The Less Talked About Part of Kevin McCarthy’s Deal With Republican Radicals
The most talked about part of the deal Kevin McCarthy made with Republican radicals to become Speaker of the House involved concessions to those members on rules, powerful committee assignments for members of the House Freedom Caucus and the creation of a new select committee on the “weaponization” of government that would give Republicans like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio an official platform from which they could undermine the investigations into President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 insurrection.
And although there has been plenty of chatter about the effect this may have on the basic functioning of government, less remarked on but still significant is McCarthy’s pledge to force major budget cuts using the debt ceiling as leverage with the Biden administration. McCarthy has also agreed to pursue a resolution committing the federal government to a balanced budget within the decade, which could not be done without major cuts to Social Security, Medicare and a lot of what’s left of the American welfare state.
None of this comes as a shock or a surprise. Conservative opposition to social insurance goes back to the New Deal itself, with figures like the previous president Herbert Hoover denouncing Franklin Roosevelt’s policies as “socialism” that would place the nation on a “march to Moscow.” And of course, successive Republican Congresses have, since the 2010 Tea Party wave, tried to pass or force gigantic cuts to federal social spending, with the debt ceiling as their preferred hostage.
This juxtaposition of extreme opposition to social insurance with contempt for constitutional democracy and rule of law helps illuminate the tight connection between these two strands of contemporary Republican thought. Many of the Republican radicals who seized control of the House last week also voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and they have been vocal apologists for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
One of the key insights driving the creation of the modern welfare state was an adaptation of the older republican idea that self-government could not be sustained in the absence of economic security and independence. In the original conception, to own a farm and manage a homestead was to secure your economic standing and cultivate the habits of citizenship.
The closing of the frontier, the growth of industrial capitalism and the transition to wage labor for most workers forced Americans to rethink the terms of republican freedom. Populism — the insurgent movement that emerged in the late 19th century to put national economic life under democratic control by the “common people” — was one attempt to renegotiate the terms of American freedom. The more elite-driven Progressive movement, coming as it did in the wake of the collapse of the Populist Party, was another.
For the Populists, freedom meant popular control over economic decision-making. For Progressive intellectuals like Walter Lippmann, it meant security from economic want. “Instead of hanging human dignity on the one assumption about self-government,” Lippmann wrote, “you insist that man’s dignity requires a standard of living.” Government, then, is judged according to whether it is producing “a certain minimum of health, of decent housing, of material necessities, of education, of freedom, of pleasures, of beauty, not whether at the sacrifice of all these things, it vibrates to the self-centered opinions that happen to be floating around in men’s minds.”
You can think of the New Deal, in this context, as an attempt to synthesize the Populist and Progressive conceptions of freedom. Organized through industrial unions, workers have the power to shape their collective economic fate and, in turn, use the administrative capacity of the state to secure their economic footing and provide freedom from want and from dependency on the arbitrary power of private employers.
Of course, for the employers, this kind of arbitrary power is just another name for “liberty,” and a large part of the conservative opposition to social insurance and the welfare state stems from the belief that this expansion of state power is a threat to the sanctity of the market and the liberty of individuals to act within it.
But left untouched by a democratically accountable state, the free market is just another arena for the domination of the many by the few, of the subordination of labor to the dictates of capital.
Social insurance and the welfare state are more than a ballast against the winds of capitalism; they are part of the foundation of self-government and the cornerstone of democratic citizenship as we now understand it, where individuals are as free as possible from the arbitrary domination and authority of others.
Extreme opposition to social insurance and the safety net is, in that case, a natural fit for an authoritarian movement that tried to overturn the constitutional order and now wants to use the power it has to clean up as much of the scene of the crime as it can manage.
It is, for that matter, a natural fit for the entire Republican Party. Even after you exclude the MAGA radicals, you find a political party whose hostility to a broader, more equitable democracy is deep-seated and profound. You might even say that the rich tradition of American republicanism deserves a better and more faithful namesake.
Here's a guy who kinda knows what he's talking about - as long as we take what he says as an outline of what's happening, and what some of the possible outcomes could be, and not consider him some kind of Magic Eight Ball.
His conclusions about Putin's massive fuckup in Ukraine seem pretty solid. I just wish these guys would try a little harder to stay out of the predictions business.
This is generally centered on Hungary, but as he points out, nobody stands alone.
Gotta be careful with what we want government to do about the business of USAmerica Inc because the politics of economic policy can get very smarmy very quickly.
What I intend to do is along the lines of what I usually do these days - take what the Dems have to say with a large pinch of salt, and ignore the Republicans almost altogether.
Here's that same old thing we have to remind ourselves of all the fucking time: In the last 40 years, every time Republicans have run things, they've blown up the debt and the deficit, and every time the Democrats are in power, they've lowered the debt and the deficit - usually in a pretty big way.
Reagan and Bush41 tripled the debt
Clinton left office with a surplus
Bush43 blew it up
Obama cut it by half
Trump blew it up again
Biden has cut it by half so far
Republicans -
the guys who're supposed to be good at economics -
suck at it.
Democrats -
the guys who're supposed to suck at it -
are pretty fuckin' good at it.
Does Government Spending Cause Inflation?
Key takeaways
Inflation occurs when the cost of goods and services rises over time
Several factors contribute to inflation generally, and today’s inflation in particular, including consumer demand, supply chain disruptions and energy shortages
Some economists hold that government spending can cause inflation, while others believe that the current inflationary environment is unusual
Other economists believe the debate is more nuanced – in other words, it’s about when and where the government spends
Americans remain largely pessimistic about one of the most unusual economies in recent history. Much of this negativity runs back to inflation, with the most recent numbers showing inflation rose 8.5% year-over-year. As the highest spike in 41 years, it’s no wonder rising prices remain top-of-mind for consumers and investors alike.
Depending on who you ask, the cause of this inflation varies.
Some economists blame supply chain deficiencies, while others point the finger at corporate greed. The topsy-turvy housing market and resulting rent spikes probably pushed inflation along, too. And for many, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent energy shortages did nobody any favors.
Another common answer is that unprecedented levels of government spending had a hand to play. But historically, economists have largely agreed that the link between government spending and inflation remains weak.
So, what’s the truth?
Does government spending cause inflation – or are underlying factors to blame?
What is inflation?
Inflation describes the gradual incline of prices and subsequent decline of a dollar’s purchasing power. In other words, as prices go up due to various economic pressures, one dollar buys less than it used to.
