Economic trouble often leads to political and social trouble. Prolonged economic recession has taken a heavy toll on political tranquility in the U.S. At the local level, disagreements can be particularly disagreeable. Here’s a view from my little part of America, as reported in my other blog.
via Ocean City Blog
Here’s a glimpse of government in America, as reported in my hometown newspaper.
The City Council is concerned about the large crowds waiting at bus stops, often watching three or four buses pass without stopping because the buses are already jam-packed standing-room-only.
The transportation administrator (we’ll call him H.A.) assured the City Council that his department is “doing the best they can.” He explained:
“The problem is just like the _____ Steakhouse, you can’t build it big enough, you can’t staff it enough to meet the people, you can’t do it and you can’t afford to do it.”
Four can’t-do-its in one miserable sentence by a high-ranking public bureaucrat! And he’s the boss! Can you imagine how demoralized his employees must feel? It’s enough to make you cry. But wait. H.A. is only getting started. As the newspaper reported:
H.A. added that it is also difficult to fill bus shifts because driving a bus in _______ City isn’t a fit for everybody. He said currently the department does not have full staffing and there are 32 vacant eight-hour shifts.
“As of today, we are not fully staffed . . . you can’t walk in the door and get in the seat of that bus,” H.A. said.
H.A. explained that if a driver does not have a CDL license (commercial driver’s license) it would take an additional 30 days to train and acquire a passenger license.
Let me see if I understand this. Unemployment is over 9 percent in America — and higher in our local area — and yet the administrator is unable to hire sufficient bus drivers? The required 30 days training is too high an obstacle to overcome?
A City Council member assured H.A., “There are no problems in us giving you the money you need to have to do the job.” H.A. proudly acknowledged that money is NOT the problem. Money is not going to change his can’t-do attitude.
“If you hand me a bazillion dollars, it doesn’t mean I have all the drivers and all the vehicles,” H.A. said. “It’s an octopus with a lot of tentacles, you make it work.”
(H.A. also affirmed that the supply of buses is not the problem. He has 14 brand new buses waiting to go into service.)
If anyone remained unconvinced that HA can’t do the job, he went on to confirm his determined futility with the following:
“I don’t want anybody in this room to think we will be in a position to deploy a sufficient number of buses every time you’re waiting at the bus stop during a peak hour, on a peak night, on a beautiful hot, sunny evening in June, July and August and that we will be able to pick you up every 10 minutes.” H.A. said. “It’s utopia and it just can’t be done.”
Case closed. Ladies and gentlemen, when any bureaucrat, government agency, corporation, or business becomes so thoroughly demoralized and convinced that it can’t do its job, don’t you think it’s past time for a change?
American workers, businesses, and government used to proudly flaunt a CAN-DO attitude. No More. H.A.’s defeatist can’t-do attitude has become the new standard in America. Can’t-do permeates American government, politics, and business.
America seems immobilized by a deadly epidemic of passive-aggressive sickness. We can’t do it. Even if we could do it, we won’t do it, and nobody can make us do it. You can’t complain about it, because we won’t even answer the phone.
Add up all the can’t-do attitudes like H.A.’s from every corner of this once-great nation, and you get the following:
American workers can’t compete with other workers around the world.
America can’t maintain its bridges and highways and water and sewer systems.
America can’t afford Medicare and Social Security. (Although every other advanced Western nation can.)
American business is sitting on billions in idle capital, but American business can’t put the money to work because of uncertainty. (Life is uncertain. Starting a business or investing capital is always fraught with uncertainty, by definition. Uncertainty is the nature of capitalism. Profits and stock prices routinely climb a wall of fear.)
The U.S. Senate can’t pass a budget because it can’t get 60 votes. On anything. You name it, the U.S. Senate can’t do it.
Congress can’t follow and the President can’t lead. Democrats and Republicans can’t work together. What did you expect?
We, the voters, can’t be serious. We’re surrounded by momentous problems, begging to be solved; but we can’t pay attention to anything, except sex scandals.
Ladies and gentlemen, our can’t-do attitude is killing whatever is left of the American Dream.
— John Hayden
Image via Wikipedia
The “Clueless Farmhand” has now become the “Clueless Farmer.” Step one (buy a few acres with a livable house) is complete.
Sounds like the new farmer-entrepreneur, Diana, and her husband, will be focusing on the chicken business, and also growing quite a variety of vegetables. Diana, aka “Farmer Di” and “Doodi,” is methodically learning all she can about how to be a successful part of the “local-food” movement. Click on the Clueless Farmer’s report below. Her post includes lots of links to useful farming information.
This is a serious career-change event. Diana says: “My completely awesome husband turned down a perfectly decent and lucrative office job in favor of farming for a subsistence income.”
The real farming begins this week, with “100 fluffy day-old chicks and about 500 seedlings of various vegetables.” That sounds feasible on five acres, with some room for expansion.
