Summer Fun

May 22, 2004
     The summer driving season officially kicks off Friday with the Memorial Day weekend and, as gasoline prices prompt more families to stay home, a lot of Americans will be stuck in their oppressively boring suburbs wondering about the meaning of it all. The failures and disconnections of the living arrangement most Americans have been induced to choose will at last become manifest.

     They will discover that a luxurious private realm, with more bathrooms per inhabitant than any other society, will not compensate for a public realm that has been reduced and impoverished into a universal automobile slum. The children will be relegated to their TVs and video game terminals. The only other option will be trips to the mall -- except that credit cards maxed out on gasoline fill-ups will put the kibosh on recreational shopping, too, and the public will make the additional discovery that malls have little else to offer non-spenders, except a keener awareness of their hopeless debt levels. The adults will blame George W. Bush.

     It seems to me that as the weeks advance into the hardcore vacation zone, the price of gasoline is only likely to go higher. (Duh. . . .) It will be a strange interplay between increased competition (or growing scarcity) of global oil resources and weakness in the US dollar itself -- and it may not be so easy to tell which is the chicken or the egg. The dollar's loss of value against other currencies will force the federal reserve to keep bumping up interest rates so that all the foreign holders of US debt paper will not dump it.

      Higher interest rates would be good news to savers -- except that there are none in America. They will be bad news to the millions who bought their suburban houses using "creative" adjustable rate mortgages when interest rates were at rock bottom. So, on top of being bored out of their minds being stuck at home in suburbia all summer, many will face the even greater trauma of default, foreclosure, and having no place to live at all. Of course, selling the house would be an option, but not a good one when everybody else is selling and few people are buying and the seller is left in the uncomfortable position of offering a house for less than he paid for it.

      All this discontent and difficulty may not show up in the stock markets right away, because out of the minority of Americans who own stocks, many of these are retirees or pension institutions who are not in a position to go to all cash. But by the traditional crash season, fall, it will be apparent that the hallucinated US economy of credit-and-mortgages is going up in a vapor. Then the real fun may begin. I think it will be initially a near-hyperinflationary wave that breaks as we enter winter into a deflationary trough of frenzied asset liquidation. There will be lots of "pre-owned" stuff to buy, cheap.

Comments

[3-D]

I dunno about all the folks neck deep in debt and concerned about gas prices, but I just purchased my first motorcycle. I, for one, will be enjoying the summer months more than ever with gas sipping rides from my city apartment inside Dallas, not 10 miles from my job. There's fun to be had this summer during the vacation, it's just not behind the wheel of a 15mpg land yacht. ;-)

[John Yossarian]

What are we supposed to do about it?

[Tooz]

The transition from inflation to deflation may already be in process, as the housing bubble implodes along with other financial markets, especially hard assets. They won't be able to print money fast enough to prevent this contraction, IMHO.

[Robert of the Rohirrim]

"Americans will be stuck in their oppressively boring suburbs wondering about the meaning of it all." "So, on top of being bored out of their minds being stuck at home in suburbia all summer, ..."

I like the suburbs. We have nice neighbors, there are children playing everywhere, it's very safe and healthy. We BBQ, play ball and ride bikes in the cul-de-sac, and go to the pool or play in the sprinkler when it gets hot. I fix up the house and garden on the weekends. We read Homer and Grisham in our lawn chairs while we watch the children play. It's perfect.

And you hate this and want to destroy it? Thanks, but we can do without your help on this one.

[Lilli]

John,

Be glad you still have the TV and the internet.

[One Eye Open]

"Then the real fun may begin."

Fun indeed. But only if you are a whiney little asshole that revels in others misfortune and is still carrying grudges because no one picked you for the baseball team because you athletic prowess sucked and your mommy dressed you funny.

Get over it Jimmy. The world is what it is. Mistakes aboud. Our predecessors weren't perfect. The idealized past is just that...idealized. Don't like big glass boxed McWhatevers? I don't either. I would guess most people don't. So, don't frequent them.

The world is not going to remake its self in your image of what it should be be, Jimbo. Sorry but you don't get to be emperor. Deal with it. You are not getting picked for the team. Maybe you should start wearing that as a badge of honor since you tend to rant quite a bit about how ficked up the "team" is. Be careful what you wish for as the "fun" may turn out to be not all that much fun.

[C. JoDI]

Mistakes aboud.

Indeed. One Eye Open: perhaps it's time to lift the lid on the other one.