But inflation as we think of it doesn’t just occur in a single good or service. Rather, it’s a broad-based increase, with prices rising at different speeds in different sectors.
Economists measure inflation through metrics like the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI). These calculate price changes in a “basket” of goods to measure national inflation levels. The resulting numbers are reported as inflation.
Generally, economists consider a small amount of inflation – about 2% – healthy for growing, functional economies. Moderate inflation encourages consumers to spend now to avoid higher prices later, which keeps money circulating.
But too much inflation – like the levels we’re seeing this year – can damage an economy. Continual price increases push the cost of essential goods and services out of reach for many consumers. Left unchecked, high inflation can even lead to recession.
Types of inflation
Inflation is generally described as the result of demand outstripping supply, or alternatively, the supply of money exceeding demand.
Several factors can play into these equations, from low interest rates, labor market changes or supply shortages. Based on the specific cause of inflation, we can divide it into two categories: demand-pull or cost-push.
Demand-pull inflation
Demand-pull inflation is perhaps the most common kind of inflation. This type occurs when the demand for goods outpaces supply chain growth, pulling up prices.
Demand-pull inflation often pops up when consumer demand rises in growing economies. An expansion in the supply of money or credit (via low interest rates) can also result in demand-pull inflation.
Cost-push inflation
Cost-push inflation occurs when the supply of goods or services fails to meet existing demand, thereby pushing prices up.
Cost-push inflation may crop up when labor or raw materials shortages prevent producers from manufacturing goods quickly. Natural disasters, global pandemics, trade agreements and exchange rate changes can all contribute to cost-push inflation. Does government spending cause inflation?
Now that we’ve looked at the definition and drivers of inflation, let’s address our question: does government spending cause inflation?
The answer, roughly, is yes – and in other cases, no.
Historical studies on government spending and inflation
Studies of the historical link between government spending and inflation find that the link is tenuous.
In particular, one study by the St. Louis Federal Reserve found that government spending has little to no impact on inflation. In fact, a 10% increase in government spending may lead to a 0.08% decline in inflation.
Others have found that government spending around the world may have minimal impacts on inflation, often in the tenths of a percentage point. Government spending and Covid-19
On the other hand, modern studies have found that the current link between government spending and inflation may be stronger.
In particular, the 2022 inflation spike followed two major federal spending programs under two administrations. The first, the CARES Act, passed in March 2020, while the American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021.
Collectively, these initiatives aimed to minimize the economic devastation of Covid-19 by distributing three stimulus checks, expanding unemployment benefits and providing extra funds to state and local governments.
While experts have credited these Acts with possibly preventing a recession, economists have also found that their passage correlates with an unusual spike in inflation. By providing extra capital to American households, economists note, consumers were able to go out and spend money they wouldn’t have had otherwise. In turn, this increased consumer demand, pulling up prices.
However, a recent analysis from the San Francisco Federal Reserve found that government spending only contributed to about three percentage points of today’s inflation. These findings corroborate an October 2021 paper that suggested stimulus checks made inflation slightly worse – but not to the extent we’re seeing now.
A full half of today’s inflation, they discovered, stems from ongoing supply chain issues as producers struggle to push out enough goods to meet demand. The war in Ukraine and resulting energy shortage, alongside a turbulent housing market, have also contributed to inflation, pushing up prices from several directions at once.
Not all government spending leads to inflation
However, not all government spending is correlated with higher inflation. It appears that the size and style of intervention matters.
For instance, the recent infrastructure bill is unlikely to contribute to higher inflation. Measures like this aim to buff economic productivity instead of consumer wallets.
In other words, instead of flooding the economy with capital via stimulus checks or tax cuts, they invest in new technologies and jobs. (Both of which, 17 Nobel-winning economists believe, could help ease long-term inflationary pressures.)
So, does government spending cause inflation – or not?
As it stands now, the question is less does government spending cause inflation, and more where and how government spending impacts inflation.
When government activities inject more capital into the economy, consumers have more to spend, which can increase demand. If suppliers fail to meet rising demand, they may hike prices, leading to inflation.
On the other hand, when government activities inject more jobs into the economy, inflation may modulate as capital flows more normally through economic pipelines.
When it comes to our current situation, we can also look beyond our borders for clues.
For example, many European countries provided far less assistance to their economies when Covid-19 hit. However, these countries are also staring down the double-barrel of low supply and inflation ranging from 2.5% to nearly 80%. That suggests that supply chain issues and other outside factors, rather than government stimulus, may have boosted inflation.
How to beat inflation as an investor
Regardless of the specific cause, inflation can spell trouble for investors. Even in higher-earning assets, too-high inflation can lead to poor or negative returns thanks to reduced purchasing power. That’s especially true in savings-based assets like high-yield, money market and certificates of deposit (CD) accounts.
For investors seeking higher returns, these investments may lead to better outcomes.
Stocks
When inflation soars, many investors turn to stocks to provide. While individual prices may rise and fall, and bear markets can temporarily wipe out even the best gains, historically, the stock market has always performed – eventually.
Of course, that doesn’t mean stocks are a guaranteed bet, especially short-term. But with a long-term buy-and-hold strategy, a well-diversified portfolio can beat inflation over years and decades. For a little extra oomph, you can invest in dividend-paying stocks to offset the impact of potential price drops.
Bonds
Bonds tend to offer lower returns than stocks, but long-term, they too can beat inflation. Bonds also comprise a critical component of well-diversified funds, as they lower overall risk and provide more consistent returns than stocks.
When inflation grows inordinately high, investors can also turn to TIPS, or Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities. This special class of Treasury bonds automatically adjust based on changes to CPI, providing inflation-adjusted returns over five, 10 or 30 years.
Real estate
Real estate is another common hedge against inflation. But it’s not just buying rental properties – investing in infrastructure and construction projects can also capitalize on real estate booms.
However, since we may be in a housing recession, real estate may not provide the same protections it has historically. Still, investors who believe real estate may rise again soon may consider “buying low” now to “sell high” later.
Commodities
When inflation picks up, investors often turn to tangible assets like commodities to protect their returns. Commodities include raw materials like copper and oil, as well as agricultural products like grain and beef. With commodities of all kinds experiencing inflation, investing in the right products can produce substantial returns.
As I recall it, historically, this has been one of the main harbingers of some pretty bad shit headed our way.