If it works, the small-farm movement has potential to provide a great lifestyle, along with a modest income, for thousands of workers who would otherwise be stuck in dead-end jobs, and living in suburbia.
Producing and consuming our food locally (including organic food) makes sense, and it can improve our food security in times of shortages.
What has gone wrong with the world? Good grief, where did we fail? How did we fall so far?
If I’m going to blog, I may as well try to tell the truth. There’s oil gushing from a hole in the bottom of the ocean floor. It’s a horror movie come true.
The mob screamed for government to get out of the way, free corporate capitalism to give us unimagined wealth. Now, the mob screams for government to do something. How ironic that the same people who fumed that Obama’s health care reform put us on the road to socialized medicine are now furious because Obama won’t nationalize BP. Seems to me that Obama is doing a good job by keeping his head when all about him other people are losing their’s.
No oil in the water at my part of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet.
Oil keeps gushing, more and more every day. It’s washing up on the beaches. Government, save us. David Broder writes that the BP oil spill will be Barack Obama’s Iranian hostage crisis. The President! Why doesn’t the president do something? Why won’t he send in the military? “Give us Barrabas!” This could come straight from the Bible, or from “Lord of the Flies.” Get the president! He’s smart, he looks different, he doesn’t care. He won’t stop the oil leak! “Crucify him!”
The nuns used to say that trouble in the world is the result of sinfulness, the cumulative worldwide weight of our small sins of omission and commission. Maybe the nuns were on to something. If so, I would trace our predicament to all our cumulative sins of greed. Or perhaps worship of false idols.
Now, it is common to talk of corruption, not sin. Corruption in government, corruption in business, corruption in bureaucracy. Government, business and bureaucracy, of course, are made up of individual human beings. Right now, the blame police are examining every omission and commission associated with the oil spill, in an effort to name the sins, or to expose a culture of corruption in BP and government agencies.
(While we ponder corruption and sin, I think we should also remember that possibly it is not sin or corruption, but human mistakes, unintended errors of omission and commission. I would even suggest one last, unlikely possibility, that the oil spill is an accident or an act of nature that was unpreventable.)
In the case of government dysfunction, my neighbor at Lost On The Shore suggests we are all responsible:
“You see, we either want things that are opposite of each other, or things that are impossible or we don’t know what we want . . .
Our politicians can’t solve our problems for us because we want it both ways and we don’t want to compromise.”
I agree with his analysis. We want too much, or we want what we cannot have. I hope we repent and change. We can reform our values. We can change the way we live. We can, if we have the will, refuse to tolerate corruption. We should do it for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren.
— John Hayden
The relatively small community where I have taken refuge — the community that I now call “Home” — is a summer beach resort with a very seasonal economy. During the winter and spring, many locals were concerned that the economic crisis would prompt people to forgo their weekends and vacations at the beach this year. That would mean a dismal season for business and employment.
I sense that we are facing an extended period of economic hard times in America — perhaps worldwide hard times. We could be struggling for decades. Of course in any extended period, there will be signs of recovery, followed by new contractions. I’m far from an expert, but I think we have not yet seen the worst.
We have the graying of America and other advanced countries. We have the competition and sometimes turmoil of the flat-world economy (see Tom Friedman, The World Is Flat). We have complex financial problems to fix, rising unemployment, and falling real estate values.
But I had believed we would see some signs of temporary economic recovery by summer, and that our local, seasonal economy would be spared for this year. I thought we’d feel the pain next year, or the year after.
Business seemed relatively strong during the spring run-up to the season. The number of visitors was up, thanks to nice weather on the weekends. There were anecdotal reports that visitors were tight-fisted about spending. June went about as usual, and the resort was packed for the July 4 weekend, as always. People are going to do their best to celebrate July 4, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, come what may.
Now, the peak of the summer vacation season is here. Despite a bear-market rally in the stock markets, economic bad news continues on a daily basis. A Ponzi scheme here, a bankruptcy there. Unemployment is up to about 9.5 percent, nationwide, and set to hit 10 percent in the fall.
With unemployment so high, and house prices falling, what will people do this summer? The vast majority who still have jobs will try to enjoy the summer as usual. But how much will they spend? Over the years, even careful people have been willing to go into debt twice a year — Christmas, and vacation. Splurge a little for special family occasions, and pay the credit card bills later. That was the attitude.
Now I wonder. We all wonder. How much will people change their behavior in the face of economic recession? How afraid are people? Certainly, many will think twice about the buy-now, pay-later vacation.
We will know soon enough. In a seasonal economy, a year’s worth of preparation and work is rewarded in a few short weeks. Success or failure is in the balance for some. I’m thinking that July and August will be disappointing for many. A little disappointing? Or a lot disappointing? No one can predict the future, so we will hope for the best, and wait and see.
Living Simply And Still On The Grid 