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Days of Future Past..., Part II


Well…, the seed potatoes are planted in the garden at The Ranch now…, and I am glad the lead up to that story is now in the ”days past” category. I should…, and no doubt…, could have done it much earlier. Hard physical labor was a way of life in my past…, along with hard partying. Like Don, I did inhale…, but unlike Don…, I am ever so happy that in my early 40’s I traded in my day job as a chain saw jockey for one jockeying a computer for the State. The days of the future warrant some anxiety for that job…, given the state of the State budget. But that anxiety is tempered by the fact that I made that transition over ten years ago…, so I have a bit of seniority. That…, and the fact that I now have some potatoes in the ground for the future. I’ll probably be thanking Don for the inspiration that led to all the perspiration…, after I fully recovered from the physical discomfort. But…, reading Steinbeck gives me no comfort. And his image of potatoes being dumped in rivers during The Great Depression…, while people were starving…, being dumped because they couldn’t be sold for a profit is haunting my present days and nights.

“The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop. And the men of knowledge have worked, have considered, and the fruit is rotting on the ground, and the decaying mash in the wine vats is poisoning the air. And taste the wine--no grape flavor at all, just sulphur and tannic acid and alcohol.

This little orchard will be a part of the great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner.

This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries too. And four pears peeled and cut in half, cooked and canned, still cost fifteen cents. And the canned pears do not spoil. They will last for years.

The decay spreads over the State, and sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit--and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people form fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates--died of malnutrition--because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

A couple weeks ago I asked here, “…are we building up this massive debt burden for our children and grandchildren in order to keep people like the Joad's from starving…, or are we ensuring the survival and prosperity of the ‘great owners' and their ilk?”

A rhetorical question if ever there was one…, in my mind at least.

Sure…, a lot of money is going to unemployment so people don’t starve. But one hell of a lot more is going to keep big business in business…, so they can produce the goods to sell to make a profit. By selling them to people on unemployment…,? How long can this Ponzi Scheme survive?

Today I ask…, are the measures being taken now to prevent another Great Depression doing more to fuel a future Great Depression than they are doing to fight another one?


Scott R. June 6, 2009 - 3:35pm
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My guess

The last depression was described as want in a time of plenty.

This one will be more like want in a time of scarcity.

It's not beyond the realm of possibility that there could be areas where food is worthless, but for a different reason: a breakdown of the distribution network.

Eating food from your own ground is medicine for the soul (not to mention the benefits your body will derive).

I salute you.

I did inhale.

Don June 6, 2009 - 11:56pm
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In The Long Run...,

you are right about the distribution network. But I think Kuntsler's scenario of an oil crisis is a little further down the road than the problem we are facing now. Massive unemployment. We are already at 16% real unemployment..., with more to come I am afraid.

California isn't the only state facing big problems and have cut about everything else they can. The next step is laying off people. Michigan is closing eight prisons..., not a bad thing if you dismiss all the people who will be unemployed. I see big layoffs in state (maybe federal too) employment.

And as for real jobs...,housing starts, Housing Starts, HOUSING STARTS..., I have harped on it here before..., they drive this economy by creating jobs across the spectrum. There needs to be way more than "green shoots" to put all those people back to work. We got a little blip from people hoping this is the bottom in prices and interest rates..., now that interest rates are on their way back up I don't see much hope that the trend will continue. The loggers I know got early seasonal layoffs last fall, are starting back late this spring, and have been told they will be lucky to get three months work before another layoff. Not a pretty prospect for them..., or anyone else in the housing related industry. Nobody but the banks and real estate agents make a penny off selling an already built home..., and oh boy howday..., are there lots of them out there..., and more foreclosures to come I am afraid. And there won't be a whole lot of new building that provides jobs until those houses are worked off..., or sprayed with kerosene, or dumped in rivers, or slaughtered in ditches.

Scott R. June 7, 2009 - 2:38pm
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Housing starts?

And as for real jobs...,housing starts, Housing Starts, HOUSING STARTS..., I have harped on it here before..., they drive this economy by creating jobs across the spectrum. There needs to be way more than "green shoots" to put all those people back to work.

