Klepto California

Victor Davis Hanson has been having some serious problems in his little rural corner of California.  He wrote earlier on the subject (which we discussed), and as he writes in a number of different venues and the topic must get a reaction, he has come out with an update on the subject (see links below) for the National Review.

He has a lot of very interesting information.  As a data point on the ongoing collapse of rural America it is hard to beat.  As he is a historian by trade, he always brings in some crunchy historical references into the mix:  in this case the Vandals: the Germanic Tribe that finally put the Romans to paid by overrunning their North African bread basket.  While don't disagree with  his analysis as far as it goes, it seems surprisingly shallow given his background.

He notes that the influx of illegal aliens has put a strain on the local economy and that basic services (such as police enforcement) are no longer being offered to the outlying areas.  He notes the slovenly nature of his new neighborhood, with a push toward substandard (third-world really) housing.  The story of the electrified (and vaporized) grapes is priceless.

A Vandalized Valley

Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 21 December 2011 (Hat tip: Small Holding)

I do not (yet) move wrecked Winnebagos and trailers onto my single-family-zoned rural parcel to garner rental cash, as do many of my neighbors. After all, some must not, if the careful zoning work of a century is to survive. When one dog in four is not licensed and vaccinated out here, we have a problem; when four out of four will not be, we should expect a 19th-century crisis. When there are three outdoor privies used daily behind a neighbor’s house, the local environment can still handle the flies, the odor, and the increase in the chance of disease; but if there were to be 100 in a half-mile stretch, civilization itself would break down.

The influx of over 11 million illegal aliens has had a sort of ripple effect that is rarely calibrated. Sixty percent of Hispanic males in California are not graduating from high school. Unemployment in rural California runs about 20 percent. There is less fear now of arrest and incarceration, given the bankruptcy of the state, which, of course, is rarely officially connected even in small part to illegal immigration. Perhaps because illegal immigration poses so many mind-boggling challenges (e.g., probably over $20 billion lost to the state in remittances, the undermining of federal law, the prejudice shown against legal immigration applicants, ethnic favoritism as the engine of amnesty, subterfuge on the part of Mexico, vast costs in entitlements and subsidies), talking about it is futile. So most don’t, in fear of accusations of “racism.”

For those who do not leave the area, silence for now remains the norm.

All very good, I don't disagree at all.  But he ignores the interesting parallel between rural America today, and the urban inner city in the 1960s and 1970s.

That was the time period that manufacturing jobs left the city, and housing laws no longer forced the black middle and upper class to stay in place.  Those who could escape generally did.  This left behind a mix of people who in general were unable to find better alternatives.

The end result was a blighted inner city.  Given that the civil rights movement was running concurrently with some of these changes, it was inevitable that racial issues would be highlighted: and to some degree acted as a smoke screen for the actual underlying causes.

As we discussed a year ago, the same problems are catching up with white rural America in areas where the rural folk are whiter, or Hispanic rural America where Hispanics predominate.

Of course, he also doesn't seem to be very interested in pointing out that the likely supporters of bringing in the initial group of Hispanics were farmers who wanted inexpensive help.  Granted that group of Republicans tends to be from the Wall Street Journal wing of the Republican party, rather than the Nation Review folks, but they are pretty close bedfellows.

In any case the conclusion on this post is going to be pretty much like yesterdays.  Life is getting difficult for a lot of people.  A lot of these people were not expecting these types of difficulties.

Homeless Children

This is not an attempt at some sort of soap box rant.  It is fairly obvious that with a foreclosure crises, and a really lousy economy, that there would wind up being more homeless children.

There are a couple sets of numbers being discussed, one report has one in forty-five, 1.6 million total, being homeless.  This is the headline 33% increase figure noted below.  There are also Department of Housing and Urban Development study (also noted in the linked USA Today article) that put the number of homeless families at 168,000.  This smaller number is counting families that live in shelters, or on the streets, and represents a 28% increase.

Report: Child homelessness up 33% in 3 years
Marisol Bello, USA Today, 12 December 2011 (hat tip: NC)

The states where homeless children fare the best are Vermont, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and Maine.

It finds the worst states for homeless children are Southern states where poverty is high, including Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, and states decimated by foreclosures and job losses, such as Arizona, California and Nevada.

The poverty rate/child homelessness association in not exact.  But the linkage is fairly close.  All of the States that make the top ten list for  high poverty rates are at least above average in child homelessness.  The high foreclosure States, tend to push some of the high poverty states (Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina) higher up the list.  The states at the bottom tend to be a bit warmer.

