The Death of the American City

I've thought about this problem: John Ransom: Union Greed and Politician Apathy are Killing Cities, in the past, and although Ransom is right in his analysis of the immediate problem facing many cities, this is only part of what is "killing" cities. Some cities, like NYC, Boston, Seattle, and others are not being killed - - yet. What, in my opinion, has killed many cities are the same forces that have killed the mainstream media and is killing other sectors of the “old city” economy.... Societal Evolution and the Invention of the Internet. 

Today there is little need for big cities. Sweatshops have all but disappeared. Manufacturing has disintermediated, as has much of the old traditional economy: Supplier > Manufacturer > Wholesaler > Retailer to finally, Buyer, has been replaced with: Just-In-Time Manufacturer > Buyer; and this to large degree has been facilitated via the Internet. Even the traditional salesforce has been severely diminished. In the traditional economy, of just a decade or two ago, the old model business chain clustered in and around the city, providing millions with jobs. Many of those "jobs" have simply disappeared - never to return. Not just outsourced manufacturing jobs, but most "middleman" jobs as well.

Today, especially in the high-tech world of electronics, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, "campuses" have sprung-up in the suburbs and even the exurbs. What little population support needed by workers quickly develops around these campuses as, what I call, "a city in a box." The box is nearly pre-manufactured and merely needs assembly. It generally consists of the familiar modern "town" of a few big-box stores, fast food franchises, and necessary services such as: a complete medical building, perhaps even a small hospital; various and sundry mechanical services including a local airport; educational facilities and minimal county government services.

Crowds, crime, the uneducated, the unemployed, the unemployable, the unwashed of the present, if you will; those are the peoples of the dying cities. Those folks do not pay substantial taxes and are supported to a large degree by government: police, the courts, other government service providers; the bureaucrats. The very presence of this growing segment of modern society is exacerbating the death of the city. President Obama, and others are attempting to stop and even reverse this trend, to financially gut and strangle those suburbs and exurbs in order to force the tax paying population back into the cities and thus support the old culture there. Drive-up the cost of fuel is one ploy, but is back-firing; the one-time commuter will look for work closer to home or move even further out rather than return to that which he/she ran from: the big (and now dirty and dilapidated) city; and simply use less fuel. Starting a business today requires, in city services, little more than an internet connection! Gone is the glamour of the city. Good food, culture and entertainment are all available just about everywhere, and once again the Internet aides and abets.

Cheers, Mel

P.S. Sorry Governor Brown (CA), High Speed Rail and other rapid transit public transportation schemes won't stop, let alone reverse, this trend. It's called: evolution. 

The importance of the next election

Romney's choice of Paul Ryan was the perfect decision for a CEO, a businessman and a President: an Accountant and a Comptroller.

Most don't realize where we, as a nation, sit today: on the brink. We have used-up most of the equities left to us by our forefathers: world power, prestige, and shear wealth. Even the equities in our homes have greatly diminished. Beyond that we have become a debtor nation that without serious recovery will slip over the edge. Economic collapse is the ultimate destroyer of every once great nation. Most recently it was the Soviets, now but a memory. Prior to the USSR it was Great Briton, France, Spain, Portugal, Rome, Greece, Egypt, etc. All fallen empires - all spent into debt. All history.

Ronald Reagan's exhortation, "....tear down this wall!" did not bring down the Soviets, it was their failed economy based on a false ideology: Communism. What reduced Great Britain was their loss of wealth through war and collapsed colonialzation. And so it goes. America is on the brink today because of a complex multitude of losses. Our lost sense of who we are: hard working, risk-taking, "a better life" opportunity seeking nation of individuals, with the absolute knowledge that this dream is obtainable only through a righteous life and hard work. But then we came to believe, and quickly - within a generation,  that we could leverage our way to success by borrowing against ever greater wealth that would accrue to us naturally. We were entitled to success. We were each deserving of a gold star, a medal, a trophy. We've done that....... When that failed we decided to take the "Kick The Can Down The Road," road: more of the same, but better, bigger. That hasn't worked either so we are trying the age old and failed technique of inventing wealth through the magic of words and paper.

But where's the beef?

The penultimate choice is the one we are contemplating now, and we will actually have the chance to vote on it: "Let's Take Someone Else's Wealth; our neighbors, the boss', the "corporation's," the Rich Guy's. Just take it, from whomsoever.

Okay, so we vote on it. We go for the, "Let's Take The Other Guy's Stuff" scenario. That should last, what, a couple years? After that where do we turn? That's the question we should be asking: What are the consequences of our choice? What do we do when we've used up the other guy's stuff? Because that is what's next and it is coming at us like a runaway train!

Seminars are given regularly in every major metropolis extolling the virtues of living a life AWAKE. Let's wake-up for a minute or two.... we can't really live long on someone else's effort.... to use the phrase of the day, that's not sustainable.

Ideology should be a personal thing: you believe what you want to believe, I'll believe what I want, but let's both believe that we are each responsible for "us and ours" and not entitled to that of others. It's the only sane and logical course - IF - we wish "America," not the country but the concept, to continue. We need a CEO - a real businessman and his bright Accountant/Comptroller, not ideologue, to awaken us to the opportunities we each have, and to return to our special place in the world. Each of us is entitled to his and her personal ideology, but governments of Ideology are doomed to fail and their people are doomed to the consequences of that failure. That's the choice we are faced with now. It can be seen clearly..... by those willing to awaken from their daydreams.

The alarm is ringing; It's time to Wake-UP and see America clearly.

