The newspaper has, from time to time, reported on the economic impact of the Celebration and the horse industry in general. Last year, when the industry was in what seemed to be a precarious position, we ran a series of stories about the impact on the community if the horse industry were to collapse.

Obviously, any community, with time, can bounce back from the loss of a major industry or employer. But that doesn't mean that it's not appropriate to point out the economic consequences of losing a key employer.

Economic impact is not a matter of opinion or warm fuzzies; it can be documented, through employment numbers and tax revenues. We've reported on impact figures like these on various occasions in the past.

If the horse industry were to dry up and blow away, there would be serious economic consequences for this community. The same could be said for Tyson, or Sanford, or CalsonicKansei. You may not work for one of these companies or buy any of their products, but if they were to close up shop tomorrow it would affect you.

How, you ask? Let's say that a factory which employs 700 people goes out of business, and there are no other factories expanding or moving in at the same time. And let's say that 200 of those employees move away looking for work. Counting spouses and children, that's 500 people or more. The people moving away sell their homes, causing a glut on the market and decreasing the property values of those left behind.

Perhaps there are 20 businesses in the county -- small, mom-and-pop retailers, restaurants or what have you -- that are teetering on the edge of going out of business. Our 500-person drop in population takes out five of them. That's another 50 or more people directly affected right there, plus their spouses and children.

Meanwhile, out of the remaining 500 out-of-work employees, 300 find other jobs, in some cases for lower salaries than they were making before, and 200 go on unemployment. They don't spend as much, and that also hurts local retailers and the sales tax base. Plus there's an increased demand placed on local services, whether government programs or non-profit charities.

Meanwhile, we owe money on a school building program. That building program was designed to accomodate a growing population, not a shrinking one. But while our tax base decreases, the bond payments due on the building program stay the same. Also, while the government has some costs that are scaleable -- costs which will decrease as the population decreases -- there are also fixed overhead costs which aren't scaleable. So the remaining population is going to face a tax increase in order to take up the slack for the people who have moved away or sold their property.

You can see that the loss of any major industry is going to have an impact -- whether it's a factory or the walking horse industry. We were insulated to some extent from some of the closures over the last couple of decades -- Eaton Corp. and Stanley Tools come to mind -- because there were other industries expanding or moving in at the same time, and that softened the blow.

This is not meant as a blanket endorsement of keeping any industry at any cost or of giving anyone a free pass for bad behavior. There may be a case where a given industry's negatives outweigh its positives, or where some moral or ethical issue means that a given industry is no longer worthy of our support. In some cases, an industry will leave due to circumstances that are beyond our local control. But in any of those cases, we need to understand clearly what the consequences are from that industry's closure.

Some commenters have suggested that we as a community need to pursue better-paying jobs and more white-collar businesses. That's great; I agree wholeheartedly. It's also what every other community in America would like to do, and it doesn't happen overnight. In the meantime, we can't ignore the places where our current population happens to be employed.

Part of our job as journalists is to help people understand future possibilities, to give them information about what might happen in the future so that they can make up their own minds what to do about it in the present. Obviously, from the number of people who continue to insist that the horse industry has no impact on them, it's appropriate for us to continue to explain the ways in which various elements of our economy interact.

You don't have to like any specific industry, but if you stick your fingers in your ears and claim that an industry you don't like doesn't affect you, you're living in a fool's paradise.

-- John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government and other topics. His home page is lakeneuron.com.