What is a food desert?
“Food deserts are defined as urban neighborhoods and rural towns without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. Instead of supermarkets and grocery stores, these communities may have no food access or are served only by fast food restaurants and convenience stores that offer few healthy, affordable food options. The lack of access contributes to a poor diet and can lead to higher levels of obesity and other diet-related diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease.” - United States Department of Agriculture (1)
Plenty has been written on how to solve the problem. For example:
“In order to fix the food desert problem in urban areas in the United States, local communities and organizations have taken steps to combat the problem by creating their own plans and agendas to implement change. Based on an interview with the Director of the Steans Center and an anthropologist, Howard Rosing, most of the efforts that haven been taken are community-driven and are run by local community-based organizations. In general, small-scale community projects that have been implemented in various communities throughout the United States have been designed to operate on small budgets. These programs are usually mission rather than market-driven; they are usually funded by small government grants and donations (Lydersen). In this section, it is important to consider the changes that have taken place, the effectiveness of the changes, and the problems and failures of why these programs have not made significant changes in food desert communities.” (2)
The problem with the “fix” narrative is that one is entering the argument in the middle. It would be a much better exercise to begin at the beginning and understand how a food desert forms. Concentrating on urban food deserts, one reason, among many others, that food deserts exist is that they are the result of government failure -or- more succinctly politicos through the mechanism of government and the associated failure thereof. How so?
Urban renewal, public housing and greenways sound warm and fuzzy as the do-gooder is going to help the less fortunate and make utopias of what is seeming a blighted area. However, the end product is to usurp the rights of the poor in order to displace the poor and their neighborhoods. (3)
Believe it or not, lower income people need a “neighborhood” to reside in that has grocery stores, other retailers and importantly, are a reasonable distance to commute to their job. These lower income neighborhoods are not a blight, rather they are vibrant communities like any other community, albeit at a lower income level.
Moreover, people move into and out of such neighborhoods. New lower income job seekers move into the neighborhood and more successful lower income people move to other neighborhoods. Regardless of mobility in or out, or merely staying put, it is a “neighborhood”.
As a neighborhood people network, know one another, and treat the area as home. Hence interrelationships exist that are valuable relationships. Those relationships are also related to self-policing in that no one wants to live in a crime infested neighborhood. In the main, people including lower income people want peace, tranquility and not to be disturbed.
Enter urban renewal and greenways. The do-gooder and associated ilk view the lower income vibrant neighborhood not as what it is, rather as being blighted. The neighborhood is generally foreign looking to the self-appointed do-gooder who lives in neighborhoods unlike the one they are viewing as “blighted”. Stated alternatively, the neighborhood viewed as blighted necessarily needs to look like the do-gooder's neighborhood.
Yes, in order for the lower income vibrant neighborhood to look like the do-gooders neighborhood some nice urban planning needs to come to bear. Meanwhile, the do-gooders ideal of a utopia for the seeming blighted area is hijacked by politicos as they can show “they are going something” for the poor.
Hence central planning under the guise of urban renewal, public housing and greenways is deployed. The neighborhood is to be bulldozed under and replaced with shiny new public housing with a greenway for all to enjoy. Sounds good huh?
Problem is during the bulldozing/building phase all the occupants are displaced including business owners. Yes, the business owners that provided the grocery stores and retailing. These business owners can’t wait years to reopen and move on to other locations.
The dislocated workers must now find housing that is affordable since their neighborhood is now destroyed. Many find that only rural locations have a price of housing they can afford. However, moving to rural locations cause an additional price for the lower income worker in the form of commuting further to work. An additional price lower income individuals can ill afford.
Note: The same politicos that destroy affordable housing for the poor will turn around and frame "affordable housing" as a hand wringing problem ......when to one degree or another it is a problem of their own making.
Years go by and the utopia of public housing/greenway is ready for use. The new inhabitants of public housing are usually a different group than was dislocated by the central planning. The old group’s interrelationships have ended with other x-inhabitants and they care not the expense of moving yet again. Further, the public housing is not as attractive to the dislocated vs. the rental home or apartment they previously had before being dislocated. (4) (5)
The previous businesses owners, in the main, do not return as they have found other endeavors. New businesses are reluctant to located in public housing areas due to a crime rate that is inherent with warehousing people.
