This is not a diary about mental health, but it might well be. It’s not even about kids, though it really is, under the surface.
If you live in Detroit, as I do, shopping is a commute. Two trips, one yesterday, one last week, made me think a lot about what’s happening in this economy.I decided to share what I saw.
Yesterday. My husband and I walked through a mall in the Detroit area, a newer one, built in an area swollen with new homes between Detroit and Ann Arbor. There is a big restaurant just inside one entrance. It looks like something out of a cheesy 60’s apocalyptic movie: Christmas decorations are still up; dead, dried up plants left in their jardinieres; salt and sugar on the tables; stacks of napkins and silverware are on the bar. All covered with a thick layer of dust.
I can imagine a fax coming in that last day: We are declaring bankruptcy. Close at once.
Many store fronts are closed. Others are empty, or covered with a “coming soon” sign. The largest group of people in the mall are older mall-walkers, and this is a weekend evening, when shoppers are usually filling area malls. There had been two anchoring department stores. One is still going, but the other has closed. That store is dead, along with all of its kind. The middle of the mall is filling with small stands, the kind which in NYC would be shopping carts. At one end, 150 chairs are lined up and a sign advertises Singer X, Country Music Star, will be entertaining there soon. As a sometime follower of country music, I have never heard of this person.
The mall itself reminded us of a tiny mall we once frequented in Muscatine, Iowa. The town was a pretty little spot for tourism, but when riverboat gambling came in, many small local business were driven out of business. And then the gambling left. The little town (and its mall), had not recovered after 5 years, might never do so.
Right now, Michigan seems like that.
Last week. I was buying food at a mega-store, and saw small groups of shoppers huddled and talking. They were here and there in the store as I pushed my cart around, not what I usually see on a Saturday afternoon shopping trip, my least favorite time to buy groceries. Snatches of conversation leaked out:
“They’re going to declare bankruptcy. . . this may be our last big shopping trip before the pink slip. . . all of our retirement is in their stock. . .pension protection? XXXXit!. . .not with bankruptcy.”
The last time I saw people huddled and talking in stores was on 9/11. Were they talking about Dana Corp? (Dana is our latest bankruptcy, see KlatooBaradaNikto’s diary)? Could be. Every second or third business here in SE Michigan is tied to the auto industry.
I don’t know what is going to happen in this state, but it is a harbinger of things to come across the country.
I think your observations are true of many places in our country and soon will be true of many more. I notice every trip to the grocery, which I try to keep to no more than once every 10 days or more, is more expensive than the previous one. An item that was 2.89 3 months ago became 3.29, and is now (6 days ago) 4.49. Produce, with the exception of bananas has become ridiculously priced. What was 1.00 a pound last season is now 1.99 or even 2.99 a pound. And much of the produce looks awful too. No more bright, clear colored oranges, lemons and limes. Now they are battered looking with uneven colors.
Some of these prices are probably prompted by the higher gasoline prices. . . so we pay at least twice for those astronomical profits the oil companies are rolling in, once for the gas in our personal vehicles and again for the increased costs of transporting goods. Our local waste disposal service now charges a $5.00 gas surcharge.
Wages have leveled or decreased and those on fixed incomes are becoming very creative about how they choose to spend their money.
Since Ronny Ray-gun’s reign I have been asking what is our country going to do when NO ONE can afford anything? It seems to be much worse now than it was then. I am very doubtful that the HAVE’S will want to fund and run the shelters and soup kitchens. Very interesting times. It does make one very grateful for all that you do have at the moment.
With milk at $4.00 a gallon and most cereal over $3.00 a box even breakfast is expensive. I remember not too long ago being able to get 3 boxes of mac & cheese for a buck, now it’s 1.29 for one box.
I was talking to family members in Cleveland and they said there are stores closing everywhere and tons of houses on the market.
Yes, I’ve heard that Cleveland has many of the same difficulties as Detroit – only Clevenland handled its earlier problems somewhat better than Detroit did.
Nevertheless, prices seem to keep rising, and while gas is part of that, I also think other forces are at work there, too. Ordinary things are subsidized so unevenly: milk, sugar, grain products. We practically live on cereal when we get busy, and it isn’t cheap anymore.
Thanks for your comments, Shirlstars. I agree that things are tightening down, quite seriously. Here in the inner city, where poverty is entrenched and long-standing, we see more of it everyday. The fence tops are disappearing again, along with anything metal that isn’t welded down: off to the scrap heap for whatever few pennies they are worth. It’s a sign that we didn’t think much about until we moved here 13 years ago.
For sale signs are popping up everywhere. My poor students are dropping out to “save money until they can pay for a semester”. There are a lot of them in the urban university where I teach. With Pell grants shrinking, I know that many will not return, and I am greatly saddened. Education is the best way out, and it is being closed off. Our state legislature shifted a scholarship for any kid whose family had been on welfare before the kid was 12 (and if the kid got accepted in college), to a “scores high on the state graduation exam”. Guess who scores high: kids from the wealthier suburbs. Money shifted from poor to richer.
A public housing project near the school I work at, a nice-looking, well-maintained place that has been a good place for children, is being taken over by a drug gang. Shootings are frequent there now, and only a few months ago they were unknown in that neighborhood. The program that used to take inner city kids out to the country to camp is over – funds no longer available.
