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Guest Post: Are You Seeing What I'm Seeing?
Submitted by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform
Are You Seeing What I'm Seeing?
Is it just me, or are the signs of consumer collapse as clear as a Lowes parking lot on a Saturday afternoon? Sometimes I wonder if I’m just seeing the world through my pessimistic lens, skewing my point of view. My daily commute through West Philadelphia is not very enlightening, as the squalor, filth and lack of legal commerce remain consistent from year to year. This community is sustained by taxpayer subsidized low income housing, taxpayer subsidized food stamps, welfare payments, and illegal drug dealing. The dependency attitude, lifestyles of slothfulness and total lack of commerce has remained constant for decades in West Philly. It is on the weekends, cruising around a once thriving suburbia, where you perceive the persistent deterioration and decay of our debt fixated consumer spending based society.
The last two weekends I’ve needed to travel the highways of Montgomery County, PA going to a family party and purchasing a garbage disposal for my sink at my local Lowes store. Montgomery County is the typical white upper middle class suburb, with tracts of McMansions dotting the landscape. The population of 800,000 is spread over a 500 square mile area. Over 81% of the population is white, with the 9% black population confined to the urban enclaves of Norristown and Pottstown.
The median age is 38 and the median household income is $75,000, 50% above the national average. The employers are well diversified with an even distribution between education, health care, manufacturing, retail, professional services, finance and real estate. The median home price is $300,000, also 50% above the national average. The county leans Democrat, with Obama winning 60% of the vote in 2008. The 300,000 households were occupied by college educated white collar professionals. From a strictly demographic standpoint, Montgomery County appears to be a prosperous flourishing community where the residents are living lives of relative affluence. But, if you look closer and connect the dots, you see fissures in this façade of affluence that spread more expansively by the day. The cheap oil based, automobile dependent, mall centric, suburban sprawl, sanctuary of consumerism lifestyle is showing distinct signs of erosion. The clues are there for all to see and portend a bleak future for those mentally trapped in the delusions of a debt dependent suburban oasis of retail outlets, chain restaurants, office parks and enclaves of cookie cutter McMansions. An unsustainable paradigm can’t be sustained.
The first weekend had me driving along Ridge Pike, from Collegeville to Pottstown. Ridge Pike is a meandering two lane road that extends from Philadelphia, winds through Conshohocken, Plymouth Meeting, Norristown, past Ursinus College in Collegeville, to the farthest reaches of Montgomery County, at least 50 miles in length. It served as a main artery prior to the introduction of the interstates and superhighways that now connect the larger cities in eastern PA. Except for morning and evening rush hours, this road is fairly sedate. Like many primary routes in suburbia, the landscape is engulfed by strip malls, gas stations, automobile dealerships, office buildings, fast food joints, once thriving manufacturing facilities sitting vacant and older homes that preceded the proliferation of cookie cutter communities that now dominate what was once farmland.
Telltale Signs
I should probably be keeping my eyes on the road, but I can’t help but notice the telltale signs of an economic system gone haywire. As you drive along, the number of For Sale signs in front of homes stands out. When you consider how bad the housing market has been, the 40% decline in national home prices since 2007, the 30% of home dwellers underwater on their mortgage, and declining household income, you realize how desperate a home seller must be to try and unload a home in this market. The reality of the number of For Sale signs does not match the rhetoric coming from the NAR, government mouthpieces, CNBC pundits, and other housing recovery shills about record low inventory and home price increases.
The Federal Reserve/Wall Street/U.S. Treasury charade of foreclosure delaying tactics and selling thousands of properties in bulk to their crony capitalist buddies at a discount is designed to misinform the public. My local paper lists foreclosures in the community every Monday morning. In 2009 it would extend for four full pages. Today, it still extends four full pages. The fact that Wall Street bankers have criminally forged mortgage documents, people are living in houses for two years without making mortgage payments, and the Federal Government backing 97% of all mortgages while encouraging 3.5% down financing does not constitute a true housing recovery. Show me the housing recovery in these charts.
Existing home sales are at 1998 levels, with 45 million more people living in the country today.
New single family homes under construction are below levels in 1969, when there were 112 million less people in the country.
Another observation that can be made as you cruise through this suburban mecca of malaise is the overall decay of the infrastructure, appearances and disinterest or inability to maintain properties. The roadways are potholed with fading traffic lines, utility poles leaning and rotting, and signage corroding and antiquated. Houses are missing roof tiles, siding is cracked, gutters astray, porches sagging, windows cracked, a paint brush hasn’t been utilized in decades, and yards are inundated with debris and weeds. Not every house looks this way, but far more than you would think when viewing the overall demographics for Montgomery County. You wonder how many number among the 10 million vacant houses in the country today. The number of dilapidated run down properties paints a picture of the silent, barely perceptible Depression that grips the country today. With such little sense of community in the suburbs, most people don’t even know their neighbors. With the electronic transfer of food stamps, unemployment compensation, and other welfare benefits you would never know that your neighbor is unemployed and hasn’t made the mortgage payment on his house in 30 months. The corporate fascist ruling plutocracy uses their propaganda mouthpieces in the mainstream corporate media and government agency drones to misinform and obscure the truth, but the data and anecdotal observational evidence reveal the true nature of our societal implosion.
A report by the Census Bureau this past week inadvertently reveals data that confirms my observations on the roadways of my suburban existence. Annual household income fell in 2011 for the fourth straight year, to an inflation-adjusted $50,054. The median income — meaning half earned more, half less — now stands 8.9% lower than the all-time peak of $54,932 in 1999. It is far worse than even that dreadful result. Real median household income is lower than it was in 1989. When you understand that real household income hasn’t risen in 23 years, you can connect the dots with the decay and deterioration of properties in suburbia. A vast swath of Americans cannot afford to maintain their residences. If the choice is feeding your kids and keeping the heat on versus repairing the porch, replacing the windows or getting a new roof, the only option is survival.
All races have seen their income fall, with educational achievement reflected in the much higher incomes of Whites and Asians. It is interesting to note that after a 45 year War on Poverty the median household income for black families is only up 19% since 1968.
Now for the really bad news. Any critical thinking person should realize the Federal Government has been systematically under-reporting inflation since the early 1980’s in an effort to obscure the fact they are debasing the currency and methodically destroying the lives of middle class Americans. If inflation was calculated exactly as it was in 1980, the GDP figures would be substantially lower and inflation would be reported 5% higher than it is today. Faking the numbers does not change reality, only the perception of reality. Calculating real median household income with the true level of inflation exposes the true picture for middle class America. Real median household income is lower than it was in 1970, just prior to Nixon closing the gold window and unleashing the full fury of a Federal Reserve able to print fiat currency and politicians to promise the earth, moon and the sun to voters. With incomes not rising over the last four decades is it any wonder many of our 115 million households slowly rot and decay from within like an old diseased oak tree. The slightest gust of wind can lead to disaster.
Eliminating the last remnants of fiscal discipline on bankers and politicians in 1971 accomplished the desired result of enriching the top 0.1% while leaving the bottom 90% in debt and desolation. The Wall Street debt peddlers, Military Industrial arms dealers, and job destroying corporate goliaths have reaped the benefits of financialization (money printing) while shoveling the costs, their gambling losses, trillions of consumer debt, and relentless inflation upon the working tax paying middle class. The creation of the Federal Reserve and implementation of the individual income tax in 1913, along with leaving the gold standard has rewarded the cabal of private banking interests who have captured our economic and political systems with obscene levels of wealth, while senior citizens are left with no interest earnings ($400 billion per year has been absconded from savers and doled out to bankers since 2008 by Ben Bernanke) and the middle class has gone decades seeing their earnings stagnate and their purchasing power fall precipitously.