Also, the nice “greenway” that was constructed where a previous low income housing area once stood, it not really for the use of low income people. Huh? Oh yes, more times than not middle income people use the greenway to jog, bike and walk their dog. Was the greenway an altruistic endeavor for the value of the poor or merely an additional value for the middle class? (6)
Notes:
(1) https://apps.ams.usda.gov/fooddeserts/foodDeserts.aspx
(2) https://lshkurti.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/research-project-rough-draft/
(3) The Tyranny of Experts, William Easterly, 2013, Basic Books
(4) Ibid
(5) The Other Path, Hernando DeSoto, 1989, Basic Books
(6) Aaron Director, directors law
http://www.examiner.com/article/directors-law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director%27s_law
Voting is a highly irrational exercise when a large numbers of votes are cast. Really? Yes, spending enormous amounts of time, the price/cost thereof, to become familiar with issues, is greater than the value of one vote as the chances of one single vote affecting the outcome of an election, where a large number of votes are cast, is tiny. Politicos are always harping that one needs to vote. However, a very good question is: Why do so many people vote in the first pace given its irrationality. (1) (2) (3)
But many people feel a responsibility to vote. If you feel that responsibility, and considering local politicos and their associated ilk and the spending habits thereof, complete with the assertion that such spending creates prosperity, one might consider the following when casting a vote:
“Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation. If in the course of such inflation the rise in commodity prices exceeds the rise in nominal wage rates, unemployment will drop. But what makes unemployment shrink is precisely the fact that real wage rates are falling”. - Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, An Economic and Sociological Analysis, 1951, page 530.
Or stated alternatively:
“The government has nothing to give. The government is simply a mechanism which has the power to take from some to give to others. It is a way in which some people can spend other peoples' money for the benefit of a third party - and not so incidentally themselves". - The Invisible Hand in Economics and Politics, Milton Friedman, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1981, p11.
However, politicos rely on Keynesian analysis, as Keynesianism gives them the right or duty to intervene and spend. How so? Try this:
“Keynes was exceedingly effective in persuading a broad group—economists, policymakers, government officials, and interested citizens—of the two concepts implicit in his letter to Hayek: first, the public interest concept of government; second, the benevolent dictatorship concept that all will be well if only good men are in power. Clearly, Keynes’s agreement with “virtually the whole” of the Road to Serfdom did not extend to the chapter titled “Why the Worst Get on Top.”
Keynes believed that economists (and others) could best contribute to the improvement of society by investigating how to manipulate the levers actually or potentially under control of the political authorities so as to achieve desirable ends, and then persuading benevolent civil servants and elected officials to follow their advice. The role of voters is to elect persons with the right moral values to office and then let them run the country.” - Milton Friedman, Richmond Federal Reserve Economic Quarterly, volume 83/2 Spring 1997.
http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_quarterly/1997/spring/pdf/friedman.pdf
So are “we all Keynesians now”? That is an oft cited quotation, from a source one would not expect, one Milton Friedman. Problem is, it is merely an excerpt from the entire statement. Here is the entire statement:
“In one sense, we are all Keynesians now; in another, no one is a Keynesian any longer. We all use the Keynesian language and apparatus; none of us any longer accepts the initial Keynesian conclusions.” - Milton Friedman, “Why Economists Disagree,” Dollars and Deficits (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 15.
What about those Keynesian conclusions?
“For policy, the central fact is that Keynesian policy recommendations have no sounder basis, in a scientific sense, than recommendations of non-Keynesian economists or, for that matter, non economists.” After Keynesian Macroeconomics (aka After the Phillips Curve), Robert E. Lucas and Thomas J. Sargent, 1978, page 57
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf19/conf19d.pdf
We end this exercise with lots of lever pulling by local politicos spending tons of taxpayer money year after year yet total employment in Guilford County has been flat or declining since its peak in the year 2000. Go figure. (4)
Beware of the non-statistic statistic by the moniker “jobs saved or created”. It is a known-known that government can’t create jobs. What about “saved jobs”. What in the devil does “saved jobs” mean? Saved jobs is a rather recent politico creation that in somehow and in some way bailing out or subsidizing particular industry (aka corporate welfare) with taxpayer dollars is some sort of net positive. Oh please spare us.
