Category: economics

New Sinkhole the Latest Plea from Allentown’s Degraded Infrastructure

~ Chris Cocca ~ 2 Comments

Read the story here.

Some important highlights as they relate to the health of our community. Emphases added:

The 6-inch cast-iron water main is 107 years old, said Rick Dougherty, the city’s chief supervisor of water distribution.

“We’ve replaced a lot of the mains in the area over the years,” Dougherty said.

Allentown is fighting aging infrastructure throughout the city, as cast-iron pipelines and water mains from the turn of the century begin to degrade. A 12-inch cast-iron gas distribution line dating to 1928 is the prime suspect in the Feb. 9 explosion that killed five people and leveled half a city block in Allentown.

And although some gas and water pipes are replaced every year, it’s a daunting and costly task — with one gas pipeline safety group estimating the expense at $1 million for each mile.

 

I think most city residents rightly suspect that the gas and water lines beneath us need to be replaced. $1 million a mile? Fine. The new arena, which I support with a few reservations, will cost $159 million. UGI has something like 79 miles of gas line under the city, the degradation of which was a known issue 20 years ago. Yes, the cost of upgrades will be passed on to consumers without some kind of other chunk of money (ours anyway) earmarked to offset it.  How many miles of water piping need to be replaced?  Whatever it is, let’s do it.

It’s a good thing we’re in line for a hefty Community Development Block Grant.  Ooops.

In the meantime, the new sinkhole, which formed over the last 36 hours or so, is becoming national news:

The $9 Million Amazon Boycott and Priceless Found Irony

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment
An Amazon box on top of a box from the once globally famous, now defunct iconic Allentown retail brand. Found irony.

Speaking of the New Generative Economy (see previous post), donating clean water, trees, construction funds or socks (or buying fair trade items at local stores) works another kind of grace: it takes business away from companies who produce things in unjust conditions overseas and companies who package and ship them in unjust conditions right here in Pennsylvania.  Spencer Soper, the journalist who first broke the Amazon news, reports that almost 13,000 people have signed an online pledge to boycott Amazon via DC-based advocacy group American Rights at Work.

Soper’s new piece notes that 13,ooo people might equate to something like $9 million in sales.  Even if that’s only a drop in Amazon’s global bucket, imagine what that same $9 million could do, even when broken into pieces, for fair trade retailers and generative charities.

Here’ s the ARW open letter to Jeff Bezos, which you can sign and send online.

Related articles

A Tale of Two Headlines and the New Generative Economy

~ Chris Cocca ~ 3 Comments

I don’t typically buy USA Today, but I did yesterday because of this front-page feature about people giving the gift of clean water for Christmas. You may remember that this year, First Presbyterian Church of Allentown took part in the Advent Conspiracy and encouraged people to buy fair trade gifts or to donate to a few important causes in honor of loved ones instead of buying things for people who already have so much. The donation options at FPCA were:

  • Sixth Street Shelter expansion campaign (Allentown)
  • living gifts for a village in Malawi with whom our church has a connection
  • Gifts/socks/sneakers for Roosevelt Community School (Allentown)
  • Living Water International

This was a very successful campaign, and it was wonderful to see the national movement get the front-page treatment in USA Today. I noticed that today’s edition of that paper included this front-page headline: “Holiday Sales Numbers Fail to Dazzle.”

Welcome to the beginnings of the New Generative Economy.

I’m not happy that retailers are hurting, but I am happy that for all of the misery, the global economic crisis might yield some generative good.  When we have less money to spend, we realize how little we need.  Then we start to think about how so many people don’t even have that much.  Since we’re already going to spend less money on stuff, it’s easier to give more resources where they can do the most good.  Giving cash gifts to good organizations in honor of others blesses everyone.  Overheads have probably never been lower, and you can use resources like Charity Navigator to see where your money’s best spent.

If you have the money and the inclination to buy physical gifts in addition to this kind of giving, your local Ten Thousand Villages retailers have beautiful fair trade items hand-crafted by artisans from all over the developing world.

Related articles

Matt Drudge and Eric Scheiner Hate the Muppets, Seem Rather Fond of Poverty

~ Chris Cocca ~ 7 Comments

Headline writer Matt Drudge linked to a post by CNSNews video producer Eric Scheiner today that basically equates the folks behind Lily the Sesame Street Muppet with ye old Politburo.

Drudge’s headline: SESAME STREET Muppet Touts Entitlements: ‘I Get A Free Breakfast and Lunch’…

Scheiner’s take: “Sesame Street Muppet Pitches Government Dependence: Free Food at School.”

Now that you know the specific evil Sesame Workshop is apparently sanctioning, here’s a bit from Scheiner’s post:

(CNSNews.com) – A “food insecure” Muppet is helping to promote a national “Food for Thought” campaign that teaches poor families to seek out nutritious food and to eat on the taxpayers’ tab.

At the National Press Club on Thursday, Lily the Muppet – who worries about her family not having enough money to feed her properly — pitched free food at school:

“Sometimes we can’t always afford to buy all the food that we need,” Lily said. “I mean, but we’ve been finding lots of ways that we can get help…Yeah, for example, at school I get a free breakfast and a lunch…part of the meal plan.”