The facts exposed in the chart above didn’t happen by accident. The system has been rigged by those in power to enrich them, while impoverishing the masses. When you gain control over the issuance of currency, issuance of debt, tax system, political system and legal apparatus, you’ve essentially hijacked the country and can funnel all the benefits to yourself and costs to the math challenged, government educated, brainwashed dupes, known as the masses. But there is a problem for the .01%. Their sociopathic personalities never allow them to stop plundering and preying upon the sheep. They have left nothing but carcasses of the once proud hard working middle class across the country side. There are only so many Lear jets, estates in the Hamptons, Jaguars, and Rolexes the .01% can buy. There are only 152,000 of them. Their sociopathic looting and pillaging of the national wealth has destroyed the host. When 90% of the population can barely subsist, collapse and revolution beckon.
Extend, Pretend & Depend
As I drove further along Ridge Pike we passed the endless monuments to our spiral into the depths of materialism, consumerism, and the illusion that goods purchased on credit represented true wealth. Mile after mile of strip malls, restaurants, gas stations, and office buildings rolled by my window. Anyone who lives in the suburbs knows what I’m talking about. You can’t travel three miles in any direction without passing a Dunkin Donuts, KFC, McDonalds, Subway, 7-11, Dairy Queen, Supercuts, Jiffy Lube or Exxon Station. The proliferation of office parks to accommodate the millions of paper pushers that make our service economy hum has been unprecedented in human history. Never have so many done so little in so many places. Everyone knows what a standard American strip mall consists of – a pizza place, a Chinese takeout, beer store, a tanning, salon, a weight loss center, a nail salon, a Curves, karate studio, Gamestop, Radioshack, Dollar Store, H&R Block, and a debt counseling service. They are a reflection of who we’ve become – an obese drunken species with excessive narcissistic tendencies that prefers to play video games while texting on our iGadgets as our debt financed lifestyles ultimately require professional financial assistance.
What you can’t ignore today is the number of vacant storefronts in these strip malls and the overwhelming number of SPACE AVAILABLE, FOR LEASE, and FOR RENT signs that proliferate in front of these dying testaments to an unsustainable economic system based upon debt fueled consumer spending and infinite growth assumptions. The booming sign manufacturer is surely based in China. The officially reported national vacancy rates of 11% are already at record highs, but anyone with two eyes knows these self-reported numbers are a fraud. Vacancy rates based on my observations are closer to 30%. This is part of the extend and pretend strategy that has been implemented by Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, the FASB, and the Wall Street banking cabal. The fraud and false storyline of a commercial real estate recovery is evident to anyone willing to think critically. The incriminating data is provided by the Federal Reserve in their Quarterly Delinquency Report.
The last commercial real estate crisis occurred in 1991. Mall vacancy rates were at levels consistent with today.
The current reported office vacancy rates of 17.5% are only slightly below the 19% levels of 1991.
As reported by the Federal Reserve, delinquency rates on commercial real estate loans in 1991 were 12%, leading to major losses among the banks that made those imprudent loans. Amazingly, after the greatest financial collapse in history, delinquency rates on commercial loans supposedly peaked at 8.8% in the 2nd quarter of 2010 and have now miraculously plummeted to pre-collapse levels of 4.9%. This is while residential loan delinquencies have resumed their upward trajectory, the number of employed Americans has fallen by 414,000 in the last two months, 9 million Americans have left the labor force since 2008, and vacancy rates are at or near all-time highs. This doesn’t pass the smell test. The Federal Reserve, owned and controlled by the Wall Street, instructed these banks to extend all commercial real estate loans, pretend they will be paid, and value them on their books at 100% of the original loan amount. Real estate developers pretend they are collecting rent from non-existent tenants, Wall Street banks pretend they are being paid by the developers, and their highly compensated public accounting firm pretends the loans aren’t really delinquent. Again, the purpose of this scam is to shield the Wall Street bankers from accepting the losses from their reckless behavior. Ben rewards them with risk free income on their deposits, propped up by mark to fantasy accounting, while they reward themselves with billions in bonuses for a job well done. The master plan requires an eventual real recovery that isn’t going to happen. Press releases and fake data do not change the reality on the ground.
I have two strip malls within three miles of my house that opened in 1990. When I moved to the area in 1995, they were 100% occupied and a vital part of the community. The closest center has since lost its Genuardi grocery store, Sears Hardware, Blockbuster, Donatos, Sears Optical, Hollywood Tans, hair salon, pizza pub and a local book store. It is essentially a ghost mall, with two banks, a couple chain restaurants and empty parking spaces. The other strip mall lost its grocery store anchor and sporting goods store. This has happened in an outwardly prosperous community. The reality is the apparent prosperity is a sham. The entire tottering edifice of housing, autos, and retail has been sustained by ever increasing levels of debt for the last thirty years and the American consumer has hit the wall. From 1950 through the early 1980s, when the working middle class saw their standard of living rise, personal consumption expenditures accounted for between 60% and 65% of GDP. Over the last thirty years consumption has relentlessly grown as a percentage of GDP to its current level of 71%, higher than before the 2008 collapse.
If the consumption had been driven by wage increases, then this trend would not have been a problem. But, we already know real median household income is lower than it was in 1970. The thirty years of delusion were financed with debt – peddled, hawked, marketed, and pushed by the drug dealers on Wall Street. The American people got hooked on debt and still have not kicked the habit. The decline in household debt since 2008 is solely due to the Wall Street banks writing off $800 billion of mortgage, credit card, and auto loan debt and transferring the cost to the already drowning American taxpayer.
The powers that be are desperately attempting to keep this unsustainable, dysfunctional debt choked scheme from disintegrating by doling out more subprime auto debt, subprime student loan debt, low down payment mortgages, and good old credit card debt. It won’t work. The consumer is tapped out. Last week’s horrific retail sales report for August confirmed this fact. Declining household income and rising costs for energy, food, clothing, tuition, taxes, health insurance, and the other things needed to survive in the real world, have broken the spirit of Middle America. The protracted implosion of our consumer society has only just begun. There are thousands of retail outlets to be closed, hundreds of thousands of jobs to be eliminated, thousands of malls to be demolished, and billions of loan losses to be incurred by the criminal Wall Street banks.
The Faces of Failure & Futility
My fourteen years working in key positions for big box retailer IKEA has made me particularly observant of the hubris and foolishness of the big chain stores that dominate the retail landscape. There are 1.1 million retail establishments in the United States, but the top 25 mega-store national chains account for 25% of all the retail sales in the country. The top 100 retailers operate 243,000 stores and account for approximately $1.6 trillion in sales, or 36% of all the retail sales in the country. Their misconceived strategic plans assumed 5% same store growth for eternity, economic growth of 3% per year for eternity, a rising market share, and ignorance of the possible plans of their competitors. They believed they could saturate a market without over cannibalizing their existing stores. Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowes have all hit the limits of profitable expansion. Each incremental store in a market results in lower profits.
My trip to my local Lowes last weekend gave me a glimpse into a future of failure and futility. Until 2009, I had four choices of Lowes within 15 miles of my house. There was a store 8 miles east, 12 miles west, 15 miles north, and 15 miles south of my house. In an act of supreme hubris, Lowes opened a stores smack in the middle of these four stores, four miles from my house. The Hatfield store opened in early 2009 and I wrote an article detailing how Lowes was about to ruin their profitability in Montgomery County. It just so happens that I meet a couple of my old real estate buddies from IKEA at a local pub every few months. In 2009 one of them had a real estate position with Lowes and we had a spirited discussion about the prospects for the Lowes Hatfield store. He assured me it would be a huge success. I insisted it would be a dud and would crush the profitability of the market by cannibalizing the other four stores. We met at that same pub a few months ago. Lowes had laid him off and he admitted to me the Hatfield store was a disaster.
I pulled into the Lowes parking lot at 11:30 am on a Saturday. Big Box retailers do 50% of their business on the weekend. The busiest time frame is from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm on Saturday. Big box retailers build enough parking spots to handle this peak period. The 120,000 square feet Hatfield Lowes has approximately 1,000 parking spaces. I pulled into the spot closest to the entrance during their supposed peak period. There were about 70 cars in the parking lot, with most probably owned by Lowes workers. It is a pleasure to shop in this store, with wide open aisles, and an employee to customer ratio of four to one. The store has 14 checkout lanes and at peak period on a Saturday, there was ONE checkout lane open, with no lines. This is a corporate profit disaster in the making, but the human tragedy far overrides the declining profits of this mega-retailer.