When doctors won't take a job in your town because they can't afford housing, something is badly out of balance. And if you leave it to "natural market forces" it will definitely fix itself eventually, but when it does, it'll probably look a whole lot less like the ebb and flow of the tides, and a whole lot more like Mt St Hellens.
(pay wall)
In Martha’s Vineyard, even the doctors can’t afford housing anymore
Essential workers can’t afford to stay on the island, putting basic services in jeopardy
The stacks of chicken broth and shelf-stable milk were dwindling as the food pantry entered the last minutes of the day and a 63-year-old woman in a Boston Red Sox mask hurried through the door.
Sharon Brown, the pantry director, greeted the woman at the front desk. As Brown logged the details she needed to collect into her system, the woman’s story unspooled: After 18 years of living on the island, her rent had suddenly shot up.
“I couldn’t believe it. Doubled!” the woman said. “I’ve never seen things this bad.”
“This summer was the worst summer ever,” Brown agreed.
What Brown didn’t say out loud was that she knew this story well. That she and her 14-year-old son had moved three times since June. That in two weeks, when school began, she had no idea where they were going to live. Finding an affordable year-round rental on the Vineyard had become next to impossible.
“Well,” Brown began, “if you know anyone who has a year-round...” Her voice trailed off.
The Red Sox fan considered for a moment before shaking her head.
“I don’t,” she said. “But I’ll keep an ear out.”
This is the part of Martha’s Vineyard most people never see. An island known for its opulence and natural beauty, a playground for presidents and celebrities, it is kept afloat by workers for whom America’s housing crisis is not an eventuality. It’s here.
Even before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) this week made a political statement by sending two planes full of asylum seekers to the summer haven, the dearth of affordable housing on the Vineyard had pushed its year-round community to a breaking point.
Schools have struggled to staff classrooms. Indigenous people whose families have lived on the island for centuries have been forced to leave their homeland. Firefighters and government workers can’t afford to stay in the communities they serve. People juggling two, three, even four service-industry jobs say they live each month knowing they are one rent hike away from moving into their cars or tents or onto a friend’s couch.
And then there’s Brown, who serves the island’s neediest, including its growing population of seniors.
This hollowing out is nothing new in cities like Los Angeles, New Orleans and Austin, where short-term rentals and investor home buyers have overtaken razor-thin housing markets and destabilized whole neighborhoods. But on an island where commuting means setting sail over temperamental waters, the Vineyard’s housing crisis is also an existential one.
“We’re hemorrhaging people who are our infrastructure, who hold this community up,” said Laura Silber, the coordinator of the Coalition to Create the Martha’s Vineyard Housing Bank, which led a successful effort this year to win support for a new fund for affordable housing. “If you don’t have municipal workers, if you don’t have teachers, if you don’t have emergency workers, if you don’t have someone to help families who are struggling and run the food bank, how does a community keep functioning?”
Nowhere to ‘shuffle’ to
In the winter, the 96-square-mile landmass of Martha’s Vineyard settles into stillness. The tourism industry’s grip on rental properties loosens, and the families who live here year-round rotate into more spacious winter homes for around six months. Only about half the island’s homes remain occupied all year, according to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission.
As the Vineyard thaws, what locals refer to as the “island shuffle” kicks into high gear. They pack up and move from those winter homes into summer rentals, where payments are made by the week and housing can mean anything from a shack with no kitchen or flushable toilet to a camper van or a room in someone else’s home. Cars with license plates from places such as New York, New Jersey and D.C. jam the island’s two-lane roads. Bars fill with bodies, crowds clog the beaches, and the Vineyard’s lone airport becomes the third-busiest in New England.
“Because the island shuffle is so ingrained in the culture of the Vineyard, we didn’t recognize it for what it was — housing insecurity — because it was just part of life,” Silber said. “Now there’s nowhere left to shuffle to.”
Brown found a steady winter rental when she moved to the island five years ago. Summers were tougher, she said, but usually she could find someplace to last her and her son, Carron, through the busiest months. Now, they are moving every few weeks — sometimes staying in a house for only a few days.
A similar emergency has hit in resort towns, beach communities and rural destinations around the country, from the Hamptons to Aspen, Colo., and Jackson Hole, Wyo. The more remote the place, the deeper the crisis.
On Martha’s Vineyard, policymakers have chronically underinvested in affordable housing and allowed investment properties and short-term rentals to proliferate unchecked. The island, experts said, is more than 10 years late to confront its housing crisis, and it is not moving fast enough to narrow the gap.
Between 2010 and 2019, the amount of housing on the island grew by over 4 percent, according to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission. But any progress was eaten up by the vacation-rental market. In the same period, the Commission found, the number of units occupied year-round dropped by more than 8 percent.
The arrival of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 made things worse. Affluent remote workers flocked to the island’s salty air and tree-lined neighborhoods. Some who already owned property moved in full-time, depleting winter-housing options. Others bought up old homes and new builds, driving the median cost of houses up to $1.3 million as of April, according to the State House News Service. In the past year, home prices rose 33 percent.
“We can’t build our way out of this,” said Silber, from the housing bank coalition. Instead, the Vineyard, she said, must recapture housing that has been lost to the investment and short-term rental market rather than leaning exclusively on new development on the environmentally fragile island.
Even doctors can hardly afford to live here. Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, the largest employer on the island and home to its only emergency room, has for months been operating with a quarter of its staff jobs left unfilled. In January, CEO Denise Schepici offered 19 jobs to doctors, nurses and other workers ahead of the busy summer months, during which the island’s population swells from roughly 20,000 to 100,000 and emergency calls skyrocket.
Each was turned down.
“How do you recruit when rents are doubling from $3,000 a month to $6,000 a month, which is what happened to one of my nurses living in a one-bedroom apartment?” Schepici said.
None of the changes advocates have called for — zoning laws altered to protect year-round housing stock, long-term funding streams for affordable development and short-term-rental regulation — have been enacted island-wide. Earlier this year, the Vineyard’s six towns voted to approve a housing bank, a place to store money collected off of large real estate deals that would fund affordable housing. But the island can’t create such a fund until the state moves to give local municipalities the authority to impose real-estate transfer fees.
“How do you recruit when rents are doubling from $3,000 a month to $6,000 a month?”— Denise Schepici, CEO of Martha's Vineyard Hospital
Last session, the legislature failed to pass a measure to do so. But state lawmakers have vowed to push one through this year.
“We’re surrounded by water. There aren’t a lot of options for expanding outward,” said Jim Feiner, a real estate broker and chairman of the housing committee in the town of Chilmark who advocated for the adoption of the housing bank. “We need to start being proactive instead of reactive if we want our community to survive.”