So if you feel that responsibility to vote, and considering local politicos and associated ilk, the spending habits thereof, with the assertion that such spending creates prosperity, maybe one doesn’t pull that lever next to that politico’s name so as not to empower particular politicos with the ability to “manipulate the levers actually or potentially under control of the political authorities”.
Notes:
(1) Congressional Incentives and Government Failure, Chris Edwards, CATO Institute, September, 2015.
(2) The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, Bryan Caplan, 2007.
(3) Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice, Tullock, Seldon and Brady, 2002.
(4) The Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship, Job Growth. Comparison of Guilford, Mecklenburg and Wake counties,
What if one is informed, per governance transparency, to be outraged, or otherwise unhappy, given "transparent governance" that shows poor performance?
What if transparency is merely politico mantra and is resisted at every turn? What if one is uninformed, per non-transparency, to be non-outraged?
Maybe this essay, from Reason Magazine, When Open Government Slams Shut, is worth a read:
https://reason.com/archives/2015/04/30/when-open-government-slams-shu
“In 1982 Greensboro, North Carolina was rated as the #1 best place to live in America. In the years following everything went to hell. For 2015, Liveability.com ranked Greensboro at #91 but in 2008 CNN Money rated Greensboro at #50-- what happened? 41 places in 7 years-- how could any city fall so quickly? Our corrupt and inept "leaders" will tell you it was a result of the Recession but the Recession was nationwide, worldwide even.” - Billy Jones, What The Hell Happened To Greensboro?12/29/2014.
What about the local politico excuse of the recession? How valid or invalid is such excuse?
-The Virginia School of Political Economy-
A first step is a visit to the Virginia School of Political Economy. How so? The Virginia School of Political Economy is a good starting point regarding the study of political dupery and nitwitery. Political dupery and nitwitery is many times afoot.
Welcome to the politico and the “exogenous boogieman“. The exogenous boogieman comes in a zillion varieties, including recession. When times are tough for politicos, it is merely the result of some exogenous group and/or exogenous phenomena that is causing the problem.
More succinctly, is a variation of: You can't make mistakes if it's everybody else's fault.
When it doesn’t work the way the politicos promised themselves, it surely failed due to the exogenous boogieman.
The boogieman spends night and day coming up with stratagems to thwart politicos and their master plans. Yes, believe it or not, the boogieman, that insidious make-believe character, singles out a particular set of politicos and their associated planning….. as the boogieman’s personal enemy. Who’d a thunk it? (1) (2)
-The Great Moderation 1982-2007
What about the excuse of the recession?
A next step is to consider a downward spiraling local economy in regards to: The Great Moderation 1982-2007. The Great Moderation is not a period of high growth, more of a period of above or at trend moderate growth. However, inflation was much less a factor during time period 1982-2007. (3)
Matching Greensboro’s downward spiraling local economy of 1982 to present, one can strongly discount the recession argument for time period 1982 to 2007 as the time period was punctuated with above or at trend moderate growth and low inflation. Stated alternatively, the vast majority of the thirty three year downward spiraling local economy, the downward spiral thereof, occurred during a twenty five year period of at-trend- moderate-growth and low inflation aka The Great Moderation which was, to a great extent, a non-recessionary period of only mild downturns.
-Boom and Bust-
What about the excuse of the recession?
One might consider the historical aggregate.
Expansions, recessions, banking crisis, housing busts, sovereign debt default, domestic debt default….. are a dime a dozen in history. If would be a stretch of the imagination to blame “recession”, as one would not only be discarding history, one would also be depicting what goes up, always stays up…except in this particular case. (4)
-Boom and Bust with a Textile/Furniture Flavor-
What about the excuse of the recession?
Regarding the "recession" as an excuse, embedded within that argument, regarding local politicos, is the relocation of textile and furniture manufacturing.
One must remember that it is not "cheap labor" that is one of the conditions (the fallacious argument is "cheap labor") for moving labor intensive manufacturing. The real condition is "unit labor cost". (5)
In most manufacturing scenarios unit labor cost in the U.S. is quite competitive with other countries or regions. Matter-of-fact, unit labor cost in the U.S. leads the world in an astounding number of cases.