As you walk around this museum of tools and toilets you notice the looks on the faces of the workers. These aren’t the tattooed, face pierced freaks you find in many retail establishments these days. They are my neighbors. They are the beaten down middle class. They are the middle aged professionals who got cast aside by the mega-corporations in the name of efficiency, outsourcing, right sizing, stock buybacks, and executive stock options. The irony of this situation is lost on those who have gutted the American middle class. When you look into the eyes of these people, you see sadness, confusion and embarrassment. They know they can do more. They want to do more. They know they’ve been screwed, but they aren’t sure who to blame. They were once the very customers propelling Lowes’ growth, buying new kitchens, appliances, and power tools. Now they can’t afford a can of paint on their $10 per hour, no benefit retail careers. As depressing as this portrait appears, it is about to get worse.
This Lowes will be shut down and boarded up within the next two years. The parking lot will become a weed infested eyesore occupied by 14 year old skateboarders. One hundred and fifty already down on their luck neighbors will lose their jobs, the township will have a gaping hole in their tax revenue, and the CEO of Lowes will receive a $50 million bonus for his foresight in announcing the closing of 100 stores that he had opened five years before. This exact scenario will play out across suburbia, as our unsustainable system comes undone. Our future path will parallel the course of the labor participation rate. Just as the 9 million Americans who have “left” the labor force since 2008 did not willfully make that choice, the debt burdened American consumer will be dragged kicking and screaming into the new reality of a dramatically reduced standard of living.
Connecting the dots between my anecdotal observations of suburbia and a critical review of the true non-manipulated data bestows me with a not optimistic outlook for the coming decade. Is what I’m seeing just the view of a pessimist, or are you seeing the same thing?
A few powerful men have hijacked our economic, financial and political structure. They aren’t socialists or capitalists. They’re criminals. They created the culture of materialism, greed and debt, sustained by prodigious levels of media propaganda. Our culture has been led to believe that debt financed consumption over morality and justice is the path to success. In reality, we’ve condemned ourselves to a slow painful death spiral of debasement and despair.
“A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, and fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.” – Chris Hedges
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Multiply this scenario by several million:
My employer now pays about 20% more to provide me with healthcare than 2 years ago, but my wages haven't gone up and my copays are larger, as are my share of the premiums.
Did I really have $12,000 (in benefits) added to my income?
Also, because of tax laws, it's cheaper for my employer to raise the matching 401(k) contribution (because he doesn't have to pay payroll or SS taxes on it) than to give me any sort of cost of living raise. But to take advantage of the increased matching contribution limit, I have to subtract from my (frozen) take-home pay.
Is that 401(k) bump-up better or worse than getting the cash right now in the form of a raise?
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/good-jobs-2012-07.pdf
I don't think so...
<== I read the whole article
<== I read the title and just skipped to the comments
Disclosure: I read it. Pretty depressing stuff.
I fear that all above "I am not a copp..." didn't read the article, not a single comment worth reading
it's a shame, this article is so spot on in describing the present situation and what brought us to it, a must read, a perfect summary of the extend and pretend illusion they created
read it
Extremely bullish
How's business? Well, less people in the street.... That's not what i asked, i said.
So, does Matt Dillon get shot in the end?
Matt Dillon should *always* get shot in the end. Doesn't mater which end, just in the end.
What I'm also seeing today is a hilariously counter-intuitive downward movment in the "price" of CRIMEX paper gold and silver. AS IF prices wouldn't continue to rise today after last Thurdsay's QE and what with all the GREAT financial and political news from around the globe today...
No follow though rally for you PM!
'Course this foolishness will only dissuade monkey brained zombies. You know, about 90% of our fellow citizens. The rest of us? We don't need no steeenking follow through ralleys... We just Buy the Dip!
Thank you, bankster scumbags, for yet more "government" subsidized cheap Real Money. You keep giving, we'll keep taking.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket...make sure you sprinkle in food stockpiling on basics (salt, flour, sugar, dried fruit, etc)...currency is currency, but make sure you have something to trade with. Whiskey, coffee, yeast (very useful)
Q. How has capitalism worked out for you, you and, yes, you too?
I wouldn't know... all I've known are manipulated markets and debt based ponzi schemes.
"I wouldn't know... all I've known are manipulated markets and debt based ponzi schemes."
That's the way capitalism was always going to end up....it was doomed from the begininng. It's not the "ism" thought up by man.....it's the corruption of the men working in that "ism".
That said....some "ism's" blow up sooner and with worse consequences than other when human corruption is mixed in. But all will fail...just as capitalism is failing even as we speak.
Wrong, there was no beginning, you have been sold a lie, but your masters greatly appreciate your mistaken beliefs - which empower them even more than your tax dollars.
LOL....not sure what your babble means.....but your tax dollars do just as much empowering. Don't see you storming the I.R.S. building with an AK-47.
Don't blame capitalism. Capitalism is, has, and always will be the most efficient means of allocating scarce resources between individuals. It is the motivation and expression of human action, innovation, and voluntary exchange. If left free and unfettered, will create the greatest wealth for the greatest number of people. Its when you bring government in that things get fucked up. The state is an unproductive resource consuming, affairs regulating, value extracting pig. And there is the thought that without the state society wouldn't exist. Yet in order for the state to exist, it must first extract resources from other productive purposes and processes. and, while its doing that, extract other resources from other people, to give to somebody else. Everywhere and always. That is the nature of the state and its associated morality. To the extent that the state is involved in the affairs of everybody all the time, you can realy no longer call the system we live in as capitalism since the majority of exchange is no longer voluntary, rather it is coercive, even if its appearance is voluntary. A more suitable phrase is crony capitalism, where increasingly less and less people enjoy benefits at the expense of increasingly more and more people. Don't blame free market capitalism, entrepreneurship and innovation. This has been the greatest source of wealth generation EVER. Blame your benevolent government that has stepped in and royally fucked things up.
I've wondered for a while now if Americans would recognize the collapse when it arrived. I think it is here already, but has been disquised by the government entitlement/welfare programs. Once those go...
Some are aware. Other's don't want to be aware. Such is life.
Let's dispel the illusion of "entitlements" and "welfare".
Anyone in debt is a receiver of government aid. Period. Your sweat is no longer paid or priced in gold or silver, it is priced in that Federal Reserve debt instrument called the US Dollar which is simply a ledger entry. It is a ledger entry meaning that you are owed something.
Food stamps are currency. They price in the cost/benefit relationship of keeping you from a Murderous Starvation, which is the most volatile force in civilization. Tax breaks are easements and coupons and vouchers. All scrip is the same.
Most people are waiting for "The Collapse" to be announced on TV. Then they'll know it's real.
The situation is now n o r m a l i z e d.
See it???...duh, we come to ZH don't we?
must remind myself to buy Lowes before the store closing announcement...should bump it 10%, will probably double if they announce they are closing all their stores.
You people are so negative, another war and were out of this. That means lots of shovel ready jobs digging graves.
That's a bunch of human fertilizer so yup, I see green shoots.
Soylent Green Shoots?
Buy LOW, buy the reits. Got it. Thanks!
Noticed similar on a drive through long island recently. Many vacant stores and office buildings with "for rent" signs out front. Some very large, completely vacant office buildings too.
Need to qualify that statement better considering the difference in income throughout the area. We're you driving through Center Islip, or Merrick. BIG DIFFERENCE...
The US Constitution is a very moral document. Don't like? Fine, change it -- with an amendment, not by going around it countless times causing confusion and rendering the rule of law meaningless. Morality requires clarity.
O/T Chris Hedges lost me years back when his own elastic morality wrote "American Fascists," blaming all US Christians for every imagineable global problem. Now, he is in a deathmatch against his former socialist friends, and his hero Obama -- to get rid of NDAA, drones, and assasinations of US citizens.
To Hedges: choose your friends wisely the first time and you won't have to eat crow. Welcome back to the freedom movement, Chris.
