What Recovery Looks Like

We are supposed to be recovering from what is
called by some to be the worse depression/recession
since 1939. A couple of things have come to the
surface as a result.

One of my windows to what's happening outside of the
Iron County area is through an organization called
The Concrete Sawing and Drilling Association (CSDA.)

In the current issue of their journal, the president
of the association (Douglas H. Walker) reports that
instead of prices for work coming in 10 to 15% over
the engineer's estimates, work is actually being
completed some 20% below those estimates. What this
means is significant competition among contractors,
driving the prices down.

What this means to our local economy is that incomes
for those of our residents working out of state will
decrease in the near future. The repercussions are
yet to be determined. Will it become advantageous for
some of those people to stay at home, with the families
collecting welfare instead of an income?

Similarly, with the world wide drop in automobile
production, China has found itself in a position of
having excess capacity for the manufacture of tires.
Because they dropped their prices in an attempt to
increase sales, the the executive branch of the US
Government (Obama et troupe) announced and has
implemented a tariff on those tires. This old fashioned
protectionism, pure and simple. But it neglects the
fact that we depend heavily on China as a money lender
and trading partner.

It is the US tire manufacturers that decided to move
their operations off shore. Obama's three year tariff
seeks to more than double the price during that period.
So if you are going to replace the tires on any of your
vehicles, you have till the 19th of September to take
action. Prices will jump by at least 1/3.

This looks to be the first of many tariffs imposed
by the Obama administration. So much for the promise
made and repeated by Obama that those who earn less
than $250,000 a year will see no tax increases. The
beginnings of the redistribution of wealth hurts the
poor much more than the rich. You can bet you'll see
a tremendous increase in the price of used tires at
John's in Caspien, and on Telephone Time.

So we're faced with the prospects of decreasing
incomes and increasing costs, just as the case
was for the entire eastern block from the end of
WW2 till about 1990. If you're on a fixed income,
as I am, you'll be a bit better off for a while,
till social security, medicare and military health
care, are also effectively cut.

Our future, including for those folks still
working, looks more than a little bleak. The
really bad news hasn't hit yet. I'd be very
happy to have to retract these dire predictions
by being wrong.

Bill Vajk