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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Jul '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
"If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)
Jul '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness." Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation: A Day Of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer in the The United States Of America on April 30, 1863
Oct '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Is this the same James Delingpole that was complaining about the price of leeks?
(Although there is a regulatory story to be told here, too: planning restrictions - green belts and all that - have effectively made it impossible for competitors to Tesco and the other incumbents to reach critical mass.)
Dec '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
In this end, neither the bullfighter, nor the bull will win. Step aside. Charge at no capes and avoid all horns. Avoid the artifacts that are man-made traps, disguised as bait.
As your money becomes worth less, value money less. Raise some chickens and split some firewood. Focus alternatively on ballast and flotation and leave it to others to fret about sleek hulls and bigger sails.
Keep talking, writing, and making us laugh, James. I'll make sure some eggs and firewood are left at your door.
May '11
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Whoa! Where does a taxi driver get a credit report that justifies a $300,000 house? And 15 years ago no less?
I feel for the guy and his struggles but I have to ask...what the heck was he thinking?
BTW...his house that is worth only $130,000 now was worth only $130,000 then, it was just priced at $300,000.
Mar '11
Re: All the leaves are brown...
Thanks to Mr Clinton, no credit report was necessary - that's what got us into this mess.
Aug '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
James,
A couple of things. First, I find the tale of a house that was worth $300,000 in 1996 now being worth $130,000 incredible -- especially in the Bay Area. Where does this driver live? A condo in Hayward? If so, given Bay Area wages compared to Angelino wages, I am living in the wrong part of the state. But...maybe he commutes from Stockton -- though they didn't have $300,000 houses in 1996. Additionally, at 5%, the monthly payment on a 300k home is about $1,600. His utilities and insurance are $1,400? Hmm...I have a low deductible family PPO at half that.
Second...he makes 3k a month $36k a year. His wife makes $1,500 a month...$18k a year. That's $54,000 a year with $1,500 for food and disposable income.
Do his parents provide "zero" income? Are they Grampa Joe's from Wonka-land who can only get up for a vacation, but cannot get up for any kind of work?
Welcome to Obama's America. Welcome to malaise and the delusion of failure. What this man lacks is American optimism.
Aug '10
Re: All the leaves are brown...
As I think about this a little bit more, I think you were being hustled for a bigger tip.
"Welcome to America rube!"