--Stark socio-economic contrasts between Lake Oswego HS and Benson Tech HS, as shown through an examination of their respective football programs. The bottom line: Lake Oswego is a primarily white, upper-middle to upper-class suburb, and has a strong tax base with which to support its school district. Benson Tech has a more racially-diverse student body drawn primarily from inner-eastside Portland, with poorer neighborhoods and many more single-parent households. (One additional note that wasn't mentioned in the paper: Benson, being an official "magnet" high school, has no neighborhood middle school from which to draw students or a residential tax base, making a difficult situation harder still.)
--Tektronix, long a fixture in Oregon's high-tech employment sector, was sold last year. An article examining the current state of the company looks at the culture of the new owners (basically, that leaner and meaner makes for a stronger bottom line), and the job losses that have resulted from the company's sale. Last week, another 150 people lost their jobs in a bloodletting that doesn't look like it will end anytime soon.
--In the New York Times: an article about growing food insecurity, and the new demographic of people who are darkening the doorways of the nation's food banks for the first time. Many are employed but not earning enough money due to cutbacks in hours. Others worked in industries that have seen outright collapse (i.e., construction), or were employed by large retail chains that have filed for bankruptcy and laid everyone off. There has not been any job growth in forever, and now millions of people are facing the real possibility of hunger and homelessness, not only in New York but across the country.
**********************************
I feel the weight of the economic reality sitting very heavily on my shoulders. As the lead purchaser for a bicycle retailer, I am watching our sales slump, even as people all around me insist that bike sales will never go as flat as the rest of the consumer-driven economy: "When it gets too expensive to drive, more people will start riding bicycles!" is the mantra I've heard all summer and fall.
Well, maybe. And maybe not. Driving isn't yet expensive enough -- or, frankly, inconvenient enough -- for a critical mass of people to make that change. Further, when the automobile industry is the largest manufacturing employer in the United States, the government can't NOT bail out the automakers. So the car culture, sick as it is, still has a staggering influence on the rest of the nation's economy.
How expensive will the car-centric lifestyle have to become for the paradigm shift to take place? When living in one's car becomes more expensive -- and harder -- than giving up that car in order to keep the apartment or house. Meanwhile, there is perhaps SOME additional "security" in working in the bike industry in Portland, but that doesn't yet translate to the rest of the country. All the bike shops in Portland cannot order enough fenders, bags and other accessories to offset the slump in sales to shops in other cities hit harder by the recession.
I have given a lot of thought over the last couple of years to just how dependent our world is on rabid consumerism. It is beginning to really upset me. Such an economy cannot be sustainable forever; one day the bill will come due and things will have to change. Economies of scale will have to get much smaller and we will have to make more of what we need to live right here at home. I'm not talking about boutique items, like craft-built bike frames and custom shoes; I'm talking about relearning the arts of conservation, reusing, repairing and scavenging, and of living on a much simpler scale that doesn't depend so much upon retail. I'm not ready to throw my lot in with the Peak Oil crowd; I don't think things will crash quite that hard or that fast. But I do think that change is coming, has to come, eventually. I think we will see some of it in this lifetime. I worry about that change affecting my ability to keep body and soul together.
Today is a truly worrisome day. I hope tomorrow will bring some fresh perspective to soften the worldview a bit.
--Stark socio-economic contrasts between Lake Oswego HS and Benson Tech HS, as shown through an examination of their respective football programs. The bottom line: Lake Oswego is a primarily white, upper-middle to upper-class suburb, and has a strong tax base with which to support its school district. Benson Tech has a more racially-diverse student body drawn primarily from inner-eastside Portland, with poorer neighborhoods and many more single-parent households. (One additional note that wasn't mentioned in the paper: Benson, being an official "magnet" high school, has no neighborhood middle school from which to draw students or a residential tax base, making a difficult situation harder still.)
--Tektronix, long a fixture in Oregon's high-tech employment sector, was sold last year. An article examining the current state of the company looks at the culture of the new owners (basically, that leaner and meaner makes for a stronger bottom line), and the job losses that have resulted from the company's sale. Last week, another 150 people lost their jobs in a bloodletting that doesn't look like it will end anytime soon.
--In the New York Times: an article about growing food insecurity, and the new demographic of people who are darkening the doorways of the nation's food banks for the first time. Many are employed but not earning enough money due to cutbacks in hours. Others worked in industries that have seen outright collapse (i.e., construction), or were employed by large retail chains that have filed for bankruptcy and laid everyone off. There has not been any job growth in forever, and now millions of people are facing the real possibility of hunger and homelessness, not only in New York but across the country.
**********************************
I feel the weight of the economic reality sitting very heavily on my shoulders. As the lead purchaser for a bicycle retailer, I am watching our sales slump, even as people all around me insist that bike sales will never go as flat as the rest of the consumer-driven economy: "When it gets too expensive to drive, more people will start riding bicycles!" is the mantra I've heard all summer and fall.
Well, maybe. And maybe not. Driving isn't yet expensive enough -- or, frankly, inconvenient enough -- for a critical mass of people to make that change. Further, when the automobile industry is the largest manufacturing employer in the United States, the government can't NOT bail out the automakers. So the car culture, sick as it is, still has a staggering influence on the rest of the nation's economy.
How expensive will the car-centric lifestyle have to become for the paradigm shift to take place? When living in one's car becomes more expensive -- and harder -- than giving up that car in order to keep the apartment or house. Meanwhile, there is perhaps SOME additional "security" in working in the bike industry in Portland, but that doesn't yet translate to the rest of the country. All the bike shops in Portland cannot order enough fenders, bags and other accessories to offset the slump in sales to shops in other cities hit harder by the recession.
I have given a lot of thought over the last couple of years to just how dependent our world is on rabid consumerism. It is beginning to really upset me. Such an economy cannot be sustainable forever; one day the bill will come due and things will have to change. Economies of scale will have to get much smaller and we will have to make more of what we need to live right here at home. I'm not talking about boutique items, like craft-built bike frames and custom shoes; I'm talking about relearning the arts of conservation, reusing, repairing and scavenging, and of living on a much simpler scale that doesn't depend so much upon retail. I'm not ready to throw my lot in with the Peak Oil crowd; I don't think things will crash quite that hard or that fast. But I do think that change is coming, has to come, eventually. I think we will see some of it in this lifetime. I worry about that change affecting my ability to keep body and soul together.
Today is a truly worrisome day.
I hope tomorrow will bring some fresh perspective to soften the worldview a bit.