I thank all those who urged me to take up my pen again and get back to Wholesome Reading. It’s been a difficult few months with the BP annual, the concomitant book tour (still ongoing), and the great national mess in which we currently find ourselves. I needed to take some time to recharge the batteries and see how the first Days of Obama shook out. The view so far: no miracles, at least not of the good kind. According to jobless data released today, we are for all intents and purposes nearing 15 percent unemployment. That’s a scary, scary number and it’s getting to feel very personal. In previous slowdowns, unemployment seemed far away. You knew a guy who knew a guy who lost his job. Now we all have people quite close to us who are hurting, and there’s an increasing sense of “there but for the grace of god go I.” Daily living is dancing between the raindrops, the lightning bolts, the falling meteors.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the economic carnage is what we’ll be left with when it’s all over. As the New York Times reported today, “he acceleration has convinced some economists that, far from an ordinary downturn after which jobs will return, the contraction under way reflects a fundamental restructuring of the American economy. In crucial industries — particularly manufacturing, financial services and retail — many companies have opted to abandon whole areas of business.”

“These jobs aren’t coming back,” said John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia in Charlotte. “A lot of production either isn’t going to happen at all, or it’s going to happen somewhere other than the United States. There are going to be fewer stores, fewer factories, fewer financial services operations. Firms are making strategic decisions that they don’t want to be in their businesses.”

I think that’s a way of saying that America is going to be a more boring place. Let’s face it–there are already precious few reasons to leave the house as it is. Maybe your part of the country is different, but in my area, every shopping center has a Best Buys, a Petsmart, and a Target, or a close approximation of that lineup. Maybe you throw in a Home Depot or a Lowe’s. Scattered among these big stores is a chain restaurant, and even an occasional book store. But the book stores are dying, the record stores are dead, the chain restaurants miserable. I recently accompanied a close friend to my favorite used CD and DVD shop. He said, “There’s really no reason to come here anymore,” by which I think he meant that you can get your media needs fulfilled, legitimately or otherwise, buy the Internet. That depresses me. I like city living, even the vague approximation of it that we have here in the suburbs. If there’s nothing to see or do, no shops that promise anything but staples, and even the museums shrunken or dead, what’s the point of leaving?

But that’s a discussion for the future. Perhaps something will come along that’s new and even more exciting than… Target. First we have to get to the point that money is flowing again, and that seems a long, long way off.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 6:54 pm and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.