tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post9063581067431706511..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: The Sad Tale of JanesvilleJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-52261249766798771312017-07-12T13:16:22.797-04:002017-07-12T13:16:22.797-04:00Tthis sounds like a community that relied way too ...Tthis sounds like a community that relied way too heavily on a single source of incomes, which is something we've seen over and over again in history.<br /><br />Fishing, logging, mining communities... it happens again and again. An industry which cannot be sustained moves in, workers follow, they make good money, they settle down to start families, the industry dries up in that particular location and moves on, and the firmly entrenched workers suddenly have no means to support themselves anymore.<br /><br />In many cases, the workers grow accustomed to having high incomes, and begin spending more of that money that they probably should. They develop an expectation of a level of affluence beyond anyone'sability to sustain once the industry they work in inevitable moves on. They buy houses, they have children, they settle in permanently for the rest of their lives, not realizing that their entire lifestyle is tenuous. In their minds, the reward for their hand work doing awful jobs is supposed to be wealth and stability, and when those both inevitably disappear, they suddenly feel lost and robbed.<br /><br />There are strong parallels to aspiring actors in Hollywood landing their first high paying jobs, and to up and coming musicians signing on to record labels. You hear all sorts of stories about people who work themselves into the ground because they're being offered very attractive wages, but they fail to realize those wages won't always be there for them, and they don't save and carefully manage their money, but rather spend it almost as fast as they can earn it.<br /><br />The problem is one of overreliance on the goose that lays the golden egg, and a lack of diversification and planning for the future. Janesville propped itself up on a crutch, and never gave thought to how it would limp along once that crutch inevitably snapped in half.<br /><br />Barring some great revelation on how to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the first place, I believe the only solution is government intervention after the fact. Retraining is definitely a step in the right direction, but there also needs to be a system of relocation. The government needs to be willing to help these people move elsewhere, to follow the jobs.<br /><br />When a mine dries up, the mine companies leave town, because why wouldn't they? Realistically, shouldn't the mine workers leave too? And when advances in technology render a particular job or even and entire industry obsolete, the corporations manage to adapt and move on to new field. Shouldn't their employees do the same?<br /><br />We need to have a system in place to deal with these problems. Those houses no one can manage to sell because they're in a now-deceased boom town? The government either needs to prevent people from building them and wasting their money on buying them, or they need to help people liquidate them after the fact.<br /><br />Maybe we need to put floors or ceiling on the sale values of homes in boom towns, based on conservative government estimates of the longterm viability of the local economy. Because the actual people working in the mines and factories have to live <i>somewhere</i>, leaving it in private hands only seems to encourage exploitation and ripping people off. When the boom is happening, the demand for housing is high, and people end up paying through the nose for a place to live. When the boom ends, the demand plummets, and the houses are suddenly worthless. It's untenable.<br /><br />Alternatively, maybe the government should just buy back the houses for some reasonable percentage of their sale price.<br /><br />The point is, the boom and bust cycles we keep seeing need to have some sort of organized response designed to help the people caught in between. They need to not only be retrained, but relocated and reemployed. And we probably should do more in the way of preventative measures, educating people about the dangers of settling down to start a life when you work in a business without longterm prospects for stability and economic viability.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com