Unable to Move

An interesting article in USA Today caught my eye as another consequence of the economic melt down (aka recession).  Because of the economy, and especially due to the real estate markets, Americans are unable to move to take another job.  One of the things that apparently that has been a strength of the American economy has been our mobility.  Unlike Europe, where people are reluctant to leave the towns and cities where they were born, Americans are willing to pack the kids in the car and head to other places for jobs.  

But given the inability for many to sell their homes for the amount they owe much less the costs of moving, this mobility seems to be another factor in daily deluge of bad economic news.  

Combine this news with the data that is indicating rural communities are being severely hit with the recession and we may be staring at a reverse of The Grapes of Wrath where instead of migrating to orchards, vineyards, and other farms in California, if there is any migration at all, it will be to the cities.  Of course, this has been a trend for the past several decades, but it leads me back to a point I made recently.  For all the discussions about bailing out Wall Street, the banks, and providing broadband service to rural communities, we need to think about maintaining, restoring, and creating jobs that actually make something.  This will mean we need to use some of our natural resources, we'll need to provide energy to factories, and we'll need to energize downtrodden communities.  

But we are not going to get ourselves out of this economic debacle by trying to revitalize the same economy we had until last year, and we certainly can not afford to import products from countries that do not maintain similar environmental or labor values that we do here.  It may mean we pay more for our products, but let's begin to make high quality furniture, televisions, automobiles, computers.  Then let's sell them to people overseas who want quality in design and function.  

Then, maybe then, moving doesn't become such a necessity.  Maybe we have communities where there are good jobs, a quality environment, and chances for movement within the economic strata.  Where the idea of mobility is about where we go for vacations not having to move to find another job.