Employers step in
To keep the lights on, many businesses on the Vineyard have been forced to confront the housing crisis directly.
“We’ve had to get creative,” Schepici said.
For the hospital, that has meant leasing about two dozen dormitory-style bedrooms at a cost of about $3 million a year to offer subsidized housing for workers. Much more, though, is needed. The hospital is in the process of purchasing property in Edgartown with room enough to house nearly 50 workers and their families, but it will be more than two years before anyone can move in.
“You know, I didn’t come here to build real estate,” Shepici said. “I came here to run the hospital.” Schepici said. But for a wide range of businesses on the island, the choice is stark: House workers, or there won’t be any left.
Island native Jeremiah Roberts, 28, lives in a loft owned by his employer, Larkin Stallings, who provides housing to several year-round workers at the Ritz, a dive in downtown Oak Bluffs.
Roberts, who has been working since he graduated from high school, juggles a side hustle and a fledgling music career with two full-time jobs running his own landscaping company and manning the bar at the Ritz. He works days and nights, he said, so he can stay on the island to help his aging mother. He wants to avoid the fate that has befallen so many of his peers: Those who left rarely returned. Those who stayed have struggled to move out of their parents’ homes and make a life of their own.
The loft costs him $1,400 a month, a nearly extinct price point during the high season, when rent can go for more than that per week.
While the arrangement helps sustain Stallings’s business, he acknowledged that the setup creates a power imbalance.
“If [Roberts] leaves the job, he loses his apartment. He doesn’t have the freedom to move around,” said Stallings, who also serves as the vice president of the Martha’s Vineyard Community Services board. “Even though I offer it, I really don’t think this employer-based housing is a good solution.”
Moving every few weeks
When Brown was recruited to work as a chef at a hotel on the Vineyard, she was also told the job came with a place to live. But she quickly realized the accommodations wouldn’t work for her and her then-10-year-old son.
“I was in there with these kids, 20-somethings, who were smoking and drinking and staying up until 2 a.m.,” Brown said. “I had to start looking for something else.”
Brown and Carron, now 14, have not lived in one place for more than 11 months. Asked how many times they have moved since arriving on the Vineyard, Carron needed two hands to count.
“After a while, the moving starts to get annoying,” he said recently, as he prepared to depart yet another house, bags lumpy with clothes at his feet. “But you get used it.”
In her lowest moments, Brown thinks about boarding the ferry to the mainland and never looking back. She tried it once, after losing her kitchen job during the pandemic. She and Carron felt miserable.
“After being on the island for three years and not hearing people shooting, not hearing police cars every day, when we went back to that, it was a nightmare,” she said.
Last year, Brown was asked to return to run the island’s food bank, combining her experience in kitchens and as a social worker in Delaware. Seeing it as divine intervention, she said yes.
The pantry serves roughly 2,000 people a month, many of them seniors, low-wage workers, immigrants and families with children. More than a third of the Vineyard’s full-time residents are 65 years or older, according to Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, well above the national average of one in six.
Brown sees her work as a calling. She shows up even on her days off, puts in produce orders from home while her son watches TV, and answers work calls well after dark. One elderly woman, a longtime client, calls Brown each night to pray together before bed.
On Brown’s weekly food deliveries, she has fed people living in tents in the state forest and in cars parked overnight in beachside lots. One senior client, Brown said, spends her summer months living in a chicken coop out back so she can rent out the main house and “make what she needs to tide her over for the rest of the year,” Brown said.
Yet Brown still sees the island as a sanctuary, a place where her son can run around with friends or bike on his own to the beach. A place where she doesn’t have to worry as much about the terrible things that happen to Black boys in America — street violence, state violence or worse. Here, her son is free to be who he is: a soft-spoken ninth-grader who helps seniors with their groceries and volunteers at the food bank after school, who loves video games and rolls his eyes when his mom tells him to stop watching YouTube videos with so much swearing, then quietly complies.
“I ask him every time we’re about to move again: Are you sure you want to stay here?” Brown said. “And he says yes.”
By the second week of August, it was time to move again. Brown had been subletting a small Victorian cottage at the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association in Oak Bluffs for a month and a half, the maximum allowed by the community’s board of directors. When she asked for an extension, the board said no.
Despite posting pleas on social media, putting her name on affordable-housing wait lists, and exhausting her network of friends, colleagues and even clients at the food bank, Brown’s only housing option was to accept a weeklong plant-sitting gig at a friend’s house. The week after, she planned to take Carron on a 10-day road trip. It was more than a vacation. It was a way to buy time: If they stayed, they might have nowhere to live.
As Brown planned their journey — a stop to visit family in Maryland, their trip to Universal Studios — their return date ricocheted in her mind.
“I have to pray that something will be ready by then,” she said.
Saved by an act of charity
The limited supply of available housing has pit islanders against islanders, individuals against businesses.
In the spring, Lori DiGiacomo, 61, discovered her landlord was putting his Vineyard Haven house and the detached in-law unit where she had lived for six years on the market. A company that intends to turn it into workforce housing scooped it up for more than $1.5 million.
"The first thought that went through my head was, ‘I’m going to lose my housing,’ " said DiGiacomo, a kindergarten teacher who has taught the Vineyard’s children for nearly 20 years. “Then I realized: I’m going to lose my people; I’m going to lose my tribe; I’m going to lose my sense of place.”
Vineyard Haven was where she raised her child and built a life, working as a house cleaner, artisan and waitress on top of her teaching job. It was where she fed the neighborhood cats, where she imagined herself being as she aged, where she planned to retire and welcome her adult daughter home for the holidays.
Instead, DiGiacomo began to apply for teaching licenses in other states. She took to Google, sending a query into the ether: “Where to move at 60?” But then, she said, her school’s principal reminded her that if she can hold on for five more years, her pension payout would increase by around 75 percent.
“I wasn’t really thinking practically until I sat down and did the math,” she said.
After DiGiacomo was featured in a June Martha’s Vineyard Times story on the island’s attrition of teachers, a concerned reader offered her a one-year lease on the 300-square-foot basement apartment attached to her house.
“The only reason I have housing right now is because of the charity of one person, as opposed to a system that’s actually working,” DiGiacomo said.