Some quotes from Founders
Consider these words from George Washington, the Father of our Nation, in his farewell speech on September 19, 1796:
"It is impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible. Of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, our religion and morality are the indispensable supporters. Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that our national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
Consider these words by John Adams, our second president, who also served as chairman of the American Bible Society.
In an address to military leaders he said, "We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution of the United States, said this: "We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments."
Hedges was never an Obama supporter. As a regular writer for truthdig.org, he wrote anti-Obama pieces to counter the pro-Obama pieces of the site's founder, Robert Scheer. Also, Hedges is a Catholic who started out studying for the priesthood, so whatever statements he's made about Christianity at least come from an above-average base of knowledge and familiarity with it. Other than that, you were right on the money!
Mrs Rainman , following her normal pre-Fall schedule, ordered 17 pairs of Zappo's winter boots delivered to our door free via UPS. She will try on all of them at her leisure , select 1 or 2 pair, then ship the unwanted back for free. Or she might just send them all back. Repeat for the remaining 3 seasons.
It appears to be madness to me, but this looks like the future of retail.
But seriously - why not? They actually are prompting people to act this way. When everyone chooses to do this, with no intent to purchase any shoes but just to feel like they are shopping and own something, then FedEx and UPS will rocket higher and Zappos will be able to report massive sales receipts...that is until they report massive profit collapse but not before they IPO and their stock shoots to $700 too.
Extend and pretend. Talk about an unsustainable business model.
Zappo biz model must be based on hammering the credit cards of those females " forgetting " to ship back the returns. Just a hunch...I try to stay out of the whole process.
I know all about that whole dot-com business model...
It's a combination of the credit-card trick, selling ecommerce data, and continuing to use PowerPoint decks of revenue projections to convince the financiers/investors that they just need ONE MORE ROUND of capital...
...because next year they'll reach critical mass and sell shoes to everyone on Earth.
My informal economic pulse locally is garage and yard sales. Been kind of noticing for 40 years.
This Saturday saw a record number of signs in our small local community - a couple I went by were large, multi-family yard sales, which seems to be a growing trend.
Just sayin'...
remember when yard sales were a weekend thing?
i've been noticing weekday yardsales more and more
unemployed selling all their shit before they move
I'm always at a loss when I see yard sales... These folks are slitting each others' throats... just take all the shit to the local goodwill/salvation army/etc. and take the tax write-off. You'll be miles ahead.
Some of us can't write off donations on our tax returns (non home owner). It's not as simple as you put it. If someone wants to sell their devalued crap to someone else why do you have a problem with it? "Slitting someone's throat" is not selling them used products that they could buy cheaper than going to a retail store that sells cheap Chinese products. It also sends a message to Corporate America regarding gutting the middle class. C.A. wanted to rely on China to pick up the missed sales opportunities that would occur in the US from the outsourcing taking place. Something tells me they made a serious mis-calculation.
BTW I do donate to charity (without my tax write off), but why should I donate something of value if I can and want to sell it. Unemployed people donating to charity for the tax writeoff..yeah they don't need money or anything.
Because you have something better to do than waste your entire saturday for a $20 spot... if any individual item has value, then it goes on ebay/craigslist... the only stuff left is junk. You have to sell a LOT of junk to make up for the loss of time/opportunity cost. I realize there are people with no opportunity cost and no other alternative but to sell some junk to get by.... however, I think you're arguing the exception and not the rule. [e.g. homeownership].
Great post, thank You! Always good to hear boots-on-the-ground anecdotal evidence on top of what the official data tells.
Very well written piece. They are hollowing out of the American middle class by the globalists that run this country. Whether they are at the State Department or some other part of federal government we have done nothing to keep jobs in the US. All have encouraged this free trade mantra at the detriment of all middle class Americans. Getting rid of Obama or Bush does not solve this problem. Get rid of the entire government structures that promote the global bs is the answer.
Music for you. I even used the line 'free trade mantra' in the lyrics!
Globalize
nation harvesting
Great articile Chris.
Bankster TSA and DHS are headed your way. North of Pittsburgh is doing pretty well. A federal reserve note goes a lot further in PA vs SoCal. East PA is likely not as bad as LA.
Thanks to the Chinese building all those Westinghouse reactors. Of course, Westinghouse gets a tax abatement while the school district it sits in lays off teachers.
It is disturbing how the labor participation rate looks like a head-and-shoulders peak.
The math is bad and until we revive manufacturing and jobs, there's nobody there to buy products. We have insanely built the economy on over inflated algorithms and formulas. The banks don't want this uncovered but when they cant adjust formulas any longer, the bottom falls out.
What incentive does a company have to build a factor and hire employees..none..when they can hire a few geeks and create a data mining system with little risk and make millions. Companies that produce tangibles or sell them do this now, like Sears for one example. The profits are huge and if Walgreens made short of $800 million mining and selling data, think of how big the profits are. Why do you think we see record breaking profits? Eventually this will crash out too as we need balance. Read about Cook Medical Devices. We are not very smart with imposing an excise tax on companies that create jobs. 2 years ago when the healthcare reform law was created, things were different but now we have more high powered algorithms created to fetch more money.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2012/07/cook-medical-cancels-plans-for-fa...
Again the banks built it and those selling data should be excise taxed to support some of this, and I think about this every time I pay an excise tax I pay for a tire to drive to my lesser paying job. It's all about the crooked math and the middle class has become data chasers to fix all the flaws for the big corporations in one area and then in another those same algorithms are used to deny. For manufacturing companies to arise like the Phoenix bird, we need to get the math correct and devaluate some algorithms as the economy can't live on those alone and the Fed can't fix it with printing money.
Regarding this:
Connecting the dots between my anecdotal observations of suburbia and a critical review of the true non-manipulated data bestows me with a not optimistic outlook for the coming decade. Is what I’m seeing just the view of a pessimist, or are you seeing the same thing?
I agree 100%
It's worse in some areas, like the old dead towns all up and down rt 129 in FL & GA, and the massive shiny new ghost towns in South West FL, NV, AZ, etc...
Good read!
I agree. I think everybody has some anecdotal observation differing only in degree. But, I can't help but think that were government to let the market determine prices (and in particular interest rates), that prices would (could) fall, and motivate innovation and entrepreneurship. Isn't that what is supposed to happen? Government has propped up failure too much and for too long, so that it is only failure that is left dotting the landscape. success has moved on. Should we really be surprised? Probably not. But, we can sure feel disappointed, discouraged, and demoralized, as we empathize with our neighbors on the horrifying knowledge that things will probably get worse before they get better. When Schumpeter talked about the creative destruction of capitalism, I doubt that in his mind, was he thinking of anything like this. I'd like to think that recovery is possible and that people will once again find purpose in what they are doing and not be disenfranchised. However, it is probably more realistic to expect the exact opposite given the current fiscal and monetary policies. It used to be that your home was your retreat; your kingdom - the place where you could focus on the positives in your life and be grateful for the things that uou had. I think now, people's homes are not this at all. Rather the home has become a permanent ball and chain and as such, a constant reliable source of imiseration and by extension, despair. This is the shit that the FED Chair and Krugman fail to recognize/acknowledge and to me, this is a failure in leadersip and the continued arrogance in the belief that There Is No Free Lunch simply doesnt apply - that this time is diferent. But, its never different. Just different people.
Pareto - you have a good grasp on things. I think that an additional problem is the "group think" mentality that permeates this "ruling class". Everything they have been taught has been through a filter of keynesianism, socialism, and communism. Secondly they have been trained to lie and obviscate truth. They can't see beyond their four walls .... and herin lies the problem. The solutions to get us out of this spiral exist, yet they are incapable of seeing them, as it would require them to admit that they are "the problem" and that the solutions that are required necessitate letting ordinary folks know the truth, that government cannot create prosperity.
