• Neoliberalism has basically cannibalized our Heartland and Rural America!

  • Dec 18 2021
  • Length: 6 mins
  • Podcast

Neoliberalism has basically cannibalized our Heartland and Rural America!

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  • The Script Neoliberalism has badly damaged the economy in half of America in order to make a very small percentage of Americans much better off than they once were. Neoliberalism has basically cannibalized our Heartland and rural economy in order to concentrate our economy into a couple dozen hot desirable urban areas and several dozen upscale resort towns. Hot desirable high tech urban areas are doing fairly well though rapidly rising housing costs there are making it impossible for many young people to buy homes without lots of down-payment assistance. High rapidly-rising housing costs are also driving low-income and even lower-middle-income residents out of high-cost cities and resort towns. Metro-Denver where my wife and I live is a good example. Here our non-tipped minimum wage is $12.32/hour and our tipped minimum is $9.30/hour. Both rates will rise in January by 2.5%. Our median household income is $87K. However, our median home sales price has risen to $704K and our median rent to $1825/month. Our current jobless rate is only 4.6%. Retail price inflation here in housing, healthcare, grocery costs, and utility bills is up by about 40% since 2018. Housing cost here is up by close to double since 2012 and by 550% since 1991. (St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's MSPUS chart). In 1991 the Federal non-tipped minimum wage was $4.25/hour. Healthcare costs here including the rise in out-of-pocket costs is up by close to triple since 2014 and by close to 1000% since 2000. Utility costs and numerous other costs are up by 250% since 2000 also. In 2000 the Federal minimum wage was $5.25/hour. I can see why older married homeowners are much more supportive of Biden than younger mainly renters are. Young people have never seen the kind of inflation we are seeing now even though inflation was in the 6-7% annual range from 1987-1991 and even higher in the 1970s. Rents and home prices are skyrocketing in most of America as new housing construction has greatly lagged demand in most of America. A recent real estate industry study found that new housing construction has been about 5 million units less than demand since 2000. Our hottest most-desirable cities and towns are out of land and nothing short of declaring eminent domain over entire suburbs of single-family housing, some of it nearly new, will fix the problem in our most-desirable urban areas, which also have our highest median incomes. Cost-driven outmigration from high-cost cities is driving housing and other living costs up in nearby lower-cost cities too. There are several articles in Kansas City media, the Kansas City Star and others, going back several years, decrying the Denverization of Kansas City. Outmigration from our even higher-cost West Coast cities has been driving home prices up in Boise, Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Portland, and Salt Lake City too. There are still bargain cities in our Heartland such as most Southern Great Lakes cities, or many cities in the Deep South, but wages there are a lot lower too. Our older son lives in Valdosta, GA, where the median home sales price was $133K just a year ago, but don't plan on making more than $40K to $50K there either. Tallahassee is almost as affordable. In Metro-Detroit and the Cleveland, OH area there is plenty of affordable housing but both cities suffer high violent crime rates and a paucity of good-paying employment too. Numerous other Southern Great Lakes cities are affordable too. Obviously with Red Joe Manchin and his sidekick from Arizona relentlessly blocking the Democrat agenda on-behalf of Republicans Joe Biden's agenda is going nowhere. It is too bad that liberals and progressives didn't hold out on passing the infrastructure bill until the Build Back Better Act passed, as now Red Joe has reneged on his tacit agreement to the BBB Act before the infrastructure bill passed. Lots of average Americans are hurting but Red Joe like Republicans only cares about rich Americans and about maintaining his coal-fueled lifestyle. Likely absolutely no change is possible on climate change policy with Red Joe blocking every Democrat initiative. So we are in a stalemate hoping to break the logjam in the 2022 election. Republicans are going to vote in force so Democrats had better be ready to vote as close as possible to 100% of the electorate too. We really need at least 55 votes in the US Senate and control of the US House to have any chance of overcoming Red Joe and the other Blue Dogs and passing any of the Democrat agenda. Otherwise, we are going to lose our democracy to the Republican goal of a brutal right-wing rich makes right faux-Christian police and prison state banana republic dictatorship that liberals and progressives should seriously consider migrating away from. Mark Richardson- House of Public Discourse Member  

     
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