DiGiacomo spent the final weeks of summer shedding pieces of her life. She rehomed her cat, gave away her dining room table, sold her Tiffany-style lamp and a framed photo of chickens. All the while, she recited a George Carlin-inspired mantra — “It’s just stuff” — between steadying breaths.
“This is where I want to be. This is my home,” said DiGiacomo, whose lease expires next summer. "Hopefully, God willing, I might just be able to stay.”
A prayer and a reprieve
Brown was in Florida when her landlord called with news. The Camp Meeting Association had approved the appeal for a six-week extension.
Brown was awash with relief. This meant she and Carron could move back to the Oak Bluffs cottage and ride out the end of the season. It meant a steady place to live — until October.
As she and Carron loaded the car once more with clothes stuffed in trash bags and her set of purple suitcases filled to the zippers, she repeated a promise he had heard before. One Brown isn’t sure she can keep.
“Don’t worry, baby,” she said. “We’ll find a year-round soon.”
"I worked twenty-nine hours a day at fourteen jobs, and walked 11 miles to class in the snow with nothing on my feet but Wonder Bread bags - in the dark and uphill and blah blah fucking blah."
Cliché du jour
If you had a really shitty life, and now you think everybody else should have a really shitty life, cuz hey - you did, and you turned out OK, here's the thing: you did not turn out OK.
Opinion Stop improving things right now! Everyone must suffer as I did!
DISGUSTING! AWFUL! I have just received word that life is getting marginally better for some people, and I am white-hot with fury! This is the worst thing that could possibly happen! I did not suffer and strive and work my fingers to the bone so that anybody else could have a life that does not involve suffering and striving and the working of fingers to the bone. I demand to see only bones and no fingers!
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thrashing because I have had the nightmare again, the nightmare in which someone else is being spared a small hint of the suffering I endured. The world should not get better! The world should get worse along with me and perish along with me.
Every time anyone’s life improves at all, I personally am insulted. Any time anyone devises a labor-saving device, or passes some kind of weak, soft-hearted law that forecloses the opportunity for a new generation of children to lose fingers in dangerous machinery, I gnash my teeth. This is an affront to everyone who struggled so mightily. To avoid affronting them, we must keep everything just as bad as ever. Put those fingers back into the machines, or our suffering will have been in vain.
When I see unleaded paint or un-asbestosed homes, I froth at the mouth and start stomping up and down like Rumpelstiltskin. And who are we to think we deserve better than to die of sepsis? Why shouldn’t smallpox be out in the world for us as it once was? Are we too good for scurvy, now? Our great-grandparents made do without penicillin, did they not?
What a fallen, broken world we live in. The audacity of people trying to eat food not contaminated by waste, or increase the number of rhinos in the wild — they had better not! Clean the air? YOU STOP THAT RIGHT NOW. Inhaling thick lungfuls of coal smoke was miserable for me, and it will be miserable for you. Put the cockroaches back into the kitchen, please, and lye back into the meat!
I look down at the face of my sleeping child and I vow: If this baby’s life is even one particle easier than mine was, I will burn this whole place down!
John Adams wrote that “I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.”
This just shows you what a fool John Adams was! No one should get to study Painting, Poetry or Musick EVER, and if they do, they should pay for it their entire lives.
I am not opposed to this student loan forgiveness plan because I fear it won’t ease the suffering of millions; I am opposed to it because I fear that it will.
I fought uphill battles and squinted into the night and toiled and burdened myself in the hope that my children, one day, would also get to work exactly that hard, if not harder, and suffer at least as much as I did, and have, if the Lord allows, lives worse than mine. God, please make their lives worse!
As usual, inflation is a complex thing that takes some real thought and a level-headed approach to policy.
And, also as usual, we get all kinds of weird shit coming from politicians, bankers, and business folk, while normal humans get stuck with the check.
John Oliver - Last Week Tonight
The basic point is that government can do some things that ease the pain as the economy goes about fixing itself, and Oliver points at a few narrowly-targeted policies that would help a lot:
Child Tax Credit
Renters' Assistance
Offset the cost (and the inflationary pressure) by raising taxes on high-earners
Do that for a year or so, and things should regain a little balance.
In the meantime, it'd be a really good idea to push for a higher minimum wage (again, offset by a reasonable effort at tax equity), and better solutions for Social Security and Medicare.
Just doubling the Soc Sec tax limit would put that program in the black pretty much forever, and could even allow consideration of expanding other aspects of the overall safety net as Boomers die off.
I'm a big fan of Keynesian Economics - at least the part about government being the basic circulation pump for the life blood of the economy (ie: money), and the part that says while government needs to stay outa the way as much as possible, it has to step in on occasion to be the Customer &/or the Employer Of Last Resort.
note: And that's about as far as I got in my first abortive attempt at college.
The biggest problem with that though is when we use government to boost this sector or that sector, or to provide a safety net that gets too big and too generous. If you go overboard on that shit, you get some really bad things like inflation and worsening inequity, which makes it all too easy for cynical manipulators to jump in and make some political hay out of the pain being felt by people who end up kinda grasping at straws - "Save me, Daddy - please".
So anyway, here's a fair rundown on some very troubling news from WaPo:
Five charts explaining why inflation is at a 40-year high
The bumpy economic recovery has had policymakers, economists and Americans households grappling with greater price hikes for gas, groceries, cars, rent and other essentials.
The latest inflation data, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed that prices in June climbed 9.1 percent compared with the year before, the highest measure in 40 years and a new pandemic-era peak. This is a breakdown of how we got here.
Persistent supply chain backlogs and high consumer demand for goods have kept prices elevated. More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has strained global energy markets and sent the national average for a gallon of gas above $5 last month. And though gas prices have since ticked down, there is no clear answer for when overall costs will subside, leaving Americans to feel the strain in their pocketbooks in the meantime.
The run-up in gas prices has become one of the most visceral ways people feel inflation in their daily lives. In some parts of the country, particularly on the West Coast, it was not uncommon to find gasoline well above $5 or even $6 a gallon in June. Since then, gas has trended down slowly, with the national average hitting $4.65 on Tuesday, according to AAA.
The concerns over soaring gas prices, home prices and rising rentshave economists worried about whether cost increases will last even after the coronavirus pandemic has mostly passed, and if the Fed’s tools will be enough of a match. The White House points to its recent moves to lower prices, including through the release of 1 million barrels a day from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve and an emergency waiver to allow use of blended biofuels. But gas prices in particular have become a fraught economic and political issue for the Fed and Biden administration.
