Kunstler: "The Dukes of Hazard show is now drawing to a close."

[JohnyCanuck]

A Harsh Season

SNIP

Out there in the cul-de-sacs and the strip malls, people are months behind in their mortgage payments, maxed out on their plastic, handing over their car keys to the lien-holders, and feeding their kids Spam fillets. Truckers get paid less for their loads than the cost of transporting the load. The airlines have financial cancer and will be dead in eighteen months. Container ship costs are heading out-of-sight. Municipalities are going broke. A weekend flood just destroyed part of the Midwest corn crop. And, of course, oil prices took a jagged turn upward last Friday en route to their next stop: $150-a-barrel.

The New York Times reported Monday that rural Americans are being hit hardest by the rise in gasoline prices. Duh. It's worst, naturally, in the big southern states where wages are low and the distances are vast. There's a reason why Nascar is the second-biggest religion down there: the automobile rescued southerners from the tyranny of geography. Cheap gas allowed them to build a "new " economy based mainly on the construction of suburban sprawl. In the process it deified the pickup truck. Guess what? The rural South made a big mistake. The Dukes of Hazard show is now drawing to a close. They are about to take a turn back to being what they were before the Second World War: an agricultural backwater. God knows what will happen to asteroid belts of "production housing" and big box shopping outside the relatively tiny pre-automobile cores of places like Houston and Atlanta.

The New York Times made a particularly inane point in their lead business section story today (Rural U.S. Takes Worst Hit as Gas Tops $4 Average) saying:

...Sociologists and economists who study rural poverty say the gasoline crisis in the rural South, if it persists, could accelerate population loss and decrease the tax base in some areas as more people move closer to urban manufacturing jobs.

Is it possible, nobody informed the reporters (and editors!) that A.) America has already hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs; and B.) That much of the little manufacturing that remains is not located in any cities per se?

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/commentary_on_current_events/index.html

[glowing]

1. great last point..

my mom was saying.. some of the reason that we survived the dot com bubble bust was because there were still manufacturing to fall back on.. that manufacturing is gone today.. sent overseas by horrible trade agreements and from corporate greed... Its going to be a tough road and its going to be one that might take us backwards before we see relief in going forward.

[Brigid]

2. And it isn't just the South.

Thanks to Bush & Co., we're seeing economic earthquakes that make the ones of the '80's look like nothing.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. "as more people move closer to urban manufacturing jobs"

You mean the ones that have not YET been outsourced to other countries?

[Fovea]

4. It's not the 20th Century anymore.

Now we are in the 21st century, heading for the 19th.

[Winterblues]

5. Reap what you sow...

I hope they love Republican rule because this is the outcome of it...They are getting exactly what they voted for..We should see nothing but big smiles from all those Republicans...

[Beregond2]

6. True,

but let's not forget that those disastrous trade agreements have the name Clinton all over them.

[Brigid]

9. Yes indeed, but . . .

I honestly think Clinton was hoping these trade agreements would be good for the American worker. So was I, which is why I supported NAFTA at the time. Turns out Clinton and I were both wrong. :(

[dawgman]

11. I don't know how those agreements could ever have been

construed as good for the worker.

Good for the short term bottom line of the Corporations sure, but not for the worker.

[Terry in Austin]

10. Hey, c'mon about Big Dog

Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we've ever had!

[Winterblues]

14. Clinton signed a few bills I disagreed with, however

I don't blame the high price of gas on NAFTA, do you? I blame the current policies from this Administration. IMO we have the worst foreign policy in our history. Our Domestic policy is just as bad and our economy is proof of that. Remember under Clinton America experienced the "Greatest Economic Expansion in History" and immediately under this Administratiopn America experienced the Greatest Economic Turn-around in History...Blame Clinton all you like but the actual proof ios in the pudding.

[JCMach1]

7. Where exactly ARE these urban jobs they are talking about?

[Brigid]

8. Dunno . . .

But if anybody ever finds out, please let us know. I want one.

[shanti]

13. mickey d's

7-11, walmart...:shrug: we've morphed into a service society.

[nomorenomore08]

12. This guy again?

While I don't doubt that there's some truth to what he's saying, he comes off as such a smug bastard - comparing those who disagree with him to children, comparing Southerners to "The Dukes of Hazzard" - that I have to take him with a grain of salt.