Gardening

A truly glorious three day weekend (us retirees can declare a three day weekend anytime we want) devoted to getting gardens and yards in shape.  Saturday and Sunday were clean-up days in auntie's yard.  Monday was the annual thatching day - auntie's yard as well as Alison's.  I also took mom plant shopping.  Big time fun.

Yesterday I was in recovery mode from three days of labor; and today was cloudy and cool - my one productive enterprise was taking Aunt Emilie to RuralCap to complete/submit her application for weatherization assistance.  She apparently qualifies which amazes me (take note for future suggestions for federal budget cuts).  The RuralCap guy was very congenial and I believe auntie enjoyed the encounter immensely.  Stay tuned...

This past week I have read several interesting articles that intrigued me.  The first was from The Economist (April 30th - May 6th) titled "America's transport infrastructure - Life in the slow lane."

America, despite its wealth and strength, often seems to be falling apart.  American cities have suffered a rash of recent infrastructure calamities, from the failure of the New Orleans levees to the collapse of a highway bridge in Minneapolis, to a fatal crash on Washington, DC's (generally impressive) metro system.  But just as striking are the common shortcomings America's civil engineers routinely give its transport structures poor marks, rating roads, rails and bridges as deficient or functionally obsolete.  And according to a World Economic Forum study America's infrastructure has got worse, by comparison with other countries, over the past decade.  In the WEF 2010 league tables America now ranks 23rd for overall infrastructure quality, between Spain and Chile.  Its roads, railways, ports and air-transport infrastructure are all judged mediocre against networks in northern Europe.
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Total public spending on transport and water infrastructure has fallen steadily since the 1960's and now stands at 2.4% of GDP.  Europe, by contrast, invests 5% of GDP in its infrastructure, while China is racing into the future at 9%.  America's spending as a share of GDP has not come close to European levels for over 50 years.  Over that time funds for both capital investments and operations and maintenance have steadily dropped.

A second article in the same edition of The Economist also caught my attention.  "Decline of the working man."

The decline of the working American man has been most marked among the less educated and blacks.  If you adjust official data to include men in prison or the armed forces (who are left out of the raw numbers), almost 35% of the 25-54 year-old men with no high-school diploma have no job, up from around 10% in the 1960's.  Of those who finished high school but did not go to college, the fraction without work has climbed from below 5% in the 1960's to almost 25%.  Among blacks, more than 30% overall and almost 70% of high-school dropouts have no job.
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Yet in the 1970's America was at the cutting edge of policies to get the hard-to-employ into work.  Jimmy Carter's administration experimented with wage subsidies, ran an array of training schemes and introduced a public employment programme which at its peak provided more than 700,00 jobs.  But these policies were tainted by association with "big government"; Ronald Reagan scrapped them, slashed funding and reoriented training towards the private sector.  American's government today spends 60% less, after adjusting for inflation, on "active" labour-market  policies than in 1980, and much less as a share of GDP than almost any other rich country."

A sad state of affairs.  But...30 years of trickle-down economics does have its consequences.  The question, of course, is what's next.  More of the same is the best bet.  I see that Big Oil prevailed today in the U.S. Senate...their tax freebies remain intact.  And I read the other day that the top 400 income earners in the U.S. had an effective tax rate of 18%.  Gee.  Mine was 22% and I ain't nowhere near the top 400!

Still...I guess we get the government we deserve...and if you can afford private security for your home and family, private education for your kids, have a bevy of attorneys and tax specialists at your beck and call and can work on your laptop and cellphone while you are chauffeured to work then perhaps all is well...

And Newt Gingrich is running for President. Life is grand!