Families across the nation are also facing higher prices at the grocery store and could see more of a pinch if Russia’s invasion causes widespread shortages of wheat, corn and other items. People are also stretching their wallets for dairy, fruits and vegetables, baked goods and meats.
Throughout the pandemic, new and used cars have been a kind of litmus test for the country’s supply chain issues and related price hikes. Used cars and trucks were a driving force behind the surge in inflation last year.
The market relies heavily on trade-ins and auto parts, which have been in low supply during a global microchip shortage. That pinch has made it more expensive for dealers to get any of their models, much less repair them. All of those problems are also hurting the supply of used cars, which depend on trade-ins as well as rental car company inventories.
There are some encouraging signs. The rise in used car prices — which made up a bulk of inflation for much of the past year — has slowed in recent months and are expected to drop as semiconductor shortages improve. The red-hot housing market is also cooling, as a runup in mortgage rates discourages aspiring buyers from competing for the few homes available.
The Federal Reserve has launched major interest rate increases to get inflation under control, penciling in seven hikes by the end of the year. In June, the Fed raised rates by three quarters of a percentage point, the most aggressive hike since 2000. Higher rates will slow the economy by making it more expensive to borrow money, which will discourage businesses from expanding and raise the cost of consumer loans like mortgages.
The challenge is a delicate one: If the Federal Reserve moves too forcefully to slow the economy, it could cause a recession and spell unwanted consequences for the job market and rest of the recovery.
“We’re not trying to provoke — and don’t think that we will need to provoke — a recession,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell told Congress last month. “But we do think it’s absolutely essential that we restore price stability, really for the benefit of the labor market as much as anything else.”
Keynesian Economics works. Holy fuck, does it ever.
While Republicans sit-n-bitch about "the debt" and "outa-control-spending", the US Treasury Dept says April 2022 was the best month ever for Budget Surplus.
Ever
We're overheated - inflation is a byproduct of a booming economy - so Yellin and her crew are trying to figure out that delicate process of "tapping the brakes" without tipping us into a bad recession, but yeah, Bidenomics is kickin' it. Eat shit and die, Supply Side assholes.
(I missed this one BTW - funny how the Press Poodles didn't mention it)
U.S. Treasury reports record budget surplus in April as revenues soar
May 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. government posted a $308 billion surplus in April - a record for any month - as receipts nearly doubled from a year earlier amid a strong economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.
The April surplus compared to a $226 billion deficit for April 2021, when receipts were reduced by a one-month delay in the annual tax filing deadline.
The previous record monthly surplus was $214 billion in April 2018. April has traditionally been marked by budget surpluses due to the traditional April 15 tax filing deadline, but deficits for that month were recorded in 2009, 2010 and 2011 after the financial crisis, and in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, a Treasury official told reporters.
Receipts last month rose 97% from the year-earlier period to $864 billion, also a record for any month, the Treasury said.
The growth in receipts was driven by an increase of $400 billion, or 274%, in individual non-withheld tax payments to $546 billion, with part of the rise accounted for by last year's tax deadline delay. But individual taxes withheld from paychecks also grew 8% to $245 billion in April.
Outlays last month were $555 billion, down 16%from April 2021. The decline reflected lower spending for COVID-19 relief, including the end of direct payments to individuals and lower payments for unemployment and small business relief.
For the first seven months of the 2022 fiscal year, the government reported a deficit of $360 billion, down 81% from the year-earlier deficit $1.932 trillion. It was the lowest deficit for the first seven months of a fiscal year since a $344 billion gap for the same period of fiscal 2017, prior to the enactment of a Republican-backed tax cut package.
Year-to-date receipts swelled by 39% to $2.986 trillion - a record for the period - while outlays fell 18% to $3.346 trillion.
Federal Reserve earnings for the year-to-date period rose 46% to $71 billion, due to the expansion of the U.S. central bank's bond portfolio over the past year. But the Treasury official said the growth would soon begin to reverse as the Fed pays out higher interest on bank reserve deposits due to a jump in interest rates.
The Treasury's interest costs climbed 32% to $60 billion last month and rose 28% to $350 billion in the year-to-date period, largely as a result of compensation paid to holders of Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), which are indexed to consumer price inflation.
The Treasury official said that interest costs on normal public debt securities increased by only $2 billion during the year-to-date period and the weighted-average yield on outstanding Treasury securities was 1.66% in April, versus 1.65% in April 2021.
The Treasury said last week that strong receipts would allow it to pay down $26 billion in debt during the second quarter, with a period-end cash balance of $800 billion as it cuts debt auction sizes. read more
First, my oldest just got word that he's kind of a big deal, so I have to brag on him a little.
PRESS RELEASE
For more information, contact:
Joey Martelli (703) 476-3420
jmartelli@shapeamerica.org
MSU Denver Student Nationally Honored as Major of the Year in Physical
Education
RESTON, VA, March 25, 2022 ---SHAPE America–Society of Health and Physical Educators will
honor Nick Roberts of MSU Denver as a Major of the Year during the organization’s 136th
National Convention & Expo, April 26-30th, in New Orleans, Louisiana! The award celebrates
outstanding undergraduate students in the health, physical education, recreation, and dance
professions who are nominated by a faculty advisor or professor. Roberts will be recognized on
Tuesday, April 26th during the Opening General Session.
“The outstanding achievements of future professionals like Nick is integral to the future of
SHAPE America and our profession.” says SHAPE America President Terri Drain, the Founder and
Coordinator of the Health and Physical Education Collaborative.
Nicks professors recognize his demonstrated leadership, innovative teaching, and a passion to learn a
multitude of pedagogy skills. He has shown academic aptitude and ambition through his work
which is creative, thorough, persuasive, timely and always well thought out and composed, He
was an active member in our campus physical education club; first as a member, and then in
short time he had taken on the responsibilities of our Physical Education Teacher Education
Vice President and then president position. Due to COVID he has remained in the president role for 2 academic years. He has successfully navigated the grant procedure to bring in money to
the PETE club.
A leader in the club, as well as in the classroom. He has taken on administrative roles with
precise details and vision, as well as mentored other club officers and pushed them to give
generously of their time. He was instrumental on numerous projects including getting members
to our state association convention as well as the national convention, leading several
fundraising events and participation in numerous club events.
