Our neighbors in Columbia Falls received devastating news about the closure of plants that will cost the Valley 200 jobs. We can point the blame in a lot of different places, or we can use our resolve to find solutions to return Flathead County and Montana to economic prosperity for all. When I grew up in the Flathead three out of four families were supported by the timber industry. That was the late ‘60s and early ‘70s; timber and the aluminum plant were the mainstays of our economy. It was a very stable time when the middle class thrived. Indeed, if not for low dexterity in my fingers I would have followed the tradition of my forefathers and my brother and would’ve been part of the blue-collar middle class. The middle class I knew and was raised in seemed to disappear after I left to go into the Marine Corps in 1975. I remember speaking to classes at Flathead High School in the late 1980s early ‘90s and found that the timber industry I knew had disappeared. Instead of three out of four families supported by the timber industry it was one out of four; today it’s probably one out of 25. The net effect this change has had on our middle class is dramatic: the middle class is shrinking under unsustainable tax burdens and social burdens. We are left with a “haves and have-nots” social strata because the middle class always shoulders the burdens of the tax system and society. How do we revive the middle class?
1. Make Montana a more business friendly state. We need to make it easy for investors to invest in our community, creating middle-class jobs that pay enough to raise a family, put kids through college and have a piece of the American dream.
2. Change state and federal regulations to emphasize the impact of small businesses. Today small business owners have to spend more time on regulations than they do creating jobs and working with their employees. The pendulum has swung so far that small businesses cannot survive anymore, which is why you see big companies buying out smaller ones and sacrificing middle class jobs.
3. Montana is the Treasure State and its treasures should be responsibly used to create jobs. Natural resources are plentiful; there is no reason that we don’t have enough logs to create many good-paying jobs in Flathead County. We need to work with our government entities both state and federal in opening up these lands for timber sales.
4. We must demand free access to our public lands. The gates that stop the working class from recreating in our public lands need to come down. These lands belong to the public and we should have access to them. The millions and millions of acres that are virtually cut off from the middle-class need to be liberated.
5. Reward stewardship rather than obstructionism. Most of us in Northwest Montana are very much concerned about conservation. But when fringe elements control the conversation and exploit our laws the middle-class suffers.
I had the privilege of engaging our community in conversation focused on jobs and the middle class recently during my campaign for the Montana Senate. I pledged to stay involved in these issues and to work with other like-minded people in addressing the diminishing middle class. Please join me in encouraging our legislators to pay attention to this crisis and act by proposing realistic solutions to save our middle class.
Don “K” Kaltschmidt
Whitefish