us that “carry” us, often in spite of our choices or personal preferences, to success, education or even, for some, addiction and criminal behavior.

Children of wealthier, or at least more stable parents (and families) have opportunities and support for projects and interests poorer kids would never know.

Poor children, or those born into addiction, abuse and health issues, face challenges healthier and more prosperous kids could never imagine.

The “make good choices” mantra of a decade or more ago rings hollow in a family where the real choice is between paying utilities or eating or running away from home or enduring even more abuse.

Any choice, by individuals, families or governments has unequal impacts.

Government programs, including taxes and laws often have specific intentions.

The problem is that virtually every law or program is a clumsy, if not crude, tool with a very specific purpose.

Eliminating student debt, for example, is a great idea. We want each succeeding generation to be educated and prepared to take on the ever increasing complexities of a technologically complicated and globally inter-connected culture and economy.

And we want their earnings to be used to invest in the larger economy or to start their own businesses.

Student debt impedes all of those.

Young people put off, or avoid higher education entirely because of the prospect of debt.

Those who do go to school often have student debt that takes years, even decades to pay off.

Two questions face every policy; who does it serve and who pays for it?

Does any policy help those who need it most?

And who decides, in the light of limited resources, who that might be?

The recent set of conversations about Covid-19 vaccinations have been revealing – even instructive – about our truest and deepest values – and the sheer economics of health care.

Covid-19 came upon us suddenly. Businesses were shuttered and hospitals were overwhelmed and city centers stood deserted – all within just a few days in March of 2020.

Covid-19 left us with a host of questions – was a vaccine possible? Where would any of us get it and, who should, or should not, get it.

Should those who were most vulnerable, like the elderly or those with underlying medical conditions be the first to get it?

Or should it be those most likely to spread it, like children?

And what about prisoners? In confined circumstances they are vastly more susceptible and far more likely to spread it to other inmates and support staff.

Who “deserves” it?

Or even, given the choice, should any of us agree to get it?

The tide, in a medical sense, was shifting, and as always, we are each impacted in very different ways.

For some, the tide is rising, for others it has been withdrawing, and for some it has been overwhelming.

Money is as fluid as any tide. And it is flowing like few of us have ever seen.

Thanks to the pandemic there are far more billionaires than a year or two ago, many more millionaires, and many more homeless all too visible in every city across our country – if not around the world.

Some rise, some fall and many flounder.

Every metaphor has its limits, but “A rising tide raises all boats,” while it may have been true, even useful for years, even generations, has like many truisms that held their power and truth for many years, not aged well in our era of complications and extremities.

Tides, oceanic or metaphorical, are regular, predictable events.

The rise and surge, and withdrawal, of seasons, nations, economies and yes, oceans is the literal pulse of creation. And, whether we like it or not, the relentless rhythm of history.

Oddly enough, even this universal principle has its skeptics.

We, in the Puget Sound area, if not the whole west coast, take tides as a given. The sea is at a different level, more than likely, every time we look at it.

It is never static and is always in motion.

Like an economy, like a relationship, perhaps like a career or even life itself.

But not everyone sees it that way.

I know people who never lived around tides.

I had some friends who were visiting from the mid-West. They had never seen tides before. Our waterline changed more in a few hours than their lakes would in a year.

Of course they had heard of tides, but a ten or twelve foot alteration in a shoreline a couple times a day spooked them. They expected bodies of water to be stable – especially large bodies of water.

Just like they expected careers, economies and relationships to be stable.

I’m from around here. I expect everything to be in flux.

I had never thought of it before, but as I saw their reaction to a literal tide, I realized why change was so difficult for them to adapt to.

I, without thinking about it, was what might be called a “coastal-ist” – I had just assumed that a core principle of nature was universally applicable.

But like any truth, it is true in its setting. And borderline incomprehensible almost anywhere else.

“A rising tide raises all boats” is usually used as an economic metaphor; when the economy is good, it’s good for everyone. But I think we all know, that is not true now – if it ever was.

Opportunity is never equal. Disabilities are never equal. Economic recessions and evictions are never equal.

“A rising tide raises all boats” presumes that everyone has a boat. And that everyone’s boat is prepared for the shifting tide, and not damaged by an extra high – or low – tide.

We are in an economy where fewer and fewer of us own more and more of the boats, and each shifting tide sinks and strands those who, for whatever reason, are not prepared.

Some are overwhelmed, some are drowning, and some are leaking.

And some are flourishing.

And the tide continues.