About SHAPE America
SHAPE America – Society of Health and Physical Educators is the nation’s largest membership
organization of health and physical education professionals. Since its founding in 1885, the
organization has defined excellence in physical education, and our National Standards for K-12
Physical Education serve as the foundation for well-designed physical education programs
across the country. We provide programs, resources and advocacy to support health and
physical educators at every level, from preschool to university graduate programs. For more
information, visit www.shapeamerica.org
But then, Nick sent me a piece about studies conducted by various Über Nerds, looking at the possibilities that certain hereditary factors may contribute to the cycle of poverty.
This is very interesting, but I can see a problem in that there are plenty of Bell Curve devotees who could glom onto this as "proof that there's something wrong with those people - that they're obviously genetically inferior".
And that's definitely not how I read this piece. It's not about straight genetics - it's about epigenesis - how environmental stresses can change the way genes are expressed or suppressed.
Maybe this is the kinda thing the "conservatives" are afraid will be revealed if people are allowed to view Critical Race Theory as a viable tool in the study of things like economics and culture and our justice system.
Emerging science is putting the lie to American meritocracy
It's a long piece, and some of it gets pretty dense - here's my money quote:
The science of the biological effects of the stresses of poverty is in its early stages. Still, it has presented us with multiple mechanisms through which such effects could happen, and many of these admit an inheritable component. If a pregnant woman, for example, is exposed to the stresses of poverty, her fetus and that fetus’ gametes can both be affected, extending the effects of poverty to at least her grandchildren. And it could go further.
Studies of mice and fruit flies have shown that epigenetic traits similar to the ones Meaney proposed can be passed down, and last for dozens of generations. The effects of things like diet and prenatal parental stress have been observed to be inherited, not just through histone modifications, but also through DNA methylation and non-coding RNAs.7 In one 2014 study, the offspring of a mouse trained to fear a particular smell were observed to also fear that smell, even with no previous exposure to it. The effect lasted for two generations.8 In humans, inheritable effects of stress have been observed through at least three generations from parents who survived mass starvation (Dutch Hunger Winter),9 a fluctuating food supply (the Överkalix cohort)10 and the Holocaust. The effects of early paternal smoking and paternal betel quid chewing have been observed to be transmitted to children in a sex-specific manner, supporting biological epigenetic transmission in humans.11 According to a 2014 survey of the field, “the few human observational studies to date suggest (male line) transgenerational effects exist that cannot easily be attributed to cultural and/or genetic inheritance.”10
Even at this stage, then, we can take a few things away from the science. First, that the stresses of being poor have a biological effect that can last a lifetime. Second, that there is evidence suggesting that these effects may be inheritable, whether it is through impact on the fetus, epigenetic effects, cell subtype effects, or something else.
This science challenges us to re-evaluate a cornerstone of American mythology, and of our social policies for the poor: the bootstrap. The story of the self-made, inspirational individual transcending his or her circumstances by sweat and hard work. A pillar of the framework of meritocracy, where rewards are supposedly justly distributed to those who deserve them most.
What kind of a bootstrap or merit-based game can we be left with if poverty cripples the contestants? Especially if it has intergenerational effects? The uglier converse of the bootstrap hypothesis—that those who fail to transcend their circumstances deserve them—makes even less sense in the face of the grim biology of poverty. When the firing gun goes off, the poor are well behind the start line. Despite my success, I certainly was.
In the context of raw sewage seeping up from your septic tank and leach field, "soggy socks" is possibly the absolute grossest imagery anyone's come up with in a very long time.
Backed-up pipes, stinky yards: Climate change is wrecking septic tanks
Lewis Lawrence likes to refer to the coastal middle peninsula of Virginia as suffering from a “soggy socks” problem. Flooding is so persistent that people often can’t walk around without getting their feet wet.
Over two decades, Lawrence, the executive director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District, has watched the effects of that problem grow, as rising waters and intensifying rains that flood the backyard render underground septic systems ineffective. When that happens smelly, unhealthy wastewater backs up into homes.
Local companies, he said, call the Middle Peninsula the “septic repair capital of the East Coast.” “That’s all you need to know,” he added. “And it’s only going to get worse.”
As climate change intensifies, septic failures are emerging as a vexing issue for local governments. For decades, flushing a toilet and making wastewater disappear was a convenience that didn't warrant a second thought. No longer. From Miami to Minnesota, septic systems are failing, posing threats to clean water, ecosystems and public health.
About 20 percent of U.S. households rely on septic, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Many systems are clustered in coastal areas that are experiencing relative sea-level rise, including around Boston and New York. Nearly half of New England homes depend on them. Florida hosts 2.6 million systems. Of the 120,000 in Miami-Dade County, more than half of them fail to work properly at some point during the year, helping to fuel deadly algae blooms in Biscayne Bay, home to the nation’s only underwater national park. The cost to convert those systems into a central sewer plant would be more than $4 billion.
The issue is complex, merging common climate themes. Solutions are expensive, beyond the ability of localities to fund them. Permitting standards that were created when rainfall and sea-level rise were relatively constant have become inadequate. Low-income and disadvantaged people who settled in areas with poor soils likely to compromise systems are disproportionately affected. Maintenance requirements are piecemeal nationwide. And while it’s clear that septic failures are increasing, the full scope of the problem remains elusive because data, particularly for the most vulnerable aging systems, are difficult to compile.
“The challenges are going to be immense,” said Scott Pippin, a lawyer and researcher at the University of Georgia’s Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems who has studied the problem along the state’s coast. “Conditions are changing. They’re becoming more challenging for the functionality of the systems. In terms of large-scale, complex analysis of the problem, we don’t really have a good picture of that now. But going forward, you can expect that it’s going to become more significant.”
Pippin’s work in Georgia is one of several studies as states from New Hampshire to Alabama confront the effects of septic system failures. Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy estimates that 24 percent of the state’s 1.37 million septic systems are failing and contaminating groundwater. A project funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is examining the potential longer-term impacts of climate change on septic systems in the Carolinas. Virginia has created a Wastewater Infrastructure Policy Working Group to address the issue.
An EPA spokesman said the agency didn’t have a report on the septic problem but noted that sea level rise, changing water tables, precipitation changes and increased temperature can cause systems to fail. The infrastructure bill passed last year provides $150 million to replace or repair systems nationwide.
For a century, conventional septic systems have been an inexpensive solution for wastewater. They work by burying a tank that collects wastewater from sinks, toilets, showers and washing machines, holding the solids while the liquid percolates through a few feet of filtering soil, where microbes and other biological processes remove harmful bacteria.