[steve duncan]

I think the cost of gas is viewed similarly to the cost of cigarettes by a nicotine addict. I remember as a very small child walking to the drugstore, signed permission note clutched in hand, sent to buy cigarettes for my mother. Those days it was a quarter a pack. We kids didn't like her smoking as its perils were just then becoming widely publicized and adults hectored children to not start the habit. Mom would say once they hit 50 cents she'd quit. Then it was a dollar. I lost track of the cessation/dollar level required. Eventually she had two heart attacks, three open heart operations and finally quit. It took nearly dying, twice, to wake her up and even then it wasn't the price to buy the damn things that forced the issue. So it will be with gasoline. It wouldn't matter if it was five dollars a gallon driving habits won't change appreciably. Those at the bottom of the economic ladder aren't feeding the economic engine of this nation as far as discretionary spending is involved. They rent cheap apartments, buy food, cheap clothes, cheap furniture, old used cars and rent an occasional movie. They'll have to hustle and forage more fiercly than ever to get by as the cost of gas encroaches on their disposable income. It's not as if they can quit eating, wearing clothes or getting from point A to B to accomplish it all. However, those with incomes above subsistence level will mostly plug right along buying their baubles, taking their vacations and having steak and lobster here and there out on the town. They'll adjust, just as I have, a few extra dollars a week in the tank viewed is nothing more than a minor irritant, something to be tolerated and adjusted to like a small pebble in your shoe. That is until we have the equivilant of those two heart attacks.

[the Cloudwalking Owl]

I'm not sure that it does much good for the cause to alienate the people who enjoy the suburbs. But I understand that anger. For anyone who wants to enjoy a vibrant public sector, the suburban lifestyle is mega-trillion dollar vampire that has been sucking the life out of the public realm as long as I have been alive.

The only places where people like me feel alive is in those areas where I can walk to work, walk to shop, walk to the pub, walk to entertainment, etc. Yet because of the growth of the suburbs I have seen my old, pre-automobile neighbourhood progressively decline to the point where I now find myself surrounded by beggars, crack-heads and now cystal-meth zombies. All of this has been clearly documented and predictable according to the work that people like Kunstler have done.

Contrary to the big lie of modern economics, we live in a "zero sum game". What wealth we have lavished on the suburbs has come at the expense of the more urban parts of society. I hope Robert enjoys his steaks and swimming pool, because they are to a certain extent being subsidized by the decline of where I live.

[netkat]

You like the suburbs, eh? Kids out playing, and having BBQ are fun things, but they are fun things which can happen anywhere, not just in the vapid wasteland of the suburb.

Maybe "I like the suburbs" is code for: "I like to live where are none of those smelly loud brown people?"

I mean, you take good whole wheat flour, process it with a bunch of chemicals, and you get Wonder Bread, which has none of the actual WONDER of wheat.

OK..go to it then!

nk

[Robert of the Rohirrim]

Cloudwalking Owl,

So it's my fault, again. Good grief, what do you people want from me?

How about the zillions spent on failed left-wing inner-city projects, those projects to bring back "vibrancy" to the cities, that I have been forced into subsidizing over the last 30 years? Listen, if the cities proper were safe, then we might be able to live there, but because they have been overrun by leftist-pampered minorities, I cannot, it's not safe to raise a family there. We go to the suburbs to escape the disasters of urban planning.

[Harold]

There's no reason cities can't have balconies, parks, and yards for kids to play with. There are cities in Europe and even Japan with these amenities. In Finland almost everyone has a summer house and when I was young -- in pre-suburbia days -- we always spent a month or so a year in the country, and I mean real country, whether mountains, ocean, or farm. And we were by no means wealthy.

Also, hi density doesn't have to be 40 stories. Row houses are high density.

[msjanket]

Sorta funny to hear folks say that those "lower tier folks" don't drive any part of the economic engine related to fuel. Folks in all sorts of work have to travel, often long distances, to get to work. And, this will sink them if fuel prices keep accelerating upward. Never forget there's tons of shekels owned by the middle income people. Costs are high, even for Chinese made shirts and shoes, and shotgun shells are getting pretty high, too.
I've had to downgrade from the expensive German beers to some stuff made in old wash tubs by retired German women in my neighborhood. I've taken a big hit. But, I like austerity. Yup, I love to scrape out every bit of mustard from the jar so I can put it on my biscuits. My pants are patched and I've had to sell off my Madonna albums to pay for the ransom also known as Saudi gasoline. I'm suckin' wind but luckily I don't live in the 'burbs. When I go by the 'burbs, I feel a lump in my throat fer all them poor "burb dwellers".
Kunstler's right. It's over. We may have to move west and pick buffalo chips to heat our hot water for our monthly shower. Forage in the deserts out west, hoping the prickly pears are ripe for the pickin'.