Additionally, the standard suburban home is a "box" not much different then a mail box. If your home included a workshop, a few tillable acres of land, zoning laws that allowed you to raise some meat, then perhaps you would have something worth owning. (Early americans understood this much better). Instead the suburban home with the zoning laws, and code enforcement police is merely "a box" a little more comfortable then the one a homeless person lives in, that is taxed .... through abhorrent property taxes (to pay for the whole blight of government workers in your suburban enclave). The homeless folks may indeed have it a little better, as at least they own their time and do not slave away at a job to stay in the box. You are also right, that there is no free lunch. Many of our citizens (and those who are not) who live here do not understand that concept as it is no longer taught in the public schools. Duty (to provide for one's self and their offspring) is no longer taught. It will eventually revert back to what is practical, useful, and what "works", but only after everything comes apart.
Gov-Co follies & foibles!
Why isn't obama circumcised?
Because there's no end to that prick.
If you're lost
and out of hope
smoke up your kids last dope
never fear
there's obama the brave
dick in his hand ..Burma Shave
West Philly has been for the most part a shithole since i could remember as a born and raised Philadelphian.My old hood,N.E. Philly is now going into shithole status.
I see what you're saying Jim Quinn. I listen to the happy, wonderful, optimistic newsman in the morning and then get in my car and drive by a fw dozen For Sale and For Lease signs...then by empty store fronts and half-vacant strip malls....some of these malls (amazingly) were only built last year! (Who is loaning these people money knowing they are going to lose 100%?)
There is a huge disconnect between the TV news and reality...bigger then last year for sure. One 2400 sf house I drive by every day was on the market for 181 days at $42 psf !
Luckily they found a sucker...oops, I mean a buyer.
The 48 and 66 years old Baby Boomers will voted for the 401(k)/ Housing Ponzi Scheme best friend : Obama / Ben Bernanke, the rest of us are fucked .
I think the multi-unit figure excludes prison "housing".
To late to stop now, just enjoy the show boys and girls we are living in great times.
The compression of history, it all will end in tears and blood.
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.
Tacitus
yea he pulls it all together with much research.
not much new, but certainly makes one wonder about the future.
at 50 some odd, i just wish it wasn't true.
but it really had to come to this point.
an inflection point where the composite of all graphs nose dives.
even pm's and g and a don't give me a sense of serenity.
feeling somewhat powerless, but not forgotten is this posted once
and worth repeating:
1)guns replace brains
2)gold replaces brains
3)internet blather replaces brains and common sense
4)you are not smarter than you really are no matter how much you say
5)not realizing all things must pass
6)assuming your friends/family/community will stand shoulder to shoulder with the come of the collapse of anything. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN BITCHEEZ. my add:think like a cougar
7)not realizing everyone lies all the time.
8)not realizing you are safer with nothing , than a backload of burdens.
9)not learning to run like a scared monkey.
10)in the end stategy is everything
went to my 40 acre/basic cabin and started the process of practicing survival- this all fucking sucks, but i saw the signs of the RE crisses and ignored it(was RE broker). not ignoring the crisses brewing this time!
if all goes ok, so what, i had fun doing what i love; hunting,being in nature , and enjoying some nice weather.
good day to ya...
Yep, and it was at least this bad two years ago and TPTB have done a fine job holding the pieces together somehow....I had/have cash ready to pounce on a deal, but Ben won't let it fall apart...he is good. I'll have to continue to wait
Truely amazing slight of hand (job)
To the one commenter bashing Ayn Rand... You should think twice before spouting such nonsense... You are living in her world now... Read up on Wesley Mouch, Jim Taggart, Mr Thompson... Collapse beckons. Except in this case, there is no Atlantis, maybe in Asia but in the USA, it will be swept up like leaves in the wind... And dont forget, nukes...
This is how F'ed up the system is: Spoke with a relative over the weekend. Her daughter bought a house (against my advice) in LV in 2007 for $260,000, it is now worth $200,000. Bought on A $0 money down VA loan. They have been renting it for a year with negative carry (even after a Fed backed refi). They went to a lawyer who said to short sale it.
GET THIS even with screwing the bank/US taxpayer out of $160,000, their credit score will only drop by 30 pts!
It is 790 now and will be 760 after - still good enough to get another house!
What kind of system is this - of course is makes sense to pay your car loans and credit cards and just walk away.
BUT THE CATCH - it has to close before Dec 31st - some kind of rule change will hit their credit score much harder.
If this true expect to see a wave of short sales.
Don't worry,Quinn, flipping zero-down houses is making a come back I hear on the radio. They need helpers tey so many to flip according to the guy on the radio---none of your own money....in your spare time.....work from home in your PJs!----flipping houses all over the place.
Gee, it sounds too good to be true.
It's easy to be rich when you live on credit.
I knew an electrician whose business did wonderful during the housing boom. New SUV's, vacations three times a year and then decided to build an ostentatious mansion to show off his "success." With this success his arrogance and hubris climbed right along with it.
Now? He's not braying too loudly anymore. The mansion he was building was about 80% finshed before he realized his income wasn't matching the out going $. Now, he's dog paddling just to keep his nose above the waterline.
Do I feel bad? No.
Bet he was a Boomer, living off everybody elses dime. Right?
of course there is no housing recovery, but that's pretty much the only string the Shalom and media cheer squad have to push on (besides AAPL of course)... it's really been an impressive campaign of bullshit - look at the XHB... i heard that young clown on CNBS immediately trying to spin the crude battering today as a potential plus for consumers.... lol what about the last 75 cents/gal bending over, havn't heard very much about that from CNBS whore brigade
Obama our hero
‘this we all know
Mak’n the taxpayer
Pay thru the nose
He’s still got Bernanke
All trussed up and tame
Cutt’n our balls off ….Burma Shave
Plenty of empty strip malls around me. An empty Best Buy since May. More and more empty stores.
An Ace Hardware that's been in business 30 years will be going out of business soon.
The HDs by me are like ghost towns-even first thing in the morning when contractors are supposed to be stocking up for the day.
Same here in Florida.
I'm an early riser(5am)so I'm on the doorstep when Lowes or HD opens.
Sometimes in there an hour with maybe three customers and an army of
staff.Contractor check out is deathly quiet.
Something is going to have to 'give' soon.
Thank you both I was going to mention them (HD) as well. Just imagine how much it costs in electricity alone to open these massive retailers in these huge warehouse sized bulidings every morning; and then to have only 10 paying customers show up! 6-7 years ago people couldn't get in the door fast enough.
meanwhile, HD stock has pretty much doubled this year... insanity
Great piece Jim.
Reality and propoganda will always be 180.
Recommend Chris Hedges book Empire of Illusion.
Excellent read, disturbing not for minors.
Pennsylvania is not alone. The decline in the standard of living is only going to get worse. A 'steak' is not going to appear on too many dinner plates any more. It will be replaced by a burger or some hummus. And when that happens, the Fed will calculate inflation by substituting $4.00 a pound ground beef for $8.00 a pound steak, and tell us that food prices have dropped 50%!
One thing you forgot to mention in those stip malls Jim - We Buy Gold places.
We left suburban Georgia 1 year ago and saw the same.
The future will support 2 kinds of lifestyle -- truly urban (not car dependent) and self sufficient, off the grid types. The suburban model appears doomed.
Fantastic article, I agree about the vast majority of it. Am seeing ~30% vacancy in supermalls in Seattle. However, strip malls are doing fine, being filled up with medical marijuana stores in anticipation of I-502 passing (full legalization for personal consumption).
However, I do have issues with you portraying your neighbors as victims though. Most people were never meant to have the lifestyles they had; they performed jobs that were not important (i.e. TPS reports) making more then what they were worth, overleveraged themselves and now they are the ones left holding the shit-covered stick. I feel bad for them, but they brought it on themselves. Somewhere along the way your neighbors bought into the fantasy that we were all destined to be on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous... wrong. And if the central bankers, credit card companies, mortgage agents and mega-stores sell it and they buy it... well, sorry! But those middle class people are just as guilty of greed as the Gordon Gekko's, just not on the same scale. I know, because I'm a recovering debt addict... foreclosure/short sale, empty savings accounts, bed bath and beyond kitchen, fancy dinners every night, Starbucks lattes, brand new everything.. dumb! Now, I shop on Craigslist/Goodwill, buy automobiles in cash, rent and not buy... live within your means!