When that doesn’t happen, bacteria and parasites from human waste flow into drinking water supplies or recreational waters, creating a public health problem. Nitrogen and phosphorous, also a byproduct of the waste, pollute waters, creating oxygen-depleted zones in rivers and along the coast, closing shellfish harvests and killing fish.
For decades, septic systems have been designed with the assumption that groundwater levels would remain static. That’s no longer true. “Systems that were permitted 40, 50 years ago and met the criteria at that time now wouldn’t,” said Charles Humphrey, an East Carolina University researcher who studies groundwater dynamics. In North Carolina’s Dare County, which includes Outer Banks destinations such as Nags Head and Rodanthe, groundwater levels are a foot higher than in the 1980s.
That means there’s not enough separation between the septic tank and groundwater to filter pollutants. The threat isn’t only along the coasts. More intense storms dumping inches of rain in a few hours soak the ground inland, compromising systems for weeks. Too little precipitation is a problem as well. The lack of early, insulating snow in the Midwest, attributed to climate change, drives down the frost line, freezing drain fields and causing failures.
Georgia spent years creating a comprehensive database of septic systems, the only state to complete one. “Everybody wants to skip to a solution — how do we build a new infrastructure for the future? But I think the story is really the value of investing in the data and in that preliminary research to make smart investments and wise decisions,” Pippin said.
While Virginia’s Middle Peninsula has a soggy socks problem, Miami-Dade County has a porous limestone bedrock problem. The soil under its 2.7 million South Florida residents allows septic tank effluent to reach groundwater, a problem intensified by climate change.
About half of the area’s 120,000 septic tanks were compromised during storms or wet years, according to a study. Roughly 9,000 are vulnerable to compromise or failure under current conditions. That number is expected to rise to 13,500 by 2040. The solution is to connect properties to a central sewer system, beginning with the most-threatened areas. So far, the county is using $100 million from the American Rescue Plan to begin converting homes to sewer and another $126 million to convert 1,000 commercial septic tanks. The plan is to expand sewer to the 9,000 most vulnerable properties within five to 10 years, if funding can be secured.
Connecting will cost between $5,000 and $20,000. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the county is looking for funds to help low- and moderate-income property owners.
“What’s at stake?” she asked. “I’m sitting on my 29th-floor office looking out the window at the beautiful bay. This is our lifeblood. Without a clean bay, we don’t have tourism. We don’t have health. We don’t have a marine industry. It is the lifeline, the economic driver.”
The cost Levine Cava outlined can be a barrier to low-income communities. In the Chuckatuck borough of Suffolk, a sprawling city in Southeast Virginia, the mostly Black, elderly residents of the Oakland neighborhood have suffered repeated septic failures in recent years. They blame the combination of new development increasing storm-water runoff and a failure by the city to maintain ditches carrying away the water.
When Roosevelt Jones, 81, moved into the neighborhood in 1961, he used an outhouse. Soon after, he installed septic. But in recent years, his system and others in the neighborhood have increasingly failed, backing up in sinks and toilets. During the 2020 winter, Jones, who has lived in his 1,300-square-foot cottage since 1961, had to pump his tank out four times at $350 each. “Normal is every five years,” he said. “When we get a bad rain, it’s going to flood my septic tank.”
When his toilet fills with sewage, Jones, who retired from a quality control position for a warehouse but still works custodial jobs, slips into a church he cleans up the road.
After the city ran a pipeline through their neighborhood to provide sewer service to a development of more than 100 homes uphill with prices starting at $300,000, residents were given the option to tie into the system. But it came at a cost — roughly $7,000 or more per house. Many in the village are on a fixed income. The price was too high. Only 33 of 75 property owners voted, with 18 of them favoring a sewer connection. “A lot of people got them [the petitions] and ended up throwing them away,” Jones said.
On Virginia's low-lying Middle Peninsula, surrounded on three sides by the Chesapeake Bay, the Rappahannock River and the York River, Lawrence has had a preview of the effects of climate change and the challenges to septic systems. Failing to address the problem, he said, could eliminate decades of environmental progress.
“You're sitting on all of the work for the last 30 years to clean up the Chesapeake Bay,” he said. One or two good hurricanes will destroy that because every residential home will become a brownfield because their septic tank is just sitting there full of bad stuff.”
Shortly after Lawrence started at the planning district in 1997, the General Assembly approved alternative septic systems in addition to the conventional gravity-fed systems. They’re engineered to have a secondary treatment that purifies the wastewater before discharging it into the soil.
Now, even those alternative systems are failing. Why? They don’t handle flooding well and flooding happens often on the Middle Peninsula.
Wastewater regulations for septic systems haven’t been overhauled in decades in states. Virginia updated requirements 20 years ago, said Lance Gregory, director of the Department of Health’s Water and Wastewater Services division. A bill passed last year directs the State Board of Health to create regulations making Virginia the first state to include the impacts of climate change on septic. The goal, Gregory said, is to not issue a permit for a system that 10 or 15 years from now will be an environmental and public health problem — and a costly repair for an owner.
Lawrence is looking for solutions, partnering with Rise, a Norfolk-based technology innovations accelerator, in a challenge to design septic systems that can be elevated much like HVAC systems. “Why are we building our communities the same way we built them 100 years ago when we know Mother Nature isn’t operating the same way she did 100 years ago? It makes no sense,” he said. “We’ve got to be reimagining and designing our communities differently. If you can elevate a heat pump, why can’t you elevate a $40,000 septic system?”
The problem percolating underground so concerned William “Skip” Stiles of the nonprofit Virginia advocacy group Wetlands Watch that he created an ad hoc group of policymakers and researchers from Georgia to Maine to share knowledge and discuss solutions.
He hopes the group’s “noodling” on the issues, as he calls it, will inform new regulations. In the end, the answer to the septic problem may not be to improve the regulations and the technology, but to leave threatened areas.
“The septic system is the canary in the coal mine,” Stiles said. “If you’ve got a house and the septic is starting to flood, it won’t be long before the house goes. We ought to be using septic failures as an early warning system for those areas we’re going to have to take people out of.”
But hey - it'll take us a while to fix all this - you can't just throw a switch and convert the whole world to a system that doesn't fuck it all up and make the planet unlivable, y'know.
It's not bullshit in and of itself - it will be hard and it will take time - but we've been allowing ourselves to be put off and paralyzed by that line for 50 years.
And for that same 50 years, we've known that we have to start somewhere. And maybe the place we have to start is all the way back where we understand that there are things you just don't fuckin' do for money.