A state ranking (pdf) can be found here.  The full report (3 meg pdf) can be found here2.  The report, not too surprisingly, is polemic in nature.  Policy decisions are a matter for debate, but there does not seem to be anything wrong with their numbers.

So what exactly does this homelessness look like:

• Sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason (doubled up):

• Living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to lack of alternative accommodations;

• Living in emergency or transitional shelters;

• Abandoned in hospitals;

• Awaiting foster care placement;

• Using a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings;

• Living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations, or similar settings; and

• Migratory children who qualify as homeless because they are living in circumstances described above.

Note that they do not count runaways.  You slide from the first bullet-point, which isn't too awful, to living in abandoned building and sheds.

Life is getting difficult for a lot of people.  Some of them are children.

This Changes Everything

Regardless of what calamity may fall upon our region, we will never lack for food.

Kudzu is edible.

I had no idea.

I was actually trying to find out if wild onions (which apparently are called wild garlic) are safe.  They are also safe.

So know I have a garnish to go with my Kudzu.

Collapse of Industry: Britain

We will start with the quote:

Why doesn't Britain make things any more?
Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian (U.K.), 16 November 2011 (hat tip: NC)

You still find industrial [areas], of course, and they look the part: overalled men milling about, passing lorries. Only up close does it become clear that there's not much actual industry going on.

The biggest unit on one [industirial area] is a dry cleaner; on another, a warehouse for loft insulation dwarfs all else. At a rare actual manufacturing firm, the director, Tom Clark, takes me out to the edge of the Tyne, centre of the industrial excitement remembered by Kennedy. "Get past us and there's nothing actually being made for miles," he says, and points down the still waterfront....

What's driven the de-industrial revolution? In significant part, it's a tale about where Britain is going, one that's been told by Conservative and Labour alike over the past 30 years. It's a simple message that comes in three parts. One, the old days of heavy industry are gone for good. The future lies in working with our brains, not our hands. Two, the job of government in economic policy is simply to get out of the way. Oh, and finally, we need to fling open our markets to trade with other countries because, despite the evidence of countless Wimbledons and World Cups, the Westminster elite believe that the British can always take on the competition and win.

Yet there's ample evidence that the promised rewards of this post-industrial future haven't materialised. What was sold as economic modernisation has led to industrial decay, with too often nothing to replace it.

The author goes on to discuss that part of the problem is that manufacturing needs less people to perform the same amount of work.  Even the Chinese have been having a hard time keeping their factories open.

British Productivity, with some lags in the 1970s was similar in its growth trend.

Source

And he notes that much of of the new economy, that was promised to replace the old manufacturing economy has been sweetened with plentiful promises - false promises as it turns out.

Richard Florida hasbeen one of the pied pipers of the new economy.  His idea was all about growth through a “creative class.” The urban areas that could turn themselves into the playground of the new hip, smart urban set would attract the best minds and capture the most advantage from the new It-based, thought-economy.

With a lot of today’s research and development in the United States coming out of public universities that have set up a apprentice-serfdom system of graduate students to work in public-private partnerships, I think Mr. Florida is missing at least some of the dynamics involved.

The Guardian article states that promise of the new knowledge economy was more propaganda than substance. To the extent that highly interconnected world systems tend to lead to winner-take-all results, it is not particularly clear that even a successful knowledge-based system is what people would want. If everyone in greater area of Raleigh, NC (1.7 million) took a 10% pay cut, and Bill Gates moves to town, the average, and total yearly income of the City would go up – a lot. But it is not clear that that would make the now poorer people of Raleigh happy.

In 2005 the British auto manufacturer MG Rover laid off 6,300 people. As these were considered the elite of the manufacturing workers, it was thought that they would be retrained soon and recover well. As the piece notes, 90% of the workers did find new employment, but they are now making Ł5,640 ($8,794) less a year. Recall that these were thought of to be the elite of the industrial workers.

Its final concern is that Britain no longer pays its way through the world. As manufacturing went away, the consumer economy took over. They note that Britain in 2010 brought in Ł97 billion ($151 billion) more goods into the country than were sold in return.

So it is that you get a giant shopping centre such as Liverpool One describing itself as the largest urban regeneration project in Europe without any apparent irony.

But what happens when the foreigners are no longer interested in lending Britain (or the United States) money so that they (we) can keep consuming their products. In the case of the United States our enormous amount of well watered arable land allows us to trade food, but that only takes about 3% of our population currently. In the case of Britain, they are a net importer of food.