Also, If they "know they can do more", then why don't they? Can your friends really develop a new technology, discover a new scientific paradigm, create a fantastic piece of art, or, construct a new business that provides a desirable product? Probably not, because if they could, they would. The truth is, they are sad, confused and embarassed because they are the ones who wait around for someone to tell them what to do to be successful, rather then being successful. And those are the people who should have to struggle to get by. That's the way it used to be, like old Mellencamp songs... "he's got an interstate running through his front yard but he says, I got it soooo good!". Just now your friends bitch about the interstate because they believe they are entitled to better.
We're all guilty and we all have it coming.
Why would a car manufacturer build a brand new auto plant in the middle of no where on rural land? and would it also need to be re-zoned to heavy industrial? I imagine new little citites have popped up all over the US while many major "older" cities having been losing population for decades. I believe these problems go far beyond money printing and I predict we may see some of these "older" cities abandoned. Which the outer lying communities, townships, villages etc... will go as well.
90% of the people going door to door around here want something for nothing. They have an impressive array of scams. I haven't had anyone ask to mow my lawn in ten years. There was one kid who shoveled my drive for cash a few years ago and another a couple of weeks ago who painted my address on the curb. I almost faint when someone wants to work for clownbux anymore.
::Putting the Lowe's opening into further perspective::
That Hatfield Lowe's was a horrendous idea. Clemen's market closed, space still hasn't sold, but Shop Right builds a huge brand new store next to Lowe's across the street from the closed grocery store.
Great article on a (yes I'm biased) great area that's being plagued by the eternal glut.
Ridge Avenue going through Strawberry Mansion...one word, plight.
Ridge Avenue going through further suburbs...plight with great makeup on.
Bullish Conshohocken though!
So what is the solution? Can someone describe a post-consumerism economic system that will support 7 billion people? Are we all doomed to be inevitable consumerablesTM? Are the death seeds of capitalism inherent in the do-or-die, profit optimization equation? If yes, then what?
ZHers see the problem, drone on about the problem, but how can or will it be mitigated?
Who is really willing to sacrifice air-conditioning, etc. (my kids don't believe there was a time when most people did not have air conditioning in their homes ('70s))? My wife will give up her air-conditioning when you pry it from her freon soaked hands.
Is it reasonable to hope that through the internet, as a communal point of reference (instead of a bitching forum), people will forge past the existing political arena and coalesce around a platform that represents other than TPTB? The answer is ...
Solution is to allow those saturated to default. Students should be allowed to default to clear their debt. The US government will probably default through printing. Default on pensions because many were promised without having the means to pay for them.
All build on over 30 years of ever-expanding credit. I know mid-twenty kids that are up to their eyballs with student loans. One with $100K and another with $200K.
Houses purchased recently only required 3.5% down. No skin. People think the game can continue forever, Credit expands until it saturates.
Baby-boomers who spent everything and are now on Social security disability because they can't find a job, causes that to implode faster.
true unbridled capitalism.
no fed.
"To announce that we are to stand by our president right or wrong...is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." --Theodore Roosevelt
Hope and change bitchezz... hope and change.
We may see the same things, but we blame different people for it. I blame the wealthy and the banks for their boom bust cycles, the unemployment, and putting the world in debt that can never be repaid. You blame it all on the poor "dependent" class, who you would probably rather see dead so they would no longer be a burden and your future drive might be be a little nicer.
The Presidential 23rd Psalm
The President is my shepherd, I am in want. He maketh me to lie
down on park benches, he leadeth me beside still factories, he restoreth
my doubt in the Socialist Democratic party. He guideth me to the path of unemployment
for his party's sake. I am still hungry. I fear evil for thou art against
me. obama anointest my income with taxes, so my expenses runneth over my
income. Surely poverty and hard living shall follow me all the days of
the Socialist Dumb-o-cratic administration, and I shall live in a rented house forever.
5,000 years ago, Moses said, "Pick up your shovel, mount your ass and I shall
lead you to the Promised Land."
5,000 years later, socialist Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "Lay down your shovel, light a
Camel, sit on your ass---this is the Promised Land."
With obama, he will take your shovel, sell your camel, kick your ass, and
tell you there is no Promised Land.
Burma Shave
Oh, for the halcyon days of the burning Bushes and when the Amercans believed : "you can do what you like, just don't get caught at it."
A guy goes into a bar and announces that he has some terrific socialist Democratic jokes.
The bartender leans over and says, "Look, buddy, I'd be careful if I were you.
The bouncers, those big fellas over there in the corner, are Socialist Dems. So am I,
and I'm no midget, either. For that matter, everyone here is a Socialist Democrat." The
newcomer says, "That's okay. I'll talk slowly."
hey Habu?
yeah
You gonna take out the new Porsche again today?
probably. I gotta call Trixie first.
Trixie?
yeah ..blonde, 34DD, hot.
oh,ok..
Life is so good.
Most of us are aware that this is the way it is...So Jim, what do you suggest we do about it?
the mindset change of Pax Americana expressed with force and perception :
A few powerful men have hijacked our economic, financial and political structure. They aren’t socialists or capitalists. They’re criminals. They created the culture of materialism, greed and debt, sustained by prodigious levels of media propaganda. Our culture has been led to believe that debt financed consumption over morality and justice is the path to success. In reality, we’ve condemned ourselves to a slow painful death spiral of debasement and despair.
“A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, and fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.” – Chris Hedges
Bravo Mr Hedges; it summarises "Reaganomics -NWO" Legacy perfectly.Capitalism defined:
"I wouldn't know... all I've known are manipulated markets and debt based ponzi schemes."
Those are but the effects of capitalism.
Earth to some ZH posters. It is not controversial to note that USA is the single most "capitalist" nation on earth. There is no opposition to it, let alone alternative party/ ideology representation. It is likewise incontrovertible that the D/R parties are equally corporatist and identical in their subjugation to cronyism.
All are simply the outcomes of unchecked, meaning unopposed, capitalism.
Yes, the system is heading towards collapse. I doubt that collapse can be a avoided absent a willingness to admit capitalism is the culprit.
Blessings
Bite me, Axelrod.
Capitalism is not the fault. The US of A has an abberation of capitalism, which is over regulated, market rigged, with every manner of control exerted through lobbiests, laws, regulations, fees, taxes, and an ignorant (largely) populace. In capitalism, you do not need the force of the state to produce goods and services. There is freedom to choose what you wish to make, sell, or buy. You do not have that here in the USofA. The whole commerce side of the USof A is upsidedown. If I wish to sell a gallon of fresh milk unpasturized - not only will I be put in handcuffs, but they (you know who) will destroy me in the process. This is just "one example".
Just talk with any small business owner who produces something for a clue as to just how far we are from capitalism.
ah yes, the means of production have been filtered(ie regulated) down to a select few.
1. you want unpasteurized milk....you can't find it and if you do you can go to jail.
2. you want to distill your own brew....you will go to jail.
3. you want to sell you organic farm raised eggs at the farmers market....you must have each and every chicken you intend to sell from blood tested.
4. you want to make your own fully automatic gun from parts manufactured within your state....you will go to jail.
there are too many 'regulations' to try and protect the idiots of this world. regulations prevent small business from creating innvation (by not letting them into the game to begin with).
we do not have capitalism....it is a bastard hermaphrodite with corporatism that is morphing into pure socialism.
Great article, now what are we going to do about it?
I'm gonna stack, finish turning over the garden for winter plants, teach my childrens children as much self reliance as I can, hug all my family and keep my powder dry for the "moment" when we meet them on the banks of the Pecos.
Well Mr. Zymurgy, I think we can count on you to brew beer, and if it is decent beer, you can keep your communist friends drunk the night before the election. In fact get them so drunk that they're paralysed.
Being slightly more serious, if you've got a few brain cells working (I think I have two or three myself) think about what you can do to survive in a poop hits the fan takedown. Biggest issues are property taxes, being able to stay fed and watered (beer works well), and defended. What most folks don't realize is that you will need help, so you'll want to align yourself with folks who at least will work with you, and hopefully know alot more then you. The gist is that mayhem will be the order of the day. I doubt that everything will remain "rolling" so you can expect something akin to marshall law. The web is full of enlightenment, so if you want to avoid starving to death in the first month of "bad times", you had best educate yourself. Brewing beer (and making spirits) is a talent worth having as long as you have a supply of grains, hops, decent yeast, and the rest of the doo-dads. Folks like to drink when "times are bad".
