The Coming Depression has Begun:Tent Cities have gone up in Suburbs

From Reuters

ONTARIO, California (Reuters) - Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.
The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.
The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.

www.reuters.com...

Our country is in serious economic peril. Our service based economy (a great experiment) has begun to fail. The dollar is falling lower and lower, and our housing market is crashing (house values have dropped here in central Florida by 24% this year alone). The construction industry has slowed to a standstill, but yet there is little unemployment. This makes no sense at all.

The numbers are scewed. Of my 10 closest friends, 8 are currently unemployed and do not show up on the statistics. Why? Because they are small business owners. My sister and her husband also are unemployed (mortgage brokers). My mom and stepdad are also small business owners. They haven't worked in 3 months. I am also a small business owner. My sales are down 90%.

This isn't just a local event either, it's all over. Small businesses are closing down at an alaming rate. President Bush himself said that small businesses are the lifeblood of America. If that's true, the arteries of the nation have become clogged with recession.

I've started looking for a job, but what do I do? Go work at WalMart for 10% of what I used to make? The administration's fiscal policy of Corporate Welfare for big business and tax breaks for small business has failed. Sure, our taxes are lower, but we were doing much better when our taxes were higher.

We must end Corprate Welfare for big business, and get back to what made this country great: its manufacturing. A service based economy just doesn't work as we're seeing now. If most of the small business owners have to go to low paying service jobs ( as is happening right now), there will be less and less money in our economy to support the service industry. Without manufacturing, we might as well be a third world nation.

I wish us all luck in the coming turmoil.

I agree. Unfortunately, my opinion is that we are in this current state by design, therefore any solutions you may have in mind are probably trivial compared to the gears already in motion.

Unfortunately, I think you're probably right. Just another case of keep the poor poor, and the rich richer? Grand design of the NWO? Seems like anything we can do to stop it won't work. Our "free trade" as destroyed our economy.

I don't have the faith in the government that you do scientist... I really find it hard to believe they have the brains to plot, muchless carry out such a wholescale scheme... I think its good old fashioned incompetance coupled with a flawed ideology (the Republican anti-regulation, big business at any cost) and good old fashioned greed.

I'm with you on that! But are we past the point of no return? This administration will go down in history like Hoover and his ilk. Maybe we should call the ten cities "Bushvilles" like the Hoovervilles of old.

Originally posted by grover
I think its good old fashioned incompetance coupled with a flawed ideology (the Republican anti-regulation, big business at any cost) and good old fashioned greed.

and that is exactly the image that prevents them from looking like criminals, and makes them look like idiots. I am convinced it is the other way around.

If everyone stopped working in U/S, government would beg people to work and stuff, is that right?

tent cities...the fruit of trickle down economics....
the money just doesn't trickle down fast enough to keep the people in their homes!!

the tent cities were rather large during reagan's experiment with the economic theory, wonder how big these tent cities will grow?
got a feeling it will be somewhat bigger this time, since they've been struggling for so long to keep the illusion of prosperity alive and have gone all out in the attempt.

if we all stopped working, you would probably see that neat new draft that's been shelved by congress get passed rather quickly... those deep in debt who were refusing to pay their bills would be "drafted" as well as those who've been relying on the social services for their needs.... they have the makings of a nice forced labor program sitting there waiting to be called upon, the wheels would keep on churning, with maybe a little bit of a sputter now and then.

reply to post by TheoOne

Do you mean for the whole country to go on strike? I had another thought, people have been marching on Washington for a long time. Why can't I get a group of people together and march on Wall Street? You could effectively draw people's attention away from Britney Spears and Paris Hilton at least for a little while. If you could effectively shut down Wall Street for a day that might get attention.

I'm also in central Florida and can tell you the exact same story. After 11 years in business, I closed the doors four months ago. I can't find a job, I can't get unemployment benefits, and I just don't exist according to the government.

What worries me the most is for the first time I can remember, there are beggars on the street in my small town.

I agree with a post I read above in that this may very well be by design after all for the first time in history the people of America are being tossed into the streets and the large corporations and the U.S. Government continue to function as though nothing is wrong or is going wrong..

I too had a business for quite sometime and though I am more lucky than most in that I don't have much in the way of debt I too have closed the doors at least until the economy turns for the better and possibly for good.. I was even considering re enlisting in the Army but I can't get waivers for some medical issues..

At any rate I hope that things turn around for people out there in particular the people I have met on this board and the gentleman who posted about losing his business

You can thank your great leaders , Nafta and cafta for this kind of thing even if the economy is bad here stateside the Large companies and government will just keep on ticking..