Labor intensive manufacturing "move" for a multitude of reasons, of which, the leading two reasons are: taxes and regulation. Taxes and regulation being the domain of politicos. Go figure.
Speaking of the relocation of textile and furniture manufacturing, a bottom has formed, several years ago. Yes, what has left, has left, the remainder will stay for other reasons (bulky items such as mattress production/distribution and skilled labor items such as the need for "detailed fabric where the pattern has to match"). The remainder may well flourish. (6)
-Tax or Recession?-
What about the excuse of the recession?
Once a firm becomes established within the domain of a political taxing authority, the politicos thereof perceive the firm as non-mobile and have a habit of escalating taxes upon the firm as politicos believe the firm to be non-mobile and hence unable to escape the tax. (7)
The firm or firms are perceived as the proverbial deep pocket and as such a never ending fountain of tax revenue for politicos. Need an example? Try Detroit, Michigan.
The basic problem the politico notional proposition of escalating tax upon the supposed immobile firm is: All capital and all human capital is mobile. Over time most capital and most human capital will seek an environment of the lowest tax and regulation.
-The Great Recession Followed by the Not So Great Expansion: 2007 to present-
What about the excuse of the recession?
The Great Recession followed by the Not So Great Expansion was and is to a great extent a result of politico notional propositions. The housing bubble was fueled by politico legislation and associated bureaucracies thereof that set the stage for private sector shenanigans. If one sets the stage for shenanigans one should not be surprised when shenanigans occur. (8) (9)
For one set of politicos to blame the failure of their set of political notional propositions upon another set of politicos and their failed set of political notional propositions resulting in a boom-bust recession is quite the interesting proposition. -Or- You can't make mistakes if its everybody else's fault.
-The Black Swan-
What about the excuse of the recession?
A final stop is the oft used politico stratagem of depicting a known-known as an unknown-unknown. Regardless of the notional political proposition deployed, the deployment occurs within an environment of business cycles and associated expansions and contractions. By no means is a recession a black swan event. (10)
When one further considers the excuse of the recession for the failure of politico master plans, then does the excuse mean that master plans of politicos only work during expansions? That the master plan only works in a perfect environment for the master plan? That the master plan only works in an environment of perfect knowledge?
Notes.
(1) Government Failure, Tullock, Seldon and Brady.
http://www.amazon.com/Government-Failure-Primer-Public-Choice-ebook/dp/B004YW6LPI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420121108&sr=1-1&keywords=Government+Failure%2C+Tullock%2C+Seldon+and+Brady.
(2) Beyond Politics, Markets, Welfare and the Failure of Bureaucracy, Mitchell and Simmons.
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Politics-Bureaucracy-Independent-Political/dp/0813322081/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420121181&sr=1-1&keywords=Beyond+Politics%2C+Markets%2C+Welfare+and+the+Failure+of+Bureaucracy%2C+Mitchell+and+Simmons
(3) The Great Moderation.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/great-moderation.asp
(4) This Time Is Different, Reinhart and Rogoff.
http://www.amazon.com/This-Time-Different-Centuries-Financial/dp/0691152640/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420121233&sr=1-1&keywords=This+Time+Is+Different%2C+Reinhart+and+Rogoff
(5) Unit labor cost: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/unit-labor-cost-63146.html
(6) Furniture Firms Eke Out Gains, Richmond Federal Reserve, Econ Focus, Third Quarter, 2010, p.21.
http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2010/q3/pdf/feature2.pdf
(7) Applied Economics, Thomas Sowell.
http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Economics-Thinking-Beyond-Stage/dp/0465003451/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420121278&sr=1-1&keywords=Applied+Economics%2C+Thomas+Sowell.
(8) Getting Off Track, John B. Taylor.
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Off-Track-Interventions-PUBLICATION/dp/0817949712/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420121345&sr=1-1&keywords=Getting+Off+Track%2C+John+B.+Taylor
(9) “The Great Recession Followed by the Not So Great Expansion”, TrendMacro, Donald Luskin, Chicago, Il.
(10) The Black Swan, N.N.Taleb.
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness-Fragility/dp/081297381X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420122539&sr=1-1&keywords=the+black+swan+the+impact+of+the+highly+improbable