Some guy saw me over the weekend and swore, utterly swore, that whe he saw me he gasped and cried out, "Tom Joad, is that you, boy?"

Well, I've got to go outside and harvest road kill for my lunchtime meal. Some guys with their new Harleys probably be laughing at me as they read this. I don't pay 'em no heed.

Once I get me a job pickin' them grapes of wrath, I'll be eating probably at least twice a day.

Y'all have a good day, now, you hear?

Mike

[Robert of the Rohirrim]

Netkat:

So, I'm not allowed to live close to people who are like me? I have no right to free association? I must be forced to put my family in crime-ridden neighborhoods to satisfy your misguided utopian dreams? Every other race/ethnicity is allowed to congregate together and have their own clubs, organizations, special priviledges, except for Whites. And that's not being racist? What a psychopathic little commie you are.

[Walt]

The vapid inhabitants of suburbia revel in barbecues and swimming pools precisely because there is no meaning, culture, or joy there. How could there be? You'd think the hairy-chested Christians who now conflate worship of Mammon with Jesus might have an insight here. But you would be mistaken. The only insight is the lure of nostalgia: cheap food, energy, houses, clothing. That's God - not yet the catastrophes lurking behind too many ARMS (our Shiva economy). When it begins crashing for them, expect the worst. Their inane sense of entitlement will demand retribution from a class of scapegoats. Who could that be? The situation is still too fluid but my money is on the environmentalists. Anyone think Al Gore might run for president in 2008? Try a lynching party.

[Lisa]

"Listen, if the cities proper were safe, then we might be able to live there, but because they have been overrun by leftist-pampered minorities, I cannot, it's not safe to raise a family there. We go to the suburbs to escape the disasters of urban planning."

Great, keep thinking that! Some of us leftist-pampered (?) minorities grew up in the suburbs and had enough of that disastrous planning...
Right now, in my Chicago neighborhood, I have several pairs of friends within a few blocks happily raising toddlers, with no plans to leave once the kids go to school (in fact,they're getting involved in improving the local schools, rather than just fleeing; there are too many other advantages to the city!). One of their kids just learned to walk on the sidewalk on my block a few weeks ago...a few doors down from a mostly peurto rican, Section 8 building. In a few weeks, we're all having a block party, and I'm marrying my S.O. in the beautiful back garden of our co-op building (no parking, thanks). A few weeks after that, we'll take the train up to Wisconsin or Michigan for a bit of a honeymoon (no car rental, thanks). I'm looking forward to a summer of gardening, the beach, and bike rides -- all in the city!

[Mike]

Steve Duncan-

Nicely put. I agree with your sense of what it'll take for us to face our ills. A hell of an analogy (and sorry for the pain it must evoke).

Cloud Oil, Netkat & Robert-

Interesting to see how Jim's rant on suburbia becomes a proxy for a discussion on race and class. I both agree heartily & diagree vehemently about all the things that all three of you said. Hell, it's a complicated issue. JHK's a smart guy; he knows that race, and especially class, are implicated in the whole suburban lifestyle debate.

Anyhow, for those interested, a small bit relating to one of the side-effects of our "cleansing" of the suburban landscape:

http://mikesneighborhood.blogspot.com/2006/05/go-directly-to-jail-do-not-pass-go-do_22.html

Enjoy.

[One Eye Open]

"Yet because of the growth of the suburbs I have seen my old, pre-automobile neighbourhood progressively decline to the point where I now find myself surrounded by beggars, crack-heads and now cystal-meth zombies."

Hey Cloud here's the rub. Let's take an imaginary, young couple. They no more created the suburban/urban, yin-yang, state-of-the-U.S. dilema then I created cheese. They are young, idealistic and starting a family. If they are idependently wealthy (not likely) they can reside in an upscale, semi-safe urban neighborhood and probably get their offspring into a fairly good school. If they are not wealthy they can join you and blend in with the ..."beggars, crack-heads and now cystal-meth zombies."

And you want to blame them for heading for the suburbs? Remember, these aren't the folks who headed for the suburbs in the 50's for all of the evil reasons that people now want to ascribe to them. These are innocents, who merely want a safe neighborhood and a good school to park the crumb-crunchers in.

You know it just dawned on me. I wonder if Kunstler has kids? I wonder if it takes parenthood to "get" why so many couples have opted for the burbs?

[toner]

Without some change to the current model it appears there will be some suffering, especially in suburbia. For home energy we need to look at solar. For transporting people and stuff we need to look at rail.

