Really. We probably have 776,478,343 apples ready for harvest not six hundred miles away, and even around here we have Apple Hill that can provide enough for all of Northern California, but no. Our food is more and more being outsourced overseas, and 'cause of only one reason -- it's cheap. Buy apple juice by the pallet -- at our newest Sam's Club.
I am not surprised that three of our local Elk Grove high schools held a drumline competition to celebrate the grand opening of our new Sam's Club on October 8th. Throw a parade for the opening of a new warehouse bulk merchant, and slowly watch our local mercants wither on the vine.
Fine. When these students graduate, when they lay down their percussion instruments for the final time, they can go to work at the Sam's Club...because that will eventually be the only employer left in Elk Grove. We have no manufacturing precisely because we decided we preferred cheap Chinese shit in bulk...like our apple juice.
Why don't we bus our drumline students up to the Yakima Valley and have them parade around a newly fallowed acre of a former apple orchard? The farmer and his hands won't be clapping and cheering them on.
Why don't we bus our drumline students out to Courtland to march around a former pear orchard? Although pears are declining due to demand, more alternate trees might have been planted had we not outsourced our food production to Asia.
Why don't we bus our drumline students out to the now-vacant big box parking lot of the old Sam's Club site? Have them help celebrate the new ghostbox, further contributing to the blight of an inner suburban ring.
Do you see the pattern here? Sam's Club moves farther south, moves to capture the market from the newer, farther out suburban rings, moves ever farther and farther away from the true job centers of the region. As they do, as they have the right to do, they give up on the old sites and leave the empty shell the problem of that ring's suburban residents. And I would bet, I would bet, that whatever new tenant occupies that old site cannot be a direct competitor to the new Sam's Club by lease law. Like I said, this is your precious free market at work.
The new store has 70 more employees than before. Wa-hey! Won't that help our recession! I don't discount work that people do, I never have, but these are associate jobs. Tell me that these are jobs that are marked black on Elk Grove's ledgers. Right. The cost of services used by these associates, e.g., the roadways and public safety, are in excess of the payroll taxes Sam's Club pays. These are non-jobs -- although the newly hired people are likely hardly in any position to quarrel about that. They are employed, "it's a job, man," and that's all that matters at this point.
Elk Grove can't see the forest for the trees. This sort of job base is what forces the city to continue to sprawl until there's nothing left. As existing payroll and property taxes can't support the local government needs, they are forced to count on future tax revenues from more sprawl. At some point this will have to stop. One way or another. It is unsustainable. We refuse to make the hard choices today and we will pay an even higher price tomorrow.
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