Before people can buy new houses, there have to be enough buyers to soak up the existing unsold stock. And before either of these things can happen, there must be people who want the houses and are paid well enough to afford them.

There is a cost to everyone for our lopsided distribution of wealth and income.

Capital may be worshiped in this society, but people who are rich enough to be capitalists don't work their money as hard as ordinary people who spend it. Poor people work their money the hardest, because they spend just about every penny on things we need. Wealthier folks spend on unproductive foolishness like fashion or luxury items, and really wealthy folks can't even pretend to spend their income. Thus we get the worst "luxury items" of all-- things like CDO of CDO, that not only don't put people to work, but destroy huge masses of wealth forever.

Too much capital and not enough spending money has given us businesses built on marketing, manipulation, and/or coercion rather than legitimate products. In place of goods and services, we have a corporate culture of "bads and disservices". How else can we explain the likes of Monsanto, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Enron?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again-- a dollar doesn't stop moving until it finds its way to a rich person. When conservatives say we must stimulate the economy by borrowing and giving the money to rich people, remember: those are the folks who gave us CDO of CDO. On the other hand, there are the folks who spend their entire paycheck on rent, gas, taxes, beans, beer, real charity, and maybe some new work boots. If economic stimulus is really the point, where is the money going to do the most work for us?

chalo June 7, 2009 - 4:06pm
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No Quarrel What So Ever...,

with what you are saying here. I tried to say it in Part I…, “Too much money in too few hands…”. What I was trying to get at in Part II was that giving all that money to the banks via Bail Outs is not going to work (it is just going to be siphoned off by the rich, as you say) …, and could lead us to another Great Depression. What we need is jobs…, and that means housing starts.

Housing starts are a leading indicator of economic activity. Those who say that no one could have seen this recession coming need only look at housing starts. They peaked near a historic high in January 2006. Then feel off a cliff. Housing starts predicted this recession and they will predict when we come out of it. We aren’t coming out of it for a good long time because there won’t be anyone with jobs to buy up the houses already on the market (as you pointed out) let alone building new ones to pull us out of this recession.

Here is a good link to a chart. You can fiddle with it to make it more visually dynamic. In the “draw” section, pick “line” to see a line graph instead of the bar graph. You can also change the “time line” down below if you want to see how well housing starts correlate with past recessions. Try going all the way back to the 50’s to see how sharp some of the drops were. The last bottom in housing starts was in January 1991. That was about the time Fannie and Freddie were being pushed to make more loans and the Housing Bubble began. Housing starts rose steadily (overall) until January 2006. Housing Starts drove those boom years…, and predicted this recession.

http://zimor.com/chart/Housing_Starts

What I was trying to say is I don’t see housing starts recovering with any significance that will pull us out of this recession. They have nudged up a bit…, but as I said, I think it is just because of some bottom fishers…, and gamblers making one last roll of the dice with everything they have left on the line. I am afraid they are going to roll craps.

I am rooting and cheering that Singular and Scottjen61 are right and we are already on the road to recovery. But if you knew how lazy I really am..., and how much work sod-busting (I wanna be a Cowboy, not a farmer!) for a garden is..., you would know that I don't have much faith in a recovery anytime soon. And I base that on three things..., housing starts, Housing Starts, and HOUSING STARTS.

Write on Chalo..., you hit the nail on the head. Hope we see more hammers hitting nails some day.

Scott R. June 8, 2009 - 10:33am
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When I was a kid the EU agriculture policies ...

... regularly produced excess amounts of butter, fruit and milk. When the warehouses were overflowing they started to destroy the food. This for obvious reasons outraged a lot of people. Because although there was no starvation in Europe there was hunger in many other places of the world. So they started to dump the excess onto the world market and sometimes shiped it for free as third world aid. The result for small farmers in many third world countries wasn't pretty. An African cattle farmer who relied on being able to exchange whatever surplus is left above the subsistence level would find that the fruits of his labor was all of sudden only worth a pittance once the EU cornucopia was unleashed on his country.

These days rather than subsidizing over-production farmers are paid to let fields lie fallow.

To me the agricultural sector is a typical example for an area where governments can not afford free market reign. Governments need to ensure there is excess capacity to mitigate the risk of famine.

quax June 7, 2009 - 12:41pm
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