[Weaseldog]

Energy production and gasoline availability is now a zero sum game.

Economics isn't, because the government con always borrow more money, in order to outbid it's citizens and private industry.

As the US Government does continue to spew new money so it never sees a gov owned hummer or truck run out of fuel, the rest of us are going to have to get used to not only paying more for fuel, but seeing long lines at the pump, and rationing. If it's not mandated rationing, it will rationing via shortages. you might wait six hours in line for gas, only to find the pump have run dry, then have the privilege of pushing your SUV back home.

I expect a market turn down, we're due one. But I wonder if the Plunge Protection Team can't turn it around.

They may just be able to inflate it forever. Essentially the word is, that the US Government borrows money to give to the big finance houses, to pump the stock market up with.

It's the flow of dollars that keeps the market jacked beyond it's fundamentals. And that's what allows the magic of derivatives and other self referencing pyramid of debt to keep growing.

Though this whole ponzi scheme is sucking the economic life out of the US, perhaps it can go a while longer yet?

Until the US Gov itself is forced to ration, what's to stop it from evolving into being the US economy in conjunction with the big banks, at the expense of everything and everyone else?

At this stage, the US Government can't even consider fixing it's financial problems without risking collapse. It has no choice but to cheat, and use deceptive practices until it implodes.

I bet it can go a long way yet.

[Cyndiluwho]

Thank you Robert. You are speaking for millions of us who feel exactly the same way. I love my suburban neighborhood. There are tons of kids around here for ours to play with and because most folks here are like ourselves it's a comfortable environment.

I like the so called blandless of the suburbs. It's clean, safe, orderly and pretty. It smells good here. For the most part people are civil, the crime rate is low and street corner conversations aren't punctuated with every other word being *motherfucker*. I see no value in drug dealers, drive-bys, street fights, baby-mamas, cars powered by loud, obscene noise that is loosely called *music*, litter everywhere or getting my ass kicked for looking at someone the wrong way. If that is what passes for valuable, exciting culture in this country I'll pass, thankyouverymuch.

[Peter]

This spake JHK: "But by the traditional crash season, fall, it will be apparent that the hallucinated US economy of credit-and-mortgages is going up in a vapor. Then the real fun may begin. I think it will be initially a near-hyperinflationary wave that breaks as we enter winter into a deflationary trough of frenzied asset liquidation."

For a sense of what it was like for the Argentines a few years years ago, click my name. You will find a very scary account of life post-crash.

[Peter]

"If that is what passes for valuable, exciting culture in this country I'll pass, thankyouverymuch."

Cyndiluwho,

Well said, as much as I loathe suburban subdivisions, you do make an important point. If you have kids, you want them to grow up somewhere relatively safe. So it's a trade-off, as with most things in life. My solution has been a move to a nice clean, safe small city.

[Robert of the Rohirrim]

Walt said:

"The vapid inhabitants of suburbia revel in barbecues and swimming pools precisely because there is no meaning, culture, or joy there. How could there be?"

Nice. Walt, of course there is meaning to be found in 'burbs. Why do you think people move to there?

Lisa,

You're either not White or you are living in a special situation. I know plenty of minorities, enough to know that White people are, by and large, not safe in most minority areas, especially Black and Mexican ones. I know the government crime stats, the ones that show that violence against Whites by non-Whites is many times higher than the other way around. Your situation is rare, congratuations. But don't extrapolate your personal experience to make general statements about the rest of us, it just doesn't work that way.

[Weaseldog]

The suburbs are better. In the inner city, kids do drugs on the street, in their cars.

In the suburbs, kids do drugs in their homes.

The newer suburbs with upwardly mobile (yuppies) folks, escaping crime from their old neighborhoods, bring it with them. There's a reason upper middle class neighborhoods take their place as heroin capitals for a time.

Plano Tx, when it was developed a concrete monument to suburbia, went finve years breaking records for heroin addiction and teen suicides.

I expect Flower Mound Texas, to be hitting marks like that soon.

In the mean time, the US is protecting it's allies in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance of Poppy Growing Drug Lords, so we can keep that brown stuff coming to suburbia.

I grew up in the burbs. They protect your kids from nothing. When they're old enough to drive, they'll be going downtown for refreshments.

At least as long as you can afford to drive anywhere. Eventually, you're going to need to homestead your suburban home or move on. You'll need to find ways to live within walking distance a job that does't rely on electricity or fuel.

But that's a long term outlook. Plenty of room to wiggle on the way there.