Hallucinated Prosperity

Is it a good thing, a good thing at all, that the all-American ideal of fakery be extended to other nations? In Britain there's an interesting idea that I guarantee will be emulated here sooner than later -- put up a fake shopfront to cover the blight behind it, to provide the illusion that there's no recession going on:

From this:

To this:



This is pretty amazing! I assumed such fakery, such hallucinated prosperity was strictly an American ethos. I was wrong! Here in the U.S. we are adept at using the U3 unemployment figure, which is less than double digits, to describe a real unemployment picture well into the high teens/low twenties. We spin 32,000 job losses in March as "not as bad as we had expected," as if that's a good thing. But it ain't just here, no sir. Britons are "painting" over abandoned storefronts to give the illusion of prosperity.

If I remember right, the U.S. needs to create about 92,000 jobs each month, in perpetuity, just to keep up with all the new 18-year-olds and college graduates entering the workforce. For every month we don't gain at all, we fall behind a tenth of a million jobs. At the height of the tech boom around here (actually, centered about 120 miles southwest from here) we created something like 150,000 jobs per month. At the peak. At the peak of the largest boom we ever had. Read: We won't be creating jobs anywhere near fast enough to get the real unemployment figure below double digits anytime soon.

Of course, consider that we build fifteen years of housal unit inventory in the span of about three, from 2003-2006. So, when the jobs do come, they ain't gonna be in construction. Consider that we consumed a decade's worth of junk in the span of about three. So, when the jobs do come, they ain't gonna be in retail sales. All those boomers who got caught up in all that housal unit mania, well, they ain't gonna let go of their jobs as quickly as anticipated. So, when the jobs do come, they won't be to backfill the aging workforce. We've got a ton of vacant commercial strip retail. Combine that with more than enough Targets and WalMarts and Asian Foot Massage Parlors and Joke T-Shirt Shops and Cell Phone Kiosks and Cigarette Shops, we won't need anything new for a solid decade. So, when the jobs do come, they still won't be in retail sales.

We've fuckered away all our manufacturing capability along with engineering support over the past two decades under the ruse of global wage arbitrage (i.e., so we could buy a toaster at a price that we didn't have to pay an American worker to make). So, when the jobs do come, they won't be in manufacturing.

Forget about the Financial, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) economy. That ship already left port, and was last sighted somewhere at the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef. They're not gonna come back. All those former florists-turned-housal-unit-flippers and real estate "professionals?" They're back to flipping flowers. So, when the jobs do come, they won't be underwriting credit default swaps or collateralized debt obligations.

I think the best job to have, here in our post recession, in our recoveryless recovery, in our the-bottom-is-in economy, would be to mount fake storefront veneers throughout Cleveland, Nashville, Spokane, Ft. Collins, and Birmingham. You'd be comfortably employed for a long time to come.