As a Nation, we are going Broke!!
I have lived at my present address in Tucson, Arizona for four years this April. Each year the economic climate locally, state wide and nationally has grown steadily worse. How can I tell you ask?
My courses of study in college have been economics, my peers there have risen to national heights of prominence and I have served in positions of finance in corporations. As cowboy buddies of mine often quipped, " this ain't my first rodeo."
Late in 2012 through last year and so far in January 2014, my mail box suffers from an effluvia of "pitch" letters from every charity on the planet, from the American Society of Twinkle Toed Children to Amalgamated Nazi Party. The local public broadcasting television station, Red Cross, Cancer Society, Food Bank, NRA, you name it, have hit our house by phone, mail, and 4 out of 5 knocks on my front door have been for solicitations.
I do not live in a middle class neighborhood. Marketing people who know anything about their trade should look at statistical data and figure out my neighborhood is not the place you hit for donations, gifts, cash contributions, or subscriptions. People on my street are just making it.
About half the folks who live here have been decimated by the 2008 bank failure and Wall Street and stock swindles and have moved down the economic scale as have I to make room here, dressing up available homes in older neighborhoods.
Many of us are now quite comfortable living within our means, but casual observation by a passer-by will show, this is not the luxurious foot-hills where one would guess Cadillacs roam freely.
Yet, nincompoops often stretch around the block rapping on our doors, selling $200 boxes of "sirloin" steaks to people that haven't seen a 3 piece suit all their lives.
90% of all my mail is some sort of sales pitch for buying something for items I'll never need at prices I can never afford. Yet, in my town, EVERYTHING is discounted 30, 40,45% off. Literally everything from hamburgers, hot dogs, roofing and Fords. Thursdays is junk mail day and the box stuffed with discount coupons where most of my street gets their food coupons for the week.
Main street in Tucson is Broadway. Half of that street eastbound has empty stores on the south side for two miles - every store is empty, every one. Restaurants, office buildings, car washes, everything that was open and operating twenty years ago is gone. GONE. The huge shopping mall I once managed 34 years ago, just a mile from my current house, was 7th largest on the globe, with 129 stores. It had over 2200 parking spaces, over 1,300,000 square feet. Gone. It has been reduced to an open air cluster of a half dozen buildings baked by the desert heat, staffed by young kids who know nothing of it's history. The original mall attracted a hundred thousand shoppers from all over the state and 3 districts in Mexico. Now, just the immediate area.
And, I know it's just not Tucson which has been declared the 6th poorest community in America. Economic indicators flash trouble everywhere. There seems NO connection between the stock market and economic health of the American citizenry. Gold and Silver merchants, you will note, no longer peddle gold as primary draw on TV ads. Much of the country is broke, so silver is cheaper, so they shill silver as they new 'gotta have' amongst your new portfolio additions.
Gold, well over $1400 an ounce, is now too rich for the poor, so to speak.
Pat Buchanan and Slick Willie Clinton once agreed that America might be a third world country in about 50 years, it was written not too long ago. With greater minds than mine dipping in the water, rowing and the above, I am scared they might be right.
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My courses of study in college have been economics, my peers there have risen to national heights of prominence and I have served in positions of finance in corporations. As cowboy buddies of mine often quipped, " this ain't my first rodeo."
Late in 2012 through last year and so far in January 2014, my mail box suffers from an effluvia of "pitch" letters from every charity on the planet, from the American Society of Twinkle Toed Children to Amalgamated Nazi Party. The local public broadcasting television station, Red Cross, Cancer Society, Food Bank, NRA, you name it, have hit our house by phone, mail, and 4 out of 5 knocks on my front door have been for solicitations.
I do not live in a middle class neighborhood. Marketing people who know anything about their trade should look at statistical data and figure out my neighborhood is not the place you hit for donations, gifts, cash contributions, or subscriptions. People on my street are just making it.
About half the folks who live here have been decimated by the 2008 bank failure and Wall Street and stock swindles and have moved down the economic scale as have I to make room here, dressing up available homes in older neighborhoods.
Many of us are now quite comfortable living within our means, but casual observation by a passer-by will show, this is not the luxurious foot-hills where one would guess Cadillacs roam freely.
Yet, nincompoops often stretch around the block rapping on our doors, selling $200 boxes of "sirloin" steaks to people that haven't seen a 3 piece suit all their lives.
90% of all my mail is some sort of sales pitch for buying something for items I'll never need at prices I can never afford. Yet, in my town, EVERYTHING is discounted 30, 40,45% off. Literally everything from hamburgers, hot dogs, roofing and Fords. Thursdays is junk mail day and the box stuffed with discount coupons where most of my street gets their food coupons for the week.
Main street in Tucson is Broadway. Half of that street eastbound has empty stores on the south side for two miles - every store is empty, every one. Restaurants, office buildings, car washes, everything that was open and operating twenty years ago is gone. GONE. The huge shopping mall I once managed 34 years ago, just a mile from my current house, was 7th largest on the globe, with 129 stores. It had over 2200 parking spaces, over 1,300,000 square feet. Gone. It has been reduced to an open air cluster of a half dozen buildings baked by the desert heat, staffed by young kids who know nothing of it's history. The original mall attracted a hundred thousand shoppers from all over the state and 3 districts in Mexico. Now, just the immediate area.
And, I know it's just not Tucson which has been declared the 6th poorest community in America. Economic indicators flash trouble everywhere. There seems NO connection between the stock market and economic health of the American citizenry. Gold and Silver merchants, you will note, no longer peddle gold as primary draw on TV ads. Much of the country is broke, so silver is cheaper, so they shill silver as they new 'gotta have' amongst your new portfolio additions.
Gold, well over $1400 an ounce, is now too rich for the poor, so to speak.
Pat Buchanan and Slick Willie Clinton once agreed that America might be a third world country in about 50 years, it was written not too long ago. With greater minds than mine dipping in the water, rowing and the above, I am scared they might be right.
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