All the leaves are brown...
Yay! I've just arrived in California and - extreme jet-lag permitting - I'm off to have dinner in SF tonight with Diane Ellis. What could be nicer?
Well, I'll tell you what would be nicer. Arriving in the world's seventh largest economy (allegedly) and imbibing the up-beat can-do spirit I remember from my first visit in the 1980s rather than experiencing it as it is now: a moribund, failed state.
I talked to my driver on the way from the airport: a cheerful Fijian just 15 years into his 30 year mortgage on a house he bought for $300,000 now worth $130,000. His $3000 take home pay all goes on servicing the mortgage repayments, the insurance and the utility bills. That leaves the $1500 a month earned by his wife to pay for everything else: two young kids, the guy's parents who live with them, everything. Where's the life there? Where's the hope? Where's the future?
Not, of course, that it's much different on my side of the pond. I talked to a Devon dairy farmer's wife on the flight over. The family have farmed there for three generations but they can scarcely scrape a living these days. Feedstuff is prohibitively expensive; the cheese-paring of the supermarkets which buy their produce is such that they make almost nothing from their milk; then there's the ever-present risk of TB which, if detected in their herd, renders the calves unsaleable. Why is there so much TB around? Well the farmers all blame it on badgers. But guess what? It's illegal to kill badgers because the animal rights agitators have decided that because badgers are cute and stripey they trump the right of dairy farmers to feed their families.
This is all tragically symptomatic of our age's warped values. We seem to have forgotten - in the decadent, post-war peace-dividend west at any right - that an economy which does not place as its highest priority the right of the working man and woman to ply their trade unencumbered by tax, regulation and political correctness is an economy which is doomed to fail.
How do we get out of this mess? Discuss.
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May '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Maybe I'm spoiled. Here in South Carolina, Boeing just built a new assembly line, BMW has invested over a billion dollars in a plant not 15 miles from my house (it's now the third largest assembly plant the company operates), and house prices are mostly stable. Our state government, while hardly a model, must balance its books each year. I guess the bad news is that Caterpillar decided to build their new plant elsewhere - in North Carolina. I guess my point is that sclerosis does not prevail everywhere.
Jul '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
This post reads like standing on the precipice of the Grand Canyon admiring the handiwork of God's Creation and then..... taking a step off.
Dec '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Apart from catastrophic collapse and rebuilding it all from the foundation up? Your guess is as good as mine.
Aug '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Underground economy. But with aboveground transactions in an alternate currency, one the government can't compromise or even comprehend, so when the government attempts to tax it, it can't compute fair market value. Has to be pegged to something technically worthless, or better yet technically nonexistent, yet rare and uninflatable.
Got it. Barack Obama's illegal-alien-relatives' DNA. Find one thing wrong with this.
Dec '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
James, have you watched the new show Terra Nova? There's your answer. Frankly, dinosaurs may be a lot more manageable than the US/Euro debt crisis.
Apr '11
Re: All the leaves are brown...
First thing comes to mind is a reworking of Cleese's training video, only instead of St Pete explaining to a businessman why he can't enter Heaven, it's for politicians and other Progressivist/Socialist types.
"You'll enjoy the irony in this, I'm quite confident!" he tells them. "It turns out that 'preventing Bad Things from happening', as you saw it, actually causes far worse misery! Isn't that just too perfect? And, of course, you knew it would, didn't you, you naughty bugger!"
"Now, if you would please, kindly follow those helpful signs that read Highway Of Good Intentions. It will take you straight there ..."
... And the sky is gray/grey.
Nov '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
There is no getting out of this mess - that is, unless a majority of Americans miraculously start to practice personal responsibility across the issues (i.e., morally, not just economically. Porn and the welfare state go hand in hand). The American people voted for dependency. Even Tea Partiers like their Medicare and Social Security. The fact that people's fortunes and well-being are irrevocably tied to the vicissitudes of the market, means people feel they've little control over their own destinies. I fear the only way to even begin to turn this around is to fully hit bottom.
Sep '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Its worth remembering that Arthur Ponziarelli jumped the shark in California.
Back to deep cover.
Aug '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Everything will be better once California spends $93 billion on high-speed rail.
Feb '11
Re: All the leaves are brown...
The King Prawn
Apart from catastrophic collapse and rebuilding it all from the foundation up? Your guess is as good as mine. · Nov 15 at 5:21pm
The masses and elites making up the polity of the United States of 2011 simply do not have the prescience, fortitude, and self-discipline necessary to take on a maelstrom that has been building for generations and can only be reversed by long sustained effort measurable on a generational scale. The psychological narcotic of instant gratification is seductive, irresistible, and hopelessly ingrained in the national character. It utterly precludes any sustained coherent effective response, whatever the efforts of the nation's leadership.
Oct '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
As to all the commenters on the dire state of affairs of the day. Would add this...
On a recent flight ot Mexico City one had the company of a Canadian family on vacation destined for beaches, sun and such. The family was large in number, consisitng of blonde, blue eyed Mennonites that had a dairy farm. Know that this family made a success in spite of the fact that in the North it gets to be minus 40 faster than one can get the stock indoors. A tough life that none here would chose.
Still cannot get the image out of my mind of the the family in traditional garb on the beaches of Mexico. The world is a big place in its wonders, in a way.
Perhaps we may survive, if we were less myopic.
Edited on November 16, 2011 at 4:10amDec '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
You and Diane are having diner at ground zero of the left's economic insanity. This society has been more concerned about the imagined rights of the perverse then the working people of this country for a very long time. A Supreme Court Justice who is more concerned about 'don't ask don't tell' then any other problem this society faces is symptomatic of the disease.
If you look out the window of the restaurant and salt begins to fall from the sky, please evacuate immediately. Diane don't look back. Actually I'm more confident about Diane not looking back then you James. Get a grip.
Phoney global warming, phoney quota-based affirmative action, phoney diversity studies, phoney third world symp foriegn policy, phoney keynsian tax&spend policy, and phoney pseudo black man as President. Does that sum it up?
Apr '11
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Lucky!
Simple: begin undoing every lefty statist program and institution starting with the Obama era through Bush and Clinton until you get to the Coolidge era then stop.
May '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
First, find a small, uninhabited island in a remote location .....
May '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Oh, and welcome to California. Stick around as long as you like. Illegal aliens are a protected species in California. ;-)
May '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Here's a tip: Girls don't like angry misanthropic tirades on their first date. Remember to ask Diane about herself...
Mar '11
Re: All the leaves are brown...
James Delingpole:
How do we get out of this mess? Discuss. ·
I was kinda hoping you would explain that to Peter.
A conservative President, Senate (61 or more) and House would help, in the US.
In the UK, you need a conservative PM - Mr Hannan would be fine.
In Europe? Hopeless.
Nov '11
Re: All the leaves are brown...
David Williamson
In the UK, you need a conservative PM - Mr Hannan would be fine.
Heck, we could use this fine gentleman as governor of Col-ee-forn-ee-a.
Re: All the leaves are brown...
There was a little of both, Trace. But we had a lovely meal and great conversation, befitting of the Ricochet brand.
Jun '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
I console myself in the knowledge that a good ole societal collapse every hundred years or so improves the gene pool. My inner mugwump reminds me that I might soon have a use for the roof pitch and down sleeping bags stored in the garage. And that pitchfork I never use . . .