Cheers, Mel

History As A Script

I've come to believe that men have simply "repeated" throughout their history. They can only do what they do.... invent new and better gadgetry which is always supposed to improve their lives, or conquer their neighbors. This men have done admirably. Beyond the gadgets however men are limited to the "map" of their DNA.... they are compelled by it and restricted by it to simply do what they do over and over again only that which they are capable of. Because their "stuff" is so marvelous... all the way back to the age of metal and beyond, even pottery at one time represented man's highest level of "technology"... they have fooled themselves into the belief that they can change, alter or at the least, control themselves and their neighbors in some new or better way. But it always results in individual and then city, state and national quest for power, which ultimately finds its own end, in a sense predestined by man's very essence: his DNA. The process then starts over. 

I think human civilization is quickly approaching that "start over" point. This time, as has happened previously, a collapse of fiat currency will help reshuffle the existing order.

 

 

Cheers, Mel 

Power

I've come to believe that power is a weird squishy kind of commodity; more a state of mind actually, with near invisible tentacles that lead into every agency and around every individual associated with government. When one looks back at history you can't help but wonder how it happened that entire countries - empires - were literally taken-over by usurpers... both elected and declared. 

There is something in the human psych that becomes sort of mesmerized and to some degree paralyzed by the potential fear of those that grab the reigns of power. Of course there is the fact that individuals are no more powerful than an individual when faced with the full force of government seized by a cabal.

Recent developments show us that the Constitution is not automatically adhered to. It all comes down to the individuals in power respecting the institutions that got them there. I'm sure that if Roosevelt had lived he'd have extended his presence in the White House indefinitely - he had no respect for the two-term tradition set by all those that preceded him.  I have no doubt that if President Obama could find a way to remain entrenched in power he simply would; America would have moved from an elective republic to an emperorship. We are more than halfway there with Congress having, over the past several decades, surrendered much their power to the President, without a shot, without a coup. 

Free bread (food stamps) and free circus (Jersey Shore!); ignorant stupid masses (with a deplorable high school dropout rate of more than 30% - nationwide!) without the cares of even personal survival does not auger well for the future of a free republic. 

History, it is oft said, is repeated by those who have failed to learn from it. The longer I live, the more I learn, the more I've come to believe that history is not something we learn from .... to avoid pitfalls .... but is learned more as a script. It teaches us not that which is to be avoided but that which is coming.

 

 

Cheers, Mel

America Needs a Competitive Edge

The key to American success today is a competitive edge. Prior to WW2 America was thriving as the engine of the Industrial Revolution for a couple of reasons: widespread opportunity and access to cheap energy and cheap labor. Today: opportunity has been strangled with a maze of government red tape; highly regulated labor; very costly energy. An American success plan should start with reduction of regulations, especially in the development of energy. Energy development in North Dakota has created a '49ers Gold Rush environment for job seekers in the Bakken area oil fields. More high paying jobs than job seekers! 


A Federal Government program subsidizing America's rolling stock to CNG would drastically reduce the demand for imported oil, driving down the cost of that resource which is used in virtually everything Americans consume. Imported oil is in effect a tax upon all Americans that goes off-shore, into the pockets of those opposed to our style of government and freedom, and unlike a legitimate tax is never returned as a government service! Development of CNG, clean coal, our own oil, and new nuclear energy would further drive down the cost of energy. Top-off this plan with the elimination of all taxes on all energy and suddenly you'd have very cheap energy costs, attracting manufacturers from around the world. Jobs: building and re-fitting CNG facilities across the country; building new nuke and clean coal plants, jobs developing our own oil resources - not allowed to be exported! Opportunities for the development of ancillary businesses surrounding these industries wouls spring-up across the country.


That's an American Recovery plan. Not wasted money kicking the can down the road. Not an ideology with a hidden agenda to "fundamentally change" what was and still has the capacity to be the greatest system ever created. We've already spent so much of our ability to repay that which we've already borrowed and now that scheme is busted. Proven, BUSTED! Time to go to work. Real work that makes stuff the world needs. 


Let's begin with energy! That's an edge the rest of the wold cannot beat. That's the edge we've still got. We've got the talent, we've got the resources, we've got the people. Let's unleash them - - let's compete!


Cheers,


Mel

Fed Budget Deficit Made Simple

From Bill Teitelbaum:

Numbers and political information can be so confusing.... 

I think this simple analogy will be helpful to gain an understanding whether we should be concerned or not... 

  

  

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000 

Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000 

New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000 

National debt: $14,271,000,000,000 

Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 

  

  

Let's remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget: 

 

Annual family income: $21,700 

Money the family spent: $38,200 

New debt on the credit card: $16,500 

Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710 

Total budget cuts: $385 

  

Understand those "deep" cuts now? 

Cheers, Mel

I Love Stuart Varney, BUT......

Stuart, you proudly proclaim how you love America and want her to remain as she is - vis a vis Britain and the EU. But you just can't resist your genes. You have the tint, if not the color, of the socialist when you express the idea that a law requiring a key lockbox on the front door of ones home, allowing entry to cops and firemen (and who knows who else - what's wrong with just using a battering ram?) as okay! This is UNAmerican. I know it is because I come from a long line of folks born and raised here with American ideals. 

I'm an oldster, I and my parents were born and raised in the West of yore. We have witnessed the slow but inexorable and lamentable march of East Coast ideas destroy Western values. Like the folks that move to the desert, love it, but then can't help themselves and are impelled to plant a lawn - because lawns are in their genes - and thus destroy the desert climate they loved so much. Lawns may be a stretch but it's an analogy that works.

Please Stuart, don't plant a lawn..... they are so English.


Cheers, Mel