Is There Life After Death? We Are as Co-Dependent on Job Creation as Banks Are in Handing Out Credit, And There is no End in Sight …
What happens when a storefront closes and it is not replaced with anything. What happens when a mall is closed because all of the storefronts inside of that mall have not been replaced with anything? What happens when a house is foreclosed on and no one ever moves into it? What happens when people are moving out of the city faster than anyone is moving in?
Usually when we talk about life after death we are talking about religion, spirituality, or existentialism. But today I am talking about what happens when a community is dying. What were the forces that brought people into the community to begin with? Everyone says that it is all about jobs, but the real question is, are people seeking out economic resources for themselves, or are they willing to bring anything to the town? That goes beyond jobs because wealth generation is about more than just jobs. In fact if anything jobs are the evidence of wealth, but not the primary indication of wealth.
People look towards jobs because of the society that we live in. Jobs were never a fast track to wealth, if anything people with jobs spend money faster than they come into possession of it. A job gives you the tools that you need to get out of poverty. But you have to get beyond the middle class. Getting out of poverty is the easiest part. An individual only needs to make more than $ 10,000 a year to get out of poverty. This does not include for expenses; some would say that you should have $ 10,000 left over after expenses to get out of poverty. Technically someone making $ 5 an hour is at the threshold.
Let’s say you make $ 30,000 a year. By my own definition, if you have less than $ 10,000 a year, you are still poor. What good is it to make $ 30,000 a year and spend $ 21,000 a year? But this is the type of world that we live in. The middle class is a different story. Many would agree that you can make $ 100,000 and still be middle class, depending on who you ask. That means that it would take ten times as much money to get out of being middle class and to be considered rich. Even then you would not be considered wealthy.
See anyone can work a job and find themselves somewhere in the middle class. It is not that hard. You can work in a call center and make $ 15 an hour and get out of poverty, assuming that you have $ 10,000 left over. Anything less than that and you are considered to be part of the working poor, but technically, you aren’t poor. The term, working poor, is a nice euphemism that suggests that you do not have any savings. The real challenge is to be rich; when you are poor you do not care about being wealthy, you just want to be rich.
Being rich is another problem because definitions vary. To be rich, it is not about how much money you make over time as it is how much money you have access to at any given moment. If you have a million dollars you can be considered rich. But you do not have to bring in a million dollars a year; you can have a million in savings, you can have a net worth of a million dollars. By my own definition, regardless of how much money is coming in or going out, if you have access to less than a million dollars you aren’t rich, you’re still either poor or middle class.
People who live in America’s cities are struggling to acquire wealth by any definition. When you see a part of the city leave and it is not replaced with anything you feel that you are that much further from life yourself. Part of the reasons why suburbs continued to grow is that they were a symbol of life. Definitions may vary as to what type of life that is, but it is still life. Suburbs are not experiencing growth in this day and age, but they are not going anywhere either. It will take a while for people to appreciate the inner city, if anything it takes a while to win their trust.
Cities are trying to rebuild, but they have to bring the companies and organizations back inside of the city limits. They can build as many high rise condominiums and apartment complexes that they want and throw as many fancy stores and boutiques as they want, none of it means anything as long as businesses continue to exist outside of the city. At the end of the day it is about the psychological toll on residents when those businesses and entities do not exist there. Ten 20 story complexes is not a replacement for one large business that is hiring 30,000 people.
There used to be a time where you could open up a shopping mall or a lifestyle center and people would be encouraged, but those days are behind us. Even if someone has a job and does not need to work at that shopping mall themselves no one is impressed when a city that needs businesses ends up with a shopping mall instead. We need to stop talking about jobs and start talking about true ways in which individuals can acquire wealth. Because a job is a quick fix that calms the nerves and prevents a person from completely collapsing emotionally and spiritually. But a job will not fix everything that is wrong with a person if they do not learn how to save their money and invest it in something worthwhile, and I am not talking about the stock market.
People need to invest in the communities they live in and in their own dreams and aspirations. Everyone knows someone who makes $ 30 an hour that has ten times the amount of debt they do and they only make $ 15 an hour. At $ 15 an hour there is a lot of trouble no one is going to allow you to get yourself into. No one is going to allow you to purchase a home without good credit and without a nice down payment if you have other debts like student loans and credit cards you aren’t taking care of. No one is going to give you that nice of an automobile unless you are paying cash. No one will allow you to run up a $ 3,000 light bill.
People assume that you do not have the money and those doors are closed off to you. But at $ 30 an hour things are entirely different; even if your credit is bad and you aren’t paying your bills people know that you have enough money to pay those bills off and pay them. They know that if you were to set your mind to it, you could pay off enough in two years, just like a man with a spare tire that needs to lose 50 pounds, and make your payments with them on time. So they will allow you to pay $ 1,500 a month on a place.
Perhaps jobs are all that there ever was in America. Perhaps the lofty idea of people having their own business and making their own way is just that, a nice idea. A job was a sure thing at one time, and now that times have changed people are being forced to consider other revenue streams but is there enough for everyone to go around? All I know is that another boarded up property is depressing …
