For three decades we have conducted a massive economic experiment, testing a theory known as supply-side economics. The theory goes like this: Lower tax rates will encourage more investment, which in turn will mean more jobs and greater prosperity—so much so that tax revenues will go up, despite lower rates. The late Milton Friedman, the libertarian economist who wanted to shut down public parks because he considered them socialism, promoted this strategy. Ronald Reagan embraced Friedman’s ideas and made them into policy when he was elected president in 1980.

For the past decade, we have doubled down on this theory of supply-side economics with the tax cuts sponsored by President George W Bush in 2001 and 2003, which President Obama has agreed to continue for two years. You would think that whether this grand experiment worked would be settled after three decades. You would think the practitioners of the dismal science of economics would look at their demand curves and the data on incomes and taxes and pronounce a verdict, the way Galileo and Copernicus did when they showed that geocentrism was a fantasy because Earth revolves around the sun (known as heliocentrism). But economics is not like that. It is not like physics with its laws and arithmetic with its absolute values.

She was 17. She had nowhere to live – or at least nowhere remotely stable or healthy – but she didn’t want to give up on her future. She’s smart, funny and has plans to go to college.

Her name is Oneta and she’s a junior at Bend High, but had circumstances been different, she very well may have been another Central Oregon youth without a warm place to stay, little to eat and hardly a shred of hope. But now, she’s living at Cascade Youth & Family Center’s Living Options For Teens (LOFT), is getting good grades, playing on the softball team and beginning her search for a college where she hopes to study genetic engineering. A transitional living program for those between the ages of 16 and 21, the LOFT is both a hangout and a home for teens who might not have anywhere else to go.

In Oneta’s case, she had bounced around between Alaska and Central Oregon. Her life had become anything but stable and schoolwork wasn’t always at the front of her mind. At one point, she was living with six family members in a small trailer. After a stint in Alaska, she returned to Central Oregon last summer and made the decision to leave her family, as it were. But before she headed out on her own, Oneta heard about the LOFT. For the past two decades, CYFC – a division of J Bar J Youth Services – has been providing a number of services in the area, including a crisis hotline, a family mediation, assistance in finding community resources and a number of other services. The LOFT, however, is CYFC’s residential service for teens, housing about a dozen young people.

Adalia McDonald is bracing herself for the coming storm. A unemployment specialist in Bend,  McDonald, like a lot of state employees, isn’t sure exactly what her job or her paycheck is going to look like next year as the legislature prepares to take up a budget that continues to hemorrhage cash amidst the recession-stricken economy. That’s a concern for McDonald, who is trying to help put two kids through college while keeping up with her own bills. But McDonald, who will take 10 unpaid days this year to help the state pinch its pennies, isn’t holding out much hope that she and her fellow workers will be spared significant hardship.

If you’ve camped in any of our nearby national forests in the past few years, you probably paid for the right to do so. And when you wrote a check for your campsite, you almost certainly didn’t make it out to the National Forest Service. You probably made it out to Hoodoo, Chuck Shepard’s recreation and resort management company, or one of the other companies contracted to take care of campgrounds in the forests.