Our food banks and shelters have been running at capacity for years now, and are beginning to shut down for lack of funding. It really is true, as the Chronicle of Philanthropy said long ago – (I have no link to their article): the wealthy donors give less during good times for them; the poor give more. But that, of course, won’t begin to make up for what is needed.
I hear you Kidspeak. There is no money for the people because our gov’t refuses to give up the notion of being an empire.
History has shown us that there are two ways for an empire to fall: one way includes a little bloodshed, but a more conscience choice to pull out of Empire (I think that this is the way the British Empire fell – some blood and some decisions) or a total collapse of the society. In some ways, this is what happened to Russia.
Me thinks that we are headed for the latter type of fall.
And people are getting nastier too. All of this re: the economy is definitely getting to them. Everyone that I know is laid off, has been laid off, is worried about being laid off, or is working 2 jobs just to get by. Said it before and I’ll say it again, something’s got to give.
Yes, that’s certainly true. Michigan’s economy has tanked, and is just sinking to the bottom. If GM goes under, the entire country will feel it terribly. Yet the auto companies continue to feature big, gas-guzzling humongas. Ford is trying to change, but change is slow, and contrary to local entrenchment. They need to “outsource their attitudes” to other places across the country, where they aren’t selling their products to their own employees, who are having to buy what they are building. They might get a different perspective.
I think what’s going to give, what’s already “giving” is what’s become the “middle class style” of living, however that is defined. If that means big TVs and multiple TVs, large cable bill, multiple vehicles, new houses with 3 car garages, lots of new goodies every year, it will mean stepping back from that. Many have already done without those things in particular, but a lot of people will have to go back to living more like their parents or grandparents in housing and income and worldly goods. That will be very very difficult, and impossible for many.
I’ve been treasuring my father and grandmother’s written notes and cooking recipes and books – they are among the best guideposts for a simpler life that I have in my possession. I’m already using them, and I expect I’ll need them more very shortly.
I think what’s going to give, what’s already “giving” is what’s become the “middle class style” of living, however that is defined. If that means big TVs and multiple TVs, large cable bill, multiple vehicles, new houses with 3 car garages, lots of new goodies every year, it will mean stepping back from that.
And the thing is, that a hell of a lot of people don’t want to. Rather, they perceive themselves as being “entitled” to a high standard of living, as opposed to making choices.
For me, the choices are simple–I’d rather have the net than cable, my car is not the greatest, but it gets me around, I prefer to live in an apartment, mealwise, I eat what I enjoy and can do wonders on a tight budget. I remember, once I was at the store, by the seafood counter–treating myself. A woman and her son (maybe 5-6 years old) were there and the kid was having a tantrum because he wanted crab legs for dinner!
Who feeds a kid that age crab legs?
Obviously,someone with more money than sense.
I hate to be a smartass-but this has been coming for a long,long time.
In 1978- when it became obvious,Jimmy Carter said so,and he was reviled.Those were the days of chloroflourocarbon scares and wearing sweaters,and turning down the thermostat.And for a short time,there was an oil glut,and all was well,or so many people thought.This led to a sense of entitlement and also a damn lot of profligacy. I see it every day.
Now,I am a child of depression era parents,who never,ever took anything for granted and I am sorry to see that so many people have lost any sense of proportion.I once took my sister to task for her insistance that she ‘needed’ that monster SUV because it MIGHT snow,–in Virginia–ya right.
Sometime in the 70’s, I read a book called ‘Diet for a Small Planet’ which really put it all in perspective-the waste that we all have taken advantage of. Then in the late eighties,hub and I moved back to PA to take care of four (count em!) elderly relatives.
While we were there,we witnessed an ENTIRE steel mill dismantled and shipped off to China. Writing on the wall indeed.
The ‘middle class American lifestyle’ has always been a pipedream,and a very short-lived one at that. When the dream is over,then there is the withdrawal to deal with.
Am I being preachy? Yes,I am. Am I being realistic? Yes, that too.
I have been trying,trying,trying to warn people of this for 20 fucking years.Am I happy about it ? NO.
But all those TV appeals about the starving children in
(insert country here),were and are,a harbinger. What made us think we were immune?
We are at the end of the Age of Hydrocarbon Man,as I think Jeremy Rifkin,called it.Harsh,yes,true?also ,yes.
‘needed’ that monster SUV because it MIGHT snow,–in Virginia—-ya right.
Being from MI and having been in the UP (upper peninsula in winter), that always cracks me up. There is no big mystery to driving in snow–just drive slower!!! (And if you drive a stick, downshift when necessary.)
The last winter I was in the UP, I was driving an older front wheel drive compact car (a stick). Drove around in a blizzard and didn’t get stuck once!
And the other thing is that, after warmer weather, people “forget” how to drive in the snow–and don’t slow down like they should. Seriously, I won’t drive the first couple days after a snowfall–too many accidents because people drive like idiots.
Remember a friend of mine talking about driving thru snow (in Kentucky?) on the way to Florida. Absolutely no traffic; she just kept on going and thought nothing of it.
Last year my bookgroup read “Into the Forest” by Jean Hegland. Its about two sisters who have to survive in the forest after the US economy completely collapses. The author never describes how/why the collapse happens. At first, I just thought it was an interesting novel. Lately I’ve been thinking about it a lot.