Did you know that most Americans will probably outlive their savings? So says a new study predicting that absent ratcheting down on their standard of living, most of us will be old and flat busted before we're dead.
I was thinking last night about the way folks in my home community back in Louisiana stepped into the breach to help my sister and her kids while Mike was off at the war. It was the practical stuff that made such a difference (chores, etc.), but also the emotional support. If times get hard, places like that are going to be good places to live (relatively speaking), in part because of the social network already in place. In small towns, opportunities for employment, entertainment, and so forth, are pretty meager compared to a big city. It's harder to be "different." And you really can't do much without everybody knowing about it. Julie and I used to laugh when we'd go down from NYC to visit my family and friends back home, and get caught up on all the local gossip; we felt like Brooklyn must be Calvin's Geneva in comparison, but of course the truth is in a big city, it's not hard to live anonymously.
But at the same time, it's hard to struggle and suffer anonymously in a small town, and easy to do so in a big city. Whether or not we're looking at decades of hardship because of oil scarcity (the Long Emergency scenario), or it's simply a matter of getting older and poorer, I think we're all going to need one another more than we do now. Thinking about the difference being in a small town made to my sister and her kids over this past year makes me wonder about whether the social solidarity that carried them through is the wave of the future. I was thinking about what an amazing thing that Mr. So-and-So did this for Mike and Ruthie, and that Mrs. So-and-So did that. Then I realized that there's nothing amazing about this at all -- that this is how people in that community are.
What's amazing, then, is that this is not amazing. It's perfectly normal. It's how people are there. When times get hard, you want to be in a place like that. But if you're not willing to share your life with those folks in good times, what makes you think they'll want to share their lives with you in bad times? It's a thought.
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Rod writes:
"I think the key here is not so much geography but *stability* -- meaning that people who live in a given place stay put long enough to develop real relationships with those in geographical proximity."
Interesting. For a while I have been playing with a notion that a high capital gains tax is a position that crunchy / Wendell Berry conservatives should support. This is counterintuitive, but it's an intellectual sore that I can't seems to stop tonguing, so to speak. Bear with me:
Capital gains is gain unrealized until the sale or disposal of a property: an increase in the value of one's home or one's ownership interest in a business is not a taxable event until one sells that property or ownership interest. Insofar as we think people make economic decisions in light of the tax obligations those decisions are likely to implicate, a higher capital gains rate will have two effects: 1) it will discourage the sort of investment speculation that we see in the market presently -- the market's peaks will be lower, to be sure, but the troughs will be shallower. 2) it will discourage the sort of speculative home ownership that has led, in the recent past, to the housing bubble, and has destabilized neighborhoods in the longer past.
Insofar as both of these types of speculation destabilize and undermine the sorts of social institutions that crunchy cons seek to cultivate, it seems to me that there is an argument to be made for discouraging that speculation by means of the capital gains tax.
To be sure, there are direct negatives: most obviously it will be harder to raise large amounts of capital, and companies will feel shareholder pressure to pay dividends, rather than increase the stock price. On the whole, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. But I'd love your thoughts, Rod.
Rod Dreher
Interesting perspective, John M. I think the key here is not so much geography but *stability* -- meaning that people who live in a given place stay put long enough to develop real relationships with those in geographical proximity.
...which is why the government does need to be in the marriage business, as marriage helps tie people to a location. (They both have to want to move, at the same time.) Which is why the state has a economic interesting in allowing gay marriage. :)
But, seriously, the problem with 'community assistance' is that it is 'filtered' to, essentially, respected and active people. The doctor who everyone went to, sure, they'll help him out, but the guy who collected garbage for 30 years and wasn't particularly social, probably not. And who knows if they'll help the sole Jewish family, or the single mother who divorced that popular town doctor, or the widow who 'married into' the town and then lost her husband before she could make any connections.
I'm not disparaging community support, it's a good thing. They rarely have a deliberate bias of any sort. But they, as allbetsareoff pointed out, makes a poor substitute for 'objective' social services. People help out other people they know well and like and respect and have things in common with, but I have to assert that those things are not really a good judge of whether or not you need or deserve community help.
Anyway, my point is, how are people of my generation seriously expected to start families, when by our 30s we are still struggling to keep ourselves and our parents afloat?
Posted by: Mike F. | July 17, 2008 4:09 AM
Do it the traditional way. Move in together. People can live under the same roof, sharing resources and sharing work, far more easily than adult children can assist elderly parents financially while trying to keep their own separate lives going. There's just such a cultural block against this. And the generations of families don't know how to get along with each other. For every financial challenge there is a lifestyle change that can be made to get around it just fine, most especially throughout the West where people are safe, free, etc.
"I'm not disparaging community support, it's a good thing. They rarely have a deliberate bias of any sort. But they, as allbetsareoff pointed out, makes a poor substitute for 'objective' social services. People help out other people they know well and like and respect and have things in common with, but I have to assert that those things are not really a good judge of whether or not you need or deserve community help." -DavidTC
David, I thoroughly agree with you. These types of support are not interchangeable. Just like community support can't substitute for social services, the reverse is usually also true: social services cannot substitute for community. Professional case managers and service workers may love their clients, but at the end of the day they are clients, not family members or friends. They can often be complimentary, for example, my church members will let each other know where they went for their services and who to talk to there. They can be bridges and gatekeepers for each other.
And neither is "community organizing" (Saul Alinsky-style or other models) the same as "community-building." (See a wonderful article in the Spring 2008 Nonprofit Quarterly on the differences. http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/content/view/535/28/ )
Do it the traditional way. Move in together. People can live under the same roof, sharing resources and sharing work, far more easily than adult children can assist elderly parents financially while trying to keep their own separate lives going. There's just such a cultural block against this. And the generations of families don't know how to get along with each other. For every financial challenge there is a lifestyle change that can be made to get around it just fine, most especially throughout the West where people are safe, free, etc.
Posted by: emuna | July 17, 2008 3:47 PM
Emuna,
You're, right, the generations don't know how to get along with each other.
Once the extended-family-cohabitation model goes away, it is very hard to return to it. Imagine, at minimum, two couples in one household, of different generations, and possibly grandchildren. Whereas in times past the advice of elders was sought out and valued, what happens today is quite different. The older couple make demands for time and resources on the younger couple, while also wanting to be involved in the intimate details of various decisions. The younger couple is bitter at the unwelcome intrusions, and the elders do not understand why their help is being rejected. People my age can instantaneously foresee these neverending spats. That's why its sometimes ok to use your parents as a temporary respite between jobs/life phases, and to gamely deal with their meddling, but moving in together is a whole different story. If the only way to afford a family is to live in a large, squabbling, toe-stepping clan - I'll take the childless life for the time being, thankyouverymuch.
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