Respectfully
GEO

reply to post by mythatsabigprobe


Need a roommate ?

I'll be evicted within the next couple months if something doesn't change. For every house on the market here in Brevard county, there are 3 going into forcloseure. Where are we all supposed to go? I guess we can go live in the swamp with the Skunk Monkey(local bigfoot). The cheapest apartment in the worst part of the county is still around 600$/month.

At least I have spare time now I guess. I actually have time to post on ATS

[edit on 28-12-2007 by pjsconcrete]

many states have squatter's rights still. if things get too bad, and too many houses get repossessed, they might have a hard time keeping track of all of them. you might actually be able to get away with moving back into your home, if no one notices and comes to tell you to get out in a set amount of time, it's yours...

I'm sorry, but if things get bad enough, and I need a home, there seems to be plenty of vacant properties around here that seem to have been all but abandoned. heck with the tent.....I'm finding me one of these!

reply to post by dawnstar

There are 4 vacant houses right here on my street alone! One was vacated after the hurricanes in'03, but the rest are all recently vacated. They've been for sale for a LONG time.

A few quotes for perspective:

"Fascism - A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism." The American Heritage Dictionary, 1983

I am quite sure someone has managed to put a new and less horrifying spin on that definition, as it is just too applicable to our current situation.

"Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike."William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice

We don't even talk about the poor in this country, we are only comfortable looking away at the latest tire fire meant to distract us.

I am in complete ageement with Scientist and others that this situation, if not wholly contrived, was certainly predictable. In my history classes, it was very well beat into our heads that the post WWII manufacturing boom was primarily responsible for the rise and flourishing of the American middle class. So who's big idea was it to cripple it and send it overseas? One really has to wonder.

Not to mention all of the marketing and economics classes that I took that taught me that there is a model space for everything. The main purpose of such science is to PREDICT outcomes. So, yes, they certainly knew, or had a good idea, of the long term effects of the policies which have created this mess.

So who is responsible? The CorpGov who has and is steadily pillaging America or its citizens who are too consumed with consuming to stand up and say 'enough'? Trust me when I say our consuming days are just about over. Maybe then we will turn off the t.v.'s and the Wii's and set about reclaiming this country.

I just found this on Youtube, police in St. Petersberg, Florida destroying a tent city there.






[edit: fixed bbcode for video]

[edit on 28-12-2007 by 12m8keall2c]
Thanks for fixing my link!!! I've got it figured out now. (stoopid brain)

[edit on 28-12-2007 by pjsconcrete]

I think we are the ones doing this to ourselves. Americans want money yet they dont like to spend it. So We buy cheap products from other countries. Then you have the fact that most factories have been closed down due to the fact they may cause pollution. I saw towns in Maine go from booming towns to ghost towns due to mills closing. Who is at fault the people them selves. We dont want the factories due to the pollution. So then people are out of work, there is no place to go so they have to move, and soon enough all factories close down and there is no work.


Hilda

reply to post by pjsconcrete


You might want to read a bit more on how the economy is performing. Here's a good article to start with.

www.washingtontimes.com...

"Calendar year 2007 looks set to produce 3 percent growth in real gross domestic product, nearly 3 percent growth in consumer spending, and more than 3 percent growth in after-tax inflation-adjusted incomes.

Meanwhile, headline inflation (including food and energy) will have run at 2½ percent, with only 2 percent core inflation.

Jobs are rising more than 100,000 monthly and the stock market is set to turn in a respectable year despite enormous headwinds."

The figures that you present are just that figures they are not fact they are numbers extrapolated from theoretical equations..

That being said with enough time and manipulation you can extrapolate any number that you want by modifying the math to suit your desired number instead of the opposite.


Respectfully
GEO

reply to post by GT100FV


Really!! If there is no inflation, why has the cost of food in central Florida gone up 20%? Why has my electric bill gone up 40%? Why was my water bill gone up 20%? Why has my insurance bill gone up 50%? Why has my cable bill gone up 20%? Why have my wages gone down 50% in the last 6 months? Small business is on the front lines of the war against the middle class.

What I'm seeing here is the beginning of the great collapse. Stocks haven't been effected much yet, but they will be soon. Get your money out of the stock market and invest in gold. Do you know what our chief export is from this country? Scrap metal. You can't base a long-term successful economy on services. You may achieve some short term success, but it is unsustainable.