I heard that new housing starts are down.
That’s supposed to be bad news.
But then I think of those crappy tract homes next to the freeways east of Pomona which put working-class families "underwater" in the subprime scam.
In an era of stagnant wages, workers hoped to score in the real estate market, so they tolerated freeway noise in their new neighborhoods and long commutes to their jobs. When their home values tanked, many slid away in the middle of the night.
That’s my association to new housing starts.
Same deal with "consumer spending". Families piling up credit card debt, buying Chinese imports at big box retailers.
With the decline of domestic manufacturing (once upon a time a toaster bought in Seattle was made in Bridgeport, Connecticut), I don’t fully understand how shopping at Best Buy will lift our economy out of its funk.
If Americans spend more money at the mall, stores will bring on sales help and shipping, ground transportation and warehousing will see an upward blip. But the linchpin of that job growth cycle - heavy industry and manufacturing - has been, as they say "off shored."
There are other contradictions that I can’t seem to reconcile.
Here’s one:
Democrats are expected to defend "government."
O.K. I’ll do that. I can argue for socialized - rather than privatized - programs and action. The problem is government’s complicity with corporate malfeasance and its other nasty tendencies which alarm Americans on the left, right and center.
Then, of course, there’s the November election.
We’ll be out there selling the accomplishments of this white house and congress.
Mostly, though, we’ll be trying to scare voters away from the big, bad republicans.
This isn’t what we had in mind two years ago, but why go there now.
Anyway, I’m used to contradictions and disappointments.
Don't forget, I’ve been in the American Labor Movement for the past 25 years.