Another “Mexico is the Future of America” post
A few more sales like this and his IPO really takes off. Photo from Philly.com / South Jersey News
This is another in my Mexico is the Future of the US Posts – which actually go back almost the life of this blog.
Reading the financial press in the US, one would think that there is still some hope for Main Street – as opposed of course to Wall Street. But let’s face it. That’s really not going to happen with this administration. A guy who can’t see the wisdom of prosecuting torturers and initiators of illegal, merciless and murderous wars – and of actually building political capital the right way – is not going to see the wisdom of changing the way business is done either. And the woes of “Main Street” are not exactly new.
Let’s take a look at what’s going on one of America’s few struggling, but surviving Main Streets – the one in Camden, New Jersey. In many ways, its typical.
When exactly did Federal Street in Camden New Jersey go under? In the 1960′s Camden lost 12.2% of it’s population, in the 1970′s another 17.2% dropped away. And when last I visited, the place was as desolate a far eastern outpost of the Rust Belt as anyone could imagine.Camden has been abandoned by any meaningful policy direction for nearly 50 years now.
Sun Belt cities – now losing population too – are all designed without Main Streets – so no worries there.
But the idea that suddenly Main Street has problems and that they are ever, ever, ever going to recover from the Mexican/Republican style government that killed them is sheer fantasy. Not to say Mexicans generally compare to Republicans, but Mexican Corruption and Republican Government dependence and manipulation certainly does compare rather favorably. Not to let Obama off the hook too easy though…
The comparison just keeps coming up. In the Santa Fe Reporter:
…the US has over the past several decades developed inequalities usually found only in poor countries with autocratic governments.
Thanks for looking into that, Geithner. And look at this. Economist Michael Hudson at Online Journal via Naked Capitalism:
“You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards, it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite.
So what does that have to do with Camden, New Jersey ? Much less with Mexico ?
Well one of the ways that Mexicans survive economic downturns is simply by keeping a good part of their economy informal. Is that neo-feudal ? Not exactly, but it is like Pre-Progressive capitalism anyway. Maybe the only thing we can do if Obama doesn’t get it – which he apparently doesn’t.
What I’m writing will horrify any middle class Mexican as much any NorteAmericano, but there is something to be said for locally owned and operated small businesses – the kind that aren’t looking to grow into capital extractive franchises, but that are looking to hold onto and maintain low profit margins and sustainable, moderate growth over the long-term. Apparently that’s also the kind the Obama administration doesn’t care much about. See the NO NEW JOB GROWTH FOR SMALL BUSINESSES story on Bloomberg.com.
Here’s Federal Street from 2 years ago. The sort of story that right wingers everywhere hate to read. A revitalized neighborhood with locally owned and operated independent businesses is thriving. And two years later, these little legally operated puestos and locales are still going strong.
Those shoppers have turned the compact shopping district into Camden’s only thriving commercial corridor, according to Raymond Lamboy of the Latin American Economic Development Association. And they have boosted a grassroots redevelopment effort as the city struggles to attract major employers.
Undoubtedly – the major employers will be able to hire people for free, paid for by the state of New Jersey and the feds. Thanks a lot.
Once fat lazy corporate-welfare Americans learn something about free-enterprise, we can get on with pushing the USA into something like an economy that isn’t quite so susceptible to the kind of Wall Street dream economics of the past 30 some years – the kind that led the US into this mess in the first place. And that means going back to Mama Lucinda’s Tienda instead of Walmart, back to Pedro’s Paleta’s instead of Haagen Daz, and probably to a lot of other interesting changes. The rust belt, including Camden, still looks more like Mexico – at least economically – than does any part of California or Texas – let’s watch if the trend isn’t everywhere soon.
