Hello! Hello! Anybody Home?

We know that but for immigration, the overall population of the United States would join the genuine contraction rate – where reproduction falls below replacement – being experienced in Japan, Europe and many other advanced nations on earth. “From 2000 to 2010 the U.S. population increased by the smallest rate than at any time since the Great Depression, rising 9.7 percent to approximately 308 million people, according to … census data. It’s yet another sign of the tough times that many Americans faced during the second half of the 2000s due to an ailing economy, but it only begins to paint a picture of the country’s money woes.” Newsweek, January 21, 2011. Whether it is a general conscious effort that comes with education or simply a reflection of the rising cost of living in developed nations (further exacerbated by a long-term economic downturn), it is not a trend experienced in the overpopulated and underdeveloped lands in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Demographic shifts in the United States, the shift of massive rust-belt manufacturing overseas and the collapse of the housing market have provided another shift in U.S. well-being. Not only is the average Canadian now economically better-off than the average American (at least in terms of net worth), but Canada is not experiencing the abandonment of major urban areas by reason of the trends noted above. With tighter bank regulation – creating a housing market where subprime loans just weren’t possible – Canadians have been able to maintain the value of their homes, the opposite of the American experience.

“One of the unfortunate results of a bad [U.S.] housing market are [sic] empty homes. Vacant properties have increased by 43.8 percent nationwide since 2000, according to the Census Bureau. Homes can be vacant for many reasons, but are defined by the bureau as both unoccupied rental inventory as well as homes that are unoccupied and ‘for sale.’ As of 2011, there were about 14.3 million year-round vacant housing units in the country, with a 10.6 percent gross vacancy rate that excludes seasonal vacancies such as vacation homes.” RealEstate.aol.com, July 19^th.

Orlando (Fl.), Dayton (Oh.), Memphis (Tn.), Detroit (Mi.), Richmond (Va.), Las Vegas (Nv.), Atlanta (Ga.), Houston (Tx.), Tampa (Fl.) and Toledo (Oh.), in that order, lead the country in both rental and homeowner vacancy rates. And in terms of cities with the greatest population declines, three of the top ten are in Michigan (Flint, Grand Rapids and Detroit), three more are from fellow rust belt states (South Bend, Indiana; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Cleveland, Ohio), two from so-called “sand states” where good weather overheated the housing markets (Hialeah, Florida and Vallejo, California), one was decimated by a hurricane and never recovered (New Orleans, Louisiana) and one was home to an industrial leader, Kodak, that has filed for bankruptcy (Rochester, New York).

But what has happened to cities has been amplified in the mid-west and southwest among farmers and ranchers as weather patterns have seen their agricultural lands, crops and livestock dry up and almost blow away in some of the driest and hottest weather this country has faced in recorded history. Water supplies are dwindling; some – like the massive Ogallala Aquifer – might just dry up totally within our lifetimes. Relief is nowhere in sight.

But these are numbers and statistics. What they reflect is sustained pain, a permanent change in the American way of life that is taking whole generations of workers and potential workers out of the system, either because of obsolescence, outsourcing or climate change. We could choose to retrain those workers, begin to deal with our greenhouse gasses, create an environment with better infrastructure, add research supported by the government to generate new industries and new jobs and upgrade an educational system that will provide competitive value-added workers for a competitive future. Or we could blindly cut deficits, reduce taxes on the rich (hoping that with the extra money they will hire workers in a world without consumer demand), support a military that spends about 40%+ of the entire world’s military budget and more on defense research than the rest of the world combined… and kill all of the above. Hmmmm….

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder exactly when having common sense disqualified a potential candidate from running for office in this country.