I noticed in a chart above, as of 2008, The total U.S. Population is only roughly 150 million people... The government census estimates today at 300+ million people..Mathematically that is an impossibility to double in population in just 4 years.... This is another lie made to inflate the AVERAGE income.. When we can all agree that the disparity between the Upperclass and everyone else is even greater than what the government and media-puppets declared.. This "democratic" system is completely ficticious.. WE LIVE IN A MONETARY CORPORATOCRACY... Policitians are mere puppets for the special interest groups to continue the status quo... This is something that is never questioned and just accepted..
Good proof reading. However, it could be a cut and paste that is from last months govt data, that nobody caught the "typo" that was/has been cut and pasted since 2008. Who you gonna believe, the cut and paste or the banksters and their ho politicians doin the lords' work.
Seems like you or I must be misreading something.
Where are you getting any hint of a "population" of 150,000,000 in '08? There aren't any "total population" charts up there...
Great pics in the article. That one of Lowes is worth a thousand words. IMO, it's the sociopaths at Wall Street that are responsible for this; too. They are always hammering businesses to "grow" based on numbers they just arbitrarily snatch out of their ass/crunched by 16 mba's and 4 interns and threaten the CEO with bad vibes/disrespect/no club membership, if they don't borrow more money to build more stores to reach this arbitrary growth number. No matter, I'm gonna blame the banksters and their ho politicians from now on, no matter what caused us to travel this path to misery and chaos.
When Obama wins it won't be long before the feral gubmint gives us a straight gift of freshly printed credit to spur the economy. My guess is households with no wealth will get around $10,000 per person while households with a net worth of $1,000,000 or greater will get $100/person. The banks will get a fee for crediting your account or providing you a fully-paid credit card. When that well runs dry they'll just do it again. After a couple of rounds the ever more dependent lower income/wealth classes will have expanded large enough to ensure never ending Demo control of the feral gubmint. About that time the dollar will no longer be the reserve currency we will go Zimbabwe as the dollar settles to its true value. Obama should be able to deliver that before the end of his second term. Oh, and have a nice day :-)
My job takes me around the country, visiting certain cities for two weeks each year. A few observations:
From 2011 to 2012, I noted sense of deterioration in places like Fort Myers, FL, Sarasota, FL, and Springfield, MO. Went from rough to rougher. You can buy older rental homes near downtown Springfield for $12M per. I poked my head into a run down strip joint their, didn't like what I saw, but felt compelled to make a purchase. After a few sips on a $3 beer, this very washed up dancer immediately laid a sob story on me and tried to get me to buy her a drink. Her eyes lit right up when I headed for the exit and told her she could polish off my beer.
I saw block after block in St. Petersburg, FL where nearly no one seems to care for their residences and very few people seem to be out and about - all on their i.gadgets?
In the small-town midwest, folks are generally poor, but farmers are rich with high corn/bean prices and soaring land prices (I've heard of $15M/acre), and farmers are sensing resentment.
I recently (a few days ago) received notification from a gubmint contractor that it has been advised to prepare to staff up for more FDIC bank-closure work. This surprised me a bit, as my understanding is that bank closures had been tailing off since 2008, 2009, and that banks had been benefitting from low cost of funds and other factors. Anyone got any ideas on what may be afoot?
I'm seeing the very same thing in Illinois, a largely democratic (communistic bastion), where outside the Chicago it gets very, very republican and libertarian. From my perspective as a fifty something, self employed contractor, the deterioration that you're seeing is societal engineering by the same guys that on one hand support unionization and on the otherhand have made Chicago a "sanctuary city" for illegal aliens primarily from South America. The welfare and it's abuse run rampant. This is all engineered, by the politicians, and will result in a cataclysmic crash .... but very long in the tooth. I do not blame walmart, costco, trader joes, or any other commercial venture that was designed to harvest dollars from those folks willing to part with their money on cheap goods.
I blame ignorance of the very same folks who waste their time watching the boob tube, never analysing anything beyond what is spoon fed to the idiots by the main stream media. They voted for all the parasitic tactics which are now fairly entrenched in society (the lawyers - for parasitic lawsuits, the insurance companies - who mandated purchase of b.s. policies designed to strip money out of everyones wallet, the bankers - for the preying on the public (look at the spread between credit card charges (interest) and what savings accounts payout in interest), the abusive taxes that fund activities I abhor, which are then propagated like a disease, the government that now requires fees and licensing for starting and operating businesses (workman's comp. insurance, unemployment insurance, general liability insurance, mandated health insurance, grossly abused income taxes.... ecetera). I could rant on and on, but what has occured is that we have built a parasitic society where the whole judicial system is corrupt. Is it any wonder that the "country of freedom" has the largest prison system on the planet. The cops look like "Stazi Henchmen", and in many cases behave similar. The whole system needs to be "un-done", or done-over. Why is it that the tax system is so corrupt (88,000 pages)? Why is it that the benevolent government preys on the poor and unsophisticated (ever wonder why the states run gambling casinoes called lotteries?)? We need to get back to a less intrusive government, but how? The majority of the crowd watching "american idol" have little in the way of usefulness, as they lack basic understandings of logical thinking. The school system (public) largely produces folks who are capable of even enterring the workforce (if there were any jobs) as they lack an understanding of work, discipline, and responsibility. What they are teaching is wrong. Colleges are likewise guilty of producing useful, talented innovaters, workers (who know how to make things, and invent useful products), instead they produce "english majors", "social studies majors", more lawyers then we could possibly ever use, and a whole host of otherwise majors that require some sort of government employment (e.g. accountants - to deal with an over complicated tax system). I could easily write another useless book, or encyclopoedia on the matter ... but it wouldn't matter. What will happen is a deconstruction of what the U.S. of A is to what it used to be (go -getters, innovaters, inventors, manufacturers, and practical sorts of folks doing what other practical sorts of folks wish to pay for), or a totalitarian regime, probably akin to what is or was observed in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, or any of the other totalitarian models.
We are in the "capital destruction" phase .... the powers that be (whether they exist in the populace in numbers or the government will choose which way we go). If folks are permitted to have "property rights" then we may return to the US to prosperity. If on the otherhand we go the way of communism, socialism, and blame capitalism for our plight, then expect to see one of the totalitarian regimes, and the U.S. will be finished. Blame ignorance and death by a thousand regulations, taxes, and voting for "special interests" protecting one class over another. Whoever said ignorance is bliss, forgot to tell you that ignorance leads to "bad things". Prosperity will end for the majority of Amicans, it has to, as the present system will rob them of any wealth they can possible acquire. I do see that the present administration does have little respect for history, and traditional values (responsibility, work ethic, telling the truth ..... and replaced it with the "you didn't build that mentality", and "blame shifting").
Hat's off to Tyler for keeping an informative website/ blogroll going.
Soon, you will probably need a permit or certificate to use the internet or post a comment.
"Sir, do you have your "free speech" permit?"
Obama was fishing this past weekend for the authority to push a buton and shut it down.
If he gets tiers of waiting, he may have to 'do it on my own', as he said.
This is the true nature of that man...the tyranny explained above.
Great article!
Unfortunately, most people have only themselves to blame. No politician that tells them the truth can get elected so they elect liars and thieves over and over again and then wonder why nobody tells them the truth.
To quote my role model from Hogan's Hero's "I see nuting, nuting!!!!!!"
Great "boots on the ground" economic analysis here. You won't see this shit on CNBC.
When I was in Vegas for the WSOP, stores were closing up left and right in the casino strip malls.
In Boston, stores have been closing left and right, especially small establishments, in favor of nation chains (who can afford the rising rents due to access to more credit). For example, the Purple Shamrock...a fun (and dirty) dance dive for young people for over 33 years is getting replaced...by a Chipotle.
