Recession Will Not Hurt Billionaires--Perhaps They Welcome It

Why should billionaires worry about a plummeting stock market? If stock prices go down, billionaires can buy stocks cheap and massively increase their control and eventual profits.

 

Why should billionaires worry that tariffs will hurt farmers? The more independent farmers go out of business, the more land will be available for corporations to buy, giving them increased control over food supply and prices. 

When certain crypto "meme coins" came on the market, there was a rush to buy, Big Money cornering the market and sending the price soaring--after which the “smart” “investors” sold at the high price to the gullible hordes whose “investments” promptly plummeted.

 

A little recession? Billionaires will be able to weather it easily, knowing they will benefit from it in the long run. How about you?

A day later, I'm coming back to clarify. The big take-away here is not that billionaires are insulated from recession by their wealth. As a friend of mine says, that’s always been true. What’s more important to see is that engineering a recession, however much it hurts the general population, can be so greatly in the interest of billionaires that while the general population is continually distracted by a nonstop flood of non-monetary issues, the financial rug can be steadily pulled right out from under them by the billionaires.

Jobs OR Housing? – That Makes No Sense

 

About a month ago, a letter to the editor of the Leelanau Enterprise observed that the “Share the Bay” signs were a clever ploy on the part of the developer’s publicity campaign for the RV park/campground. I checked with Rachel Dean, the person I was pretty sure had come up with the slogan herself, in hopes she would write to the Enterprise to correct the wrong assumption, but she was simply amused that her idea had been taken -- mistaken, that is – as part of a commercial publicity campaign. 

 

The facts are these: Rachel came up with the slogan, ordered the signs, paid for them herself, and everyone who took a sign reimbursed her for it. It was a totally local, grassroots movement. 

 

Did the letter-writer make a “reasonable assumption”? That’s what he said in his defense when I stopped him on the sidewalk to give him the scoop, because I don’t like “misinformation” circulating in our community. Community, in fact, is the key issue as he sees it, and he finds the slogan, on the other side of the “Share the Bay” signs, “Build our community,” to be a wrongful use of the term. He says community means people who put down roots and commit to a place, not “transients” (his word). 

 

In the course of our brief conversation, I learned that the letter-writer thinks affordable housing would be a better use of the property in question. He says we need affordable housing for (his examples) “firefighters and teachers.” Well, county firefighters are all volunteer: they have other jobs, or they don’t live here. As for teachers, we won’t need teachers much longer if the school keeps shrinking, as it will continue to do without other kinds of jobs.

 

What I see, from having lived and run a business here for 28 years and having spent many a long, cold winter here (working a variety of part-time jobs over the years to pay my winter bookstore bills) is that Leelanau County’s economy has always been seasonal. Agriculture and tourism: that’s the basic economy. Because of farming and summer people and tourists, we have schools and libraries and retail and other businesses. And summer people and tourists provide jobs by keeping businesses in business. Even year-round jobs exist because the seasonal economy carries so many businesses through the calendar year.

 

How long would Northport have a grocery store without “transients”? (That’s a peculiar term to apply to tourists, anyway, isn’t it? And where do “summer people” fit into the equation?) Omena’s post office would have disappeared long ago, had it not been for the old Solley’s bookstore, and believe me, bookstores in these little seasonal villages – Northport, Leland, Suttons Bay, Glen Arbor -- only survive because summer business is good to us!

 

(A former landlord of mine told me years ago, “The key to a seasonal business is to keep it seasonal.” Lately I have begun taking what I call “seasonal retirement,” and at my age I make no apologies for that. My two younger sisters and most of my friends are fully retired. I’m not. And, as I’ve already said, I have spent many winters right here and know whereof I speak.)

 

One of the keys to a viable local community, it seems to me, is understanding its basic economy. Yes, we do need year-round local housing for workers, seasonal and otherwise, but we also need the jobs that seasonal visitors bring. Affordable housing without jobs isn’t going to have many takers. A Habitat house in Cherry Home for a woman whose job was in Traverse City couldn’t hold her long. Financially, it doesn’t work.

 

Another key is listening to what local people say they need, rather than coming in from the outside to tell them what’s good for them. Many of the supporters for the RV park/campground remember the old Timber Shores campground because they worked there, and some of their children worked there. They remember how much positive impact the campground had on the community they’ve lived in for two or three generations. 

 

I live out in the township, not in the village, and I’ll be far away when winter comes, but my bookstore is now launched into its 29^th year, and I can’t imagine moving it out of Northport. This is my home. I would not want to cast a deciding vote on the RV park/campground issue, and I am as concerned as anyone else that it be properly run, if it happens, to prevent any negative consequences for Grand Traverse Bay. Trying to force a choice between jobs and housing, though? That’s a non-starter. 

 

And if the choice were. Between a campground and condos, I’d vote for the campground any day of the week.

Let Him Go First

I had recorded in my journal last night that the president of the U.S., while numbers of coronavirus cases are still on the rise and we’re nowhere near peak yet, wants to “open up the economy … sooner rather than later,” and I noted that he is "an unstable personality, ruled by ego and impulse." The previous evening, when I had written on the same topic, I referred to “the Economy” sarcastically as “our American god.” As I wrote the words, though, I thought I was probably guilty of hyperbole. Americans do not actually worship “the Economy,” do they? 

Well, now it seems the lieutenant governor of Texas (I mean, wouldn’t you know this idea would come from Texas?), Dan Patrick, age 69, suggests that many grandparents — and he includes himself — would be willing to die in the pandemic so that their children and grandchildren can “keep the America that all America loves,” i.e., the America with the booming economy. Note that this would not be dying for a religious faith or a moral principle or to save a life. He is calling on older Americans to sacrifice their lives, if necessary, in order that the economy can get back to normal.

I too worry about the future for younger generations. I have for decades. But I am convinced that the longstanding economic and corporate rape of nature, including unscrupulous pollution and flagrant mining of water and soil, using everything up as fast as possible with no regard future generations, is a much greater danger to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren's future han a few months of a stagnant economy — and that’s not to minimize the disruption and consequences from it that we will feel perhaps for the rest of our lives. It is a big deal, this shutdown. Perhaps, though, it is Nature’s way of telling us to slow down. We have been overdriving our headlines for as long as I've been alive.

And on that note --

Full disclosure/recommendations: I will be 72 years old in a matter of days and am not ready to be sacrificed on the altar of "the Economy." If Dan Patrick and Donald Trump -- and Mitch McConnell! -- are so willing to sacrifice themselves for future generations, I am willing to see them go to the head of the line. But let the first step not be contracting the virus. Let the first step be resigning from office.