A Growing List of American Shortages

 

While it’s pretty easy to see what we have too much of – office space, conspiracy theories, polarization, income inequality, student loans, greenhouse emissions and homeless people – you might be surprised at what I think we do not remotely have enough of: potable water, functional and sufficient infrastructure and immigrants. I know that this last category probably piqued your interest, so I will deal with that last (what a tease!).

Water is a huge issue, particularly for the Midwest and Western states. While we are currently experiencing a La Niña cycle, which will increase rainfall particularly in the West in the coming months, but you just have to look at the water table in our major dam-made lakes (Mead and Powell) to see how far we are from what we really need. Cities like Phoenix have slowed building permits and construction for a lack of sufficient water, and Las Vegas is looking over its parched shoulder as well. And as Kevin Hardy, writing for the September 15th Stateline, notes: “‘It’s an emergency.’ Midwest towns scramble as drought threatens drinking water… After more than a year of drought, some heartland towns are searching for new sources of drinking water and restricting usage…

“While droughts frequently wreak havoc on agriculture here, residents are facing unprecedented challenges with drinking water supplies. [The SW] corner of the state, which lacks the vast underground aquifers that sit below much of Kansas, is overly reliant on surface water such as lakes and rivers.

“That means small towns and ranches face tough and expensive choices on where to draw water from, a problem likely to increase as climate change brings more extreme weather. And it’s a quandary that stretches far beyond Kansas. Persistent drought is plaguing communities across the country’s interior: The map created by the U.S. Drought Monitor shows its deepest red pockets across Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas, among other states.

“Lack of rain has hit crops hard: In Missouri, for example, 40% of the state’s corn crop was classified as poor or very poor, according to the drought monitor. Iowa, the nation’s top corn producer, is in the midst of its worst drought in a decade with about 80% of the state in some measure of drought.” So, we need to pump water out of the major aquifers under the Midwest to where it’s needed most? Not exactly. The Ogalala Aquifer (mapped above) has major sections that are depleted or close to being depleted by decades of over-pumping for agricultural uses. In fact, in some communities, the threat of losing access to any naturally occurring potable water is very real. Mendocino, California recently facde a bout of total depletion; water had to be trucked in and store in local cisterns… not cheap.

In others, saltwater is beginning to threaten areas where no one believed that there could be a freshwater shortage. “A surge of saltwater is creeping up the Mississippi River toward New Orleans, threatening to pollute the drinking water of around 800,000 people. Officials are working to quickly find solutions before the end of October — when the saltwater is expected to infiltrate several treatment plants and make tap water unsafe to drink or use.” CNN RSS fee, September 27th. Next.

Infrastructure is so obvious to anyone driving over American roads and bridges, watching dams threaten to burst and electric charging stations become political fodder instead of solution to so many issues. But a shortage of immigrants? Seriously? Let’s start with Fareed Zakaria’s discovery, reported in an August edition of CNN’s “Global Public Square,” after speaking with several noted economists. The US, he observes, is losing at least $5 trillion a year in GDP, with a proportionate reduction in state and federal taxes, by shoving so many undocumented aliens under the table. At the bottom of this worker hierarchy are unskilled farm and construction workers performing services that employers cannot convince local Americans to do… at any hourly wage.

But even where it comes to skilled or highly educated labor, where we have massive shortfalls in finding sufficiently educated and trained STEM employees, we can’t even keep many of the ones we have. Canada (like several other Western nations – see above poster) went on a recruitment binge to lure even foreign STEM workers in the US – who could not get visas for their wives and children – with quick work visa applications and allowing families to join such workers.

Indeed, as Lauren Weber and Alana Pipe, writing for the September 25th Wall Street Journal, tell us, there is a major worker shortage across the board driving wages up, fomenting strikes and generally feeding the very inflationary surge that become a political football… where the solutions are wildly unpopular: “The U.S. economy has been running, improbably, with an unemployment rate under 4% for nearly two years.

“That isn’t just a holdover from pandemic bottlenecks, when employers let millions of people go and then struggled to find workers when demand roared back, economists and business leaders say. It is a storm that has been brewing for decades, flaring up most recently in the form of worker strikes at automakers and airlines. Labor shortages are turning into a long-term labor crisis that could push wages and turnover higher.

“Work experts have warned for years that the combination of baby boomer retirements, low birthrates, shifting immigration policies and changing worker preferences is leaving U.S. employers with too few workers to fill job openings. While the labor market is softening, none of those factors are expected to change dramatically in the coming years…

“‘It is a talent supply chain and you have to think about it that way, except in this case, talent has a choice,’ said Teresa Carroll, chief executive of Magnit, a firm that manages temp, contract and freelance workers for companies. Workers are choosing arrangements such as part-time, flexible or remote work, prompting employers to adapt to fill roles.

“Total employment will grow about 0.3% a year until 2032, the Labor Department recently projected, much slower than the 1.2% rate over the past decade, largely because of population constraints. That will contribute to slower growth in gross domestic product, the agency said.”

Given that our current population is facing birthrates well below replacement rates, we are only going to make a bad situation so much worse. Not only are we culling valuable labor from our shores, these folks are also consumers and taxpayers. Politicians do seem to love to vilify those at our southern border (“rapists and murders”) even as millions of smuggled US-made guns have empowered cartels (feed US demand for drugs) are part of the reason so many are fleeing their homelands. We seem to have an uncanny habit of building huge political walls against what actually would be in our best interest.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I do remember the good old days where populist passions were relegated to shooting ourselves just in the foot.