Shit is bad, man. And if the monopolous trends continue, our economy will get stale, and things will break soon. I *feel* it.
oh - the ku klux klan has sent one of its ambassadors for color counting to lament the hardships of a lilly white community - go fuck yourself. i am sure that you are gratified that the "coloreds" are kept in those 2 precincts you identified - at least one place in amerika has been kept safe from miscegenation and the mann law.
"White man's burden"
you need some help
Let the revolution begin!!
Funny quote I heard..
" Don't steal, the government hates competition"
The dependency attitude, lifestyles of slothfulness and total lack of commerce has remained constant for decades in West Philly, WALL STREET and ISRAEL.
Fixed it for you.
You should point out all the world's greatest welfare recipients, not just the USA's downtrodden.
Dear capitalists,
Could you but realize it, an entity calling itself "the fed" has blithely announced it will make available the sum of $40billion (with a "b") each and every month ( with an "m" and presumably on the first day of each such m-month) until it is satisfied.
Nothing could better illustrate capitalism than that.
This commitment for $40 large every 30 days occurs in a context where virtually everything that might benefit the vast majority of people and of governmental entities, like states, counties, cities and towns are starving for cash and are cutting essential services to the bone. All such persons and entities are being told to adapt to austerity and/or go bankrupt or to hell whichever is closer or sooner.
Yet, "the Fed" can in an instant and without any discernible effort, let alone strain, announce that it will "make available" any amount of money it desires. furthermore, the purpose is to help "reduce unemployment" but the plan includes no actual process of job creation.
For $40billion a month , a lot of jobs could be created very directly and very easily. But, capitalism won't allow for that. There is no money for jobs, or health or pensions or education or infrastructure etc.
That is rich.
Congratulations on your willingness to tolerate a system such as that.
More Blessings
Jplotinus - it is somewhat sad that you blame Capitalism which has not existed in this country for perhaps half a century or more. I recommend that you examine communism, fascism, and socialism .... and then Capitalism.
Why would the Soviet Union pursue destruction of Capitalism? (Talk to some folks who have lived under Communism for a clue). The Marxists proclaimed in the 30's that we (the USA) would hang ourselves with the rope we made. They instituted an all out war against the US and said that they would plant all the seeds of our own destruction within the Universities (educational system), government, and society. If you investigated that topic you would learn that all paths currently underweigh are in that direction. (I recommend reading the book by Skousan (not sure of spelling) who wrote the Naked Communist). You would learn the basics of the plan. There are many other authors and sources (not on the popular reading list for obvious reasons). You could watch a brief expose by Milton Freidman on Capitalism which would at least cover the basics of what it is. What you observe today in the US of A is not that.
God bless you.
As an add-on, Hollywood Party by Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley details the inroads that communism made into hollywood before 1950 and how it impacts us to this day.
.
Yesterday on the Closing Bell on CNBSC Maria was talking up the bank stocks, saying someone who is bearish on the banks was wrong about the banks. Never once did she mention QE 1,2, or 3 or TARP. She was acting like the banks "recovered" all by themselves. In reality, the banks are being propped up at our expense. She is some "capitalist."
As a delivery driver for one of the small package duopoly shipping companies I can say without a dought the landscape has changed. Some if not a lot of the retail decay is the internet and the ability to side step the trip to the big box and the traffic headache. Yet, the decline in real incomes and purchasing power is spot on. I see it everywhere and the long faces of the working serfs.
Nobody wants to pay you and nobody gives a shit either. The culture of greed and bling of the Reagan revolution has everyone thinking there there own god. They soon found out the real religion they where peddiling was enslavement.
" God's special little creature."
I'll let big Al tell you like it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShluRkx2kaM
Yes, the middle class has regrettably bad taste and judgment. But it's their taste, their judgment. Smoke is obvious; the fire's source is obscure. Was China criminal, for seizing the opportunity to supply cheap goods? Wal-Mart, for selling them? Dunkin' Donuts? Nixon, for opening trade for China before the yuan was convertible (my personal favorite)?
Look at the historical picture. The masses live extraordinarily well, by the standards of the past. When have they not been in hock to the rich?
Now is not the time for wailing. We all get the point here. It's time for building up the polis. Start a Boy Scout troop. Start a fight club. Open a bank. Study the life of Beethoven. Fund a science scholarship. Volunteer as a poll worker. Run for Congress, refuse to eat in the cafeteria, and turn down the salary out of principle. Do things that matter.
"Study the life of Beethoven...."
I think we're all about ready for another Fifth.
I genuinely enjoy reading your articles. You write well, set a scene well, and tell a fine narrative. You also see the human being in this depression, not just the numerical data, and you portray people in a sympathetic light.
Amazing article. Thanks. The most revealing stat......real household income flat for 23 years! Add in the fact that most homes have been adding workers ( ie wives) over that time and it is no wonder people are finally waking up and saying our total output has doubled but we're no further ahead, maybe we just wont play along anymore.
I'm in suburban DC, probably the best economy in the US. And of course why not. NO one gets poor selling shit to the gubmint. I have a 16 home SPEC development of $1.7 mil homes going up next to me! Now it has been going on for the past three years but they are slowly selling.
Meanwhile up the road, friends that bought a $2.0 Mil home in 1004 are shitting bricks cause several house next door have sold for $1.4 Mil, Now no one is crying for these folks but they are going to lose about $600,000! NO matter who you are thats real money and I know these people, like many of their neighbors tapped deep to buy those mansions. They are not rich.. They are just upper middle class white collar tech people working everyday who put every penny into that house thinking it was a sure thing. I looked at one home the other day that has been on and off the market for two years. It will be in foreclosure in a couple months and it is falling apart.
Even with all the relative prosperity around here, I'd say we average about a 20% vacancy rate in the strip centers, if you count the nail salons and day spas as "real tenants" which they are not. My local center has had about four open storefronts continuously over the past three years and all the merchants bitch that they are still trying to raise rents! Amazing. WTF! Virtually every office park has vacancy signs.
Dear slightly
Thank you for your post beginning with:
"Jplotinus - it is somewhat sad that you blame Capitalism which has not existed in this country for perhaps half a century or more. I recommend that you examine communism, fascism, and socialism .... and then Capitalism."
It is precisely that form of what I consider to be capitalist indoctrination that I object to. 50 years ago America was only just emerging from McCarthyism where communists and socialists were overtly oppressed and banned. If you got a job within corporate America at any time up until at least 1975, well within the last 50 years, you had to sign an oath disavowing communism on pain of being fired.
It is within that context that the attempt to blame socialism for the failure of American capitalism must be considered. America has not been taken over by socialists. Republicrats and Democricans who are the near sum total of all elected officials of all levels of American governance are corporatist capitalists, as are the party platforms of both divisions of the 1 party American system.
America is to capitalism what NKorea is to communism. Both countries are severe in their disdain for thoughts about communism/capitalism, respectively. Of course, Americans do not apprehend that they have no political choice. Most people were more than willing to sign anything, rat out anyone and normalize their thought process, and anything else it took then and takes now to get with the program.
And program it is in America, capitalist programming. That is why $40billion a month can be "made available" to banks until hell freezes over at the exact same time as teachers in Chicago can be told to stop striking for refusal to accept austerity. In America the one circumstance is not even perceived as being in contradiction with the other, even though they are happening simultaneously.
That is extraordinary; no, it's worse than that. It is bizarre.
Permit me to suggest Americans blame their own system for its blatant failures and cease from seeking to shift blame onto something that is nonexistent in America. Furthermore, the ills of capitalism do not mimic socialism. Capitalism fails all on its own.
Blessings
Fine article, very disturbing.
One caveat: median household size has been shrinking since the early 70s. So per-household figures can be misleading.
Better is real per-capita income. The trend there is not as bad (because it removes the factor of shrinking household sizes):
http://visualizingeconomics.com/2011/03/08/long-term-real-growth-in-us-g...
This is using the conventional inflation figures, so caveat emptor. The period 1985-2000 was pretty good. Since the 2001 recession, so-so; and since 2007, obviously, pretty bad.