Tent Cities Video by UMass Lowell Grad Students
Posted by PaulM on 20 Dec 2009 at 10:24 am | Tagged as: Beacon Hill, City Council, Federal, History, Lowell, Lowell-2009
Prof. Bob Forrant of the UMass Lowell Dept. of Regional Economic and Social Development (RESD) referred me to the following 10-minute video report on the new tent cities popping up around the country. The video was made by two RESD master’s program students in adjunct professor Dave Turcotte’s course on sustainable housing: Thomas Grindsted (from Denmark) and Jenn Russell.
Stimulus may soften the depths of the depression, but it doesn’t solve the long term structural problems with our economy.
Once we bought into Economic Globalism, we were destined to have our economic water seek its level, and with 300M people at the higher level (standard of living) and 5B at the lower level, we are destined to a much lower level. Even if the World economy is strengthen (all boats rise), that level will not be what we enjoyed for decades.
In the latter years of the Bush II presidency we typically had international trade deficits exceeding $700B per year. Those have been cut in half now, but that is more a reflection of our lack of wealth than it is a sign of economic improvement.
Government can only do so much, but one thing they could do would be to drastically alter the federal tax system to unburden work. Then there may be more jobs in this country, and fewer homes lost.