trawling today's times: economy and environment

[kenllama]

Today's New York Times made for some interesting reading (which made up for a trés lame crossword puzzle, even by Monday standards.)

Of particular note:

• Detroit Churches Pray for God's 'Bailout' -- I kid you not: a Pentacostal church in Detroit with gospel singers and SUV's on the altar, praying (presumably to got to intervene so) that the

Comments

[plantyhamchuk]

WOW. The Detroit story is totally fascinating. Unpacking the various symbolic interpretations of the SUV in America would make for a pretty religious studies paper.

[atothek]

If we're manufacturing less, doesn't that mean we're consuming less ... and doesn't that mean we're producing less waste ... and doesn't THAT mean that we will soon be facing a *shortfall* of recyclable materials, thus balancing out the whole system and driving prices back up?

[plantyhamchuk]

edit - I have no idea what I was trying to say

[kenllama]

Here's my guess:

I suspect that right now we're at a turning point: for the last many years, we've been consuming like mad, so there will probably be a period of stuff-senescence in which we're still producing lots of trash (from this year's purchases and last-years'-purchases-turned-plannàdly obsolescent). I suspect we'll face the shortfall starting around the time that manufacturing really kicks into high gear again -- depending on how soon that happens, it may bring balance or it may bring whiplash.

It makes me think that we need a revised recycling infrastructure -- one that allows for cleanly archiving low-demand items now so that they're inexpensively handy when demand picks up. The cycles of the marketplace are probably inherently waste-ridden when left to their own devices.

[jtglover]

This was a fundamentally depressing post. I await with eagerness the arrival of Keanu Reeves to inform the world that humans will be wiped out, so that the healing process can begin.

[blue_sky_48220]

I kid you not: a Pentecostal church in Detroit with gospel singers and SUV's on the altar, praying (presumably to got to intervene so) that the government would save the auto industry with a big bailout. A study released today place the unemployment rate in the City of Detroit at just north of 20%, the highest for any major city in the nation. And that's with the Detroit Three still in business. (Just for comparison, experts estimate that the unemployment rate was just shy of 25% during the Great Depression.) Is it any wonder that people are praying for help? Yes, it's crass to have an SUV on the altar. Yes, Detroit should have known better than to bet the future on big, gas-guzzling trucks. And New Orleans should have built better damns, and they should have evacuated everyone when Katrina was on the way. Sometimes, people need to be rescued from consequences of their own actions

[kenllama]

All of the problems we're facing right now: the economy as a whole, the war in Iraq, the shape of the auto industry and the food industries are such intractable messes that it's hard to figure out where to start on fixing them. One thing that I think they share, though, is an underlying reliance on Adam Smith's "invisible hand of the market

Rescue plan, part 1

[blue_sky_48220]

What employment can we find for a fifth of the city's population?

Exactly. Many of my clients are out of work. Am I supposed to tell them, "Of course you're out of work. Everyone's out of work." There are no referrals, and no amount of career training will help.

any other approaches that have particularly caught your eye?Yes. I dislike the idea of appealing to foreign car companies, because I think that car companies are not going to help in the long-term. We need to diversify this area's economic base. In terms of saving the American auto manufactures, I have a whole lot of ideas. Here are a few

Re: Rescue plan, part 1

[kenllama]

::If I were one of the Domestic Three, I'd offer a $5 million prize for anyone who can design a car that gets 75-100 miles a gallon, seats four, has power everything and air conditioning.::

Except the last two conditions (power everything and A/C) this prize exists in the form of the Automotive X Prize. $7.5 million for a car that "must seat 4 people, have 10 cubic feet (0.28 m3) of storage room, accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in 12 seconds, be able to drive 200 miles (320 km), achieve a speed of 100 mph (160 km/h), and have a fuel economy of 100 mpg."

The must-go-200-miles criterion seems pretty weak to me...