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1/27/10

Poverty in the 'burbs

Not surprisingly the decade of the naughts (or maybe they will come to be known as the oughts) saw a rise in suburban poverty as commodities of all kinds - especially fossil fuel, began what might be permanent inflation. The Brookings Institution, in The Suburbanization of Poverty found an increase of 25% in the level of poverty in US suburbs.

Between 2000 and 2008, suburbs in the country’s largest metro areas saw their poor population grow by 25 percent—almost five times faster than primary cities and well ahead of the growth seen in smaller metro areas and non-metropolitan communities.

The peak of the Great American Credit Hoax saw the banks reading the tea leaves regarding their little scheme of making profits from "fees"and their own over-exuberance around the whiz-bang "securitized mortgages" and put the breaks on credit. Home "owners" of course had become quite comfortable rolling their plastic debt into ever-increasing home debt. Unfortunately, someone realized somewhere along the line that home prices were a musical chair illusion and all of a sudden the music stopped.

There are over 14 million salespeople in the US, more than 4 million janitors and 3.48 million hairdressers, etc but only 438,490 farmers, fishers and woodsmen (woodspeople?)

It doesn't seem too surprising, to me at least, that since the cities are where all the "jobs" are, in a climate like this that is also where the "lost jobs" are too.




"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

-- Wonderland, Chapter 6


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Farm o'the Day:

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