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Economics and commerce, all built from scratch.
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.”
Not to take too much away from George Gershwin, summertime is the hardest time of the year for me; even moreso around the Fourth of July. I make my living as a consultant to nonprofits, writing grants, pr, strategic plans, and just any other way they need their story to be told. It’s a good business right up until the weather heats up and everyone goes on vacation. It’s a serious kind of work, and it dries up when people’s minds are less than serious.
The other day I got into an argument in some distant corner of the internet. That’s not exactly news – it happens far too often in my life. But this particular argument, setting aside how it got personal, was rather important to me.
What does a Depression look like? It’s been a long time since we had one, so it’s hard to tell exactly. The main feature is that a tremendous amount of money that was once in the system evaporates, leaving a huge shortage of resources to carry on the normal functions of the economy. If that seems unlikely, consider some of the things which happened last week on Wall Street:
Between 1976 and 1983, as many as 30,000 people in Argentina simply disappeared. These “Desaparecidos”, as they were known, simply vanished at the hands of the regime. After a while, mothers of the disappeared started marching in the Plaza de Mayo carrying pictures and demanding answers. Eventually, the government fell and a long process of truth and reconciliation began.
Recently in the USofA, people have started to disappear. Government agencies and nonprofits who track foreclosures have found it nearly impossible to find the people who have turned in their homes throughout the nation. The kids are no longer in schools and the families are no longer on the tax rolls; they simply disappear. Similarly, people who have taken unemployment insurance for the full six months become “discouraged workers” and no longer count as unemployed; they have also simply disappeared.
I called up an architect recently to get the name of a good carpenter who can be trusted with a 150 year old house. But this friend, who is heavily involved in our community, had a serious beef to air first. What got him upset was a recent policy change here in Saint Paul. Since the downturn started we suddenly faced a tremendous number of properties that have become a bit neglected due to foreclosure and general hard times. There are over 1600 properties on the city’s registered vacant property list, for example. The Mayor’s office has responded to this growing problem by clamping down hard on code enforcement, citing people for small issues that they would have let slide in past years.
