Posted on 07/20/2008 5:11:56 AM PDT by shrinkermd
The tenets of suburban life are the oxygen in the economic bloodstream, and the nation is suffering hypoxia. The reason a lot of folks think we're just getting warmed up on an economic swoon is that the global economy has neatly garroted all the drivers that make suburbs flourish.
...America in the early 2000s was a frothy brew of low inflation and cheap houses financed by what we'd later find out were mortgages handed out like those little dum-dum lollipops at the dentist; everybody got one no matter how bad their teeth. Nothing percolates GDP like the need to fill the screaming maw of a new home with stainless steel appliances, memory foam beds and body sculpting equipment that gathers dust while owners horf down cheese fries at TGIFridays.
To transport those consumer goods from Sam's Club, new homeowners found that cheap fuel allowed a fleet of trucks and SUVs. Their viral proliferation helped create the "virtuous" circle of the profits that flowed up and down Wall Street. The big trucks were some of Detroit's most-profitable autos. We fought terrorism with consumer spending and declared victory.
Except today the suburbs have a sort of fiscal staph infection. The nation's middle class can no longer live in a 3,500-square-foot home and drive a Chevy Yukon 30 miles to work and back each day, fork down a $20 strip steak twice a week at Outback and still make the monthly nut. What leaves that party first is the steak, then the truck, then the house, then the color from the face of the Fed chairman.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Don't count on any drill programs while they are in charge.
This is a hateful liberal’s wet dream.
They want everyone to live in the confines of the scummy cities. More control that way.
Also more misery that way. The left loves widespread misery, for many reasons.
It’s a fantasy that city dwellers consume less energy than suburbanites. Most suburbanites work relatively near home, many urbanites have long, subsidized commutes.
Most commuters who travel by car as opposed to subsized rail, already use inexpensive four bangers. The Yukons are driven by soccer moms to travel a few miles around town and on occasional vacations. They are still vastly cheaper for vacations than air travel. The urban dwellers use as much fuel flying off on their Carribean vacations as a commuter uses in two monthes.
This is drivel made up from whole cloth woven at a cocktail party.
Somehow I don’t see all that tsunami of humanity that rides the trains into NYC suddenly forsaking the trains for an overpriced studio apartment up the street from Battery Park.
Sounds like somebody secretly wishes they could have a Yukon and backyard pool of their own.
Liberals are the most jealous people on Earth.
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You notice how the article enumerates all the downsides of 'suburbia' but doesn't mention the family lifestyle tradeoff in between the middle class suburbs and upper-class DINK city living:
Such as Big Box Discount shopping -vs- High price, daily trip-to-grocery/pantry (Costco vs corner boutique grocer)
In any case, if gas prices etc make suburbia more expensive to maintain, then the market will level the field and make the house values and taxes cheaper, and city dwellings higher and harder to get. Middle class people in cities will be forced back out into cheaper digs if there really is an influx.
Finally, like you said, the article doesn't even really claim that city-living and walking to stores is more efficient. The author admits that NYC is well suited to rail commuting....where people have suburban lifestyles, houses, and drive to big box retail!
Whatever his intent, he’s not wrong. Cheap money from the political panderers led people to live above their heads.
He doesn’t know New York as well as he thinks. Their are no ‘Far Rockaways.’ The Rockaways comprise a peninsula with Far Rockaway (furthest east) at its base. There is subway service through most of this narrow peninsula.
Now it's been overbuilt and over-run by people who used to live much closer to Chicago, and they brought a lot of traffic, an increase in crime and drug use, and sudden change in election results from 90-10% Republican to 60-40.
If the liberals move back to the city, then we would just have to worry about the illegals moving into the abandoned McMansions. As long as they can't vote, we would come out ahead.
btt
“Liberal Democrats really hate those in the suburbs, exurbs and rural areas. They welcome gasoline price increases as an economic weapon. “
Well then the joke’s on them. I’m *not* moving to town, much less “the big city” and neither are any of my neighbors. I may end up having to spend all my cash money on gasoline and taxes, but I won’t be totally dependent on others for my food, heat, and the clothes on my back. ;)
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Ostego and Chenango counties? Closing in on NY's "toniest burbs"? These two counties are too far away and too thinly populated to have any impact on NYC area in any way. BIIIIG STREEEETCH for the writer trying to make a point.
As for Far Rockaway....you get there by subway...it is in Queens, not the 'burbs.
Never going to happen in New York.
Even with the cost of gas, you get twice the lifestyle for your dollar in the suburbs. For families who make $250,000 that means tough choices (small apartment or big house, suburban public schools vs. $30k a year private schools, a second car and a commuter train pass vs. taxis). For families who make $100,000 a year, it’s quite literally no choice at all.
The only way that this could change is if New York City were to clean up the ghettos and create some mechanism so that more than a small lucky fraction of middle class people could have a good quality public school for their kids. If Upper Manhattan and most of Brooklyn became livable by the standards of middle class people, than that might really make a big, big change.
Then there will be more sheep for the “natives” to feed on.
“shudder”
That was a creepy analogy indeed. I have nothing against city life per se, but it isn’t for me. I like to visit, and that is about it.
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