Rather than stave off starvation on the public dole, perhaps Drudge and Scheiner are suggesting that the nation’s chronically poor children, many of whom are being raised in food deserts, might sustain themselves on ideology.

Lily’s message is being circulated through schools, hospitals and food assistance programs as part of Sesame Street’s “Food for Thought” multi-media campaign, which includes DVDs and a booklet listing “services that can assist your family” as well as “referrals to social service agencies.”

Organizers say they have produced a million of the kits.

Here’s to a million more.  And yes, Matt Drudge, basic nutrition is an entitlement, and making it available to those who can’t yet provide it for themselves is the obligation of any society that styles itself as free and full of opportunity.

As for CNSNews: it’s owned by L. Brent Bozell III‘s Media Research Center, which says it aims to “prove — through sound scientific research — that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values” and to “neutralize [that bias’s] impact on the American political scene”.

How the hell is feeding poor kids a liberal or conservative issue?  Is it really more conservative or “traditional” to expect the market to take care of the poor?  And even if it is, what are we supposed to do while we wait for all of these layers of regulation and “entitlements” to be peeled back so we can freely suckle Market Mother Wolf?  If the private sector has to wait for lower taxes and fewer regulations before it solves the hunger problem in America, to hell with the private sector on this particular issue.

What’s so offensive to a certain radical conservative strain about things like the Food for Thought Campaign?  Is it simply hating to be reminded that poor kids actually exist, that they really do go hungry?  Is it really only politics?  Or, at the end of the day, is it really about hating those kids and their families because of who they are and where they live, and how easy it is to blame them for their misfortune, a reality so inconvenient to certain sacral political beliefs?

Cities and Prices (and Hockey), continued.

~ Chris Cocca ~ 1 Comment

Friend of the blog Jon Geeting shared my Free Market post from yesterday with some good insights and responses at his blog today.  This is the kind of online discourse I really enjoy: people of good-will engaging each other respectfully across platforms. I encourage you to take part in the conversation at Jon’s blog, but I do want to share a small excerpt from my own response:

It’s fine by me that Rite Aid provides cheaper goods and medicines to Center City residents, and God bless them for it. But on the ground in Allentown, based on conversations I had downtown over the weekend, some civic leaders really are worried that it’s going to be hard to lure and place that kind of store in the near future. They’re not worried the same way about replacing the dollar store (which is also needed). Another question: why isn’t Rite Aid simply moving across the street or up or down a block? Why isn’t the efficiency of the market making it compelling for Rite Aid to stay in the city? And if Rite Aid won’t stay, why should we be confident that Walgreens will come? If the market worked exactly the way we wanted, there’d be no such thing as food deserts, or, in this case, prescription deserts, right?

For me, the immediate issue is also framed by the experiences some folks had at the three “arena open houses” last week.  For months, people have been complaining about the lack of transparency that seems to be guiding the hockey arena project.  Last week, open houses were held in which various stations were set up and the public could talk with city officials, developers, and the owners of the former Philadelphia Phantoms.  One of the problems with this format, well-intended as it might have been, was that there was no chance for real public discussion.  If I’m being cynical, I might suggest a sort of divide and conquer strategy at work.  In any case, the Rite Aid concern came to me from downtown religious and civic leaders following these open houses, and they are worried.  So am I.  I’m not at a point where I feel confident that the market, as such, won’t create a healthcare desert in Center City.

Thank you, Jon, for picking up this discussion!

The Free Market Works Best When (Or Hockey, Rite Aid, Thai Proverbs and Doubting Government and Business)

~ Chris Cocca ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about the free market lately.  In part, I’m wondering why Center City Allentown has one good drug store (Rite Aid), and why that one good drugstore is being displaced by the coming AHL hockey arena (I generally support the arena project), and what that drugstore is going to put up its next shingle in the suburbs, and where that leaves Center City residents no longer able to walk or take reasonable transit routes to a drugstore of any kind, and what all of that says about the degree to which markets are efficient at providing basic needs.

One might argue that the arena project would not be happening without governmental canoodling and the creation of a special tax district downtown.  Sure.  But that doesn’t explain why there’s only one viable option for prescription drugs within a reasonable distance for residents who either walk wherever they’re going (we all say we want walkable cities!) or take transit (we all say we want more people riding buses).  Some arguments will come and go from the fiscally arch-conservative side: the people downtown are poor because the government’s meddling keeps them poor.  If it weren’t for government, those people would have better jobs, cars, nicer places to live, better healthcare options and so on.

And yet, at a time when rental prices and retail space downtown are likely to be at their lowest points ever (so much vacant space, but lo, an arena project looms), I don’t see a whole hell of a lot of savvy business types flocking into even the nicest, newest spaces the city has to offer.  If ever there was a time to come in from suburbs to set up shop, surely it is now.  And yet. Indeed, the coaxing of various businesses with tax breaks and economically favorable statuses is a tweaking of the supposedly pure state of equilibrium the market is thought able to deliver.  We’re in an economic mess, say some, because of government meddling.  In the process of wars on poverty and building great societies, lots of people got screwed.  These are not of themselves outlandish hypotheses. But when some fiscal conservatives take the next step to say that government has no real, legitimate role in trying to fix the mess it has created, I get confused, Columbo style.

Government makes mess.  Government perpetuates mess. Government never should have made this mess in the first place, so now government has no role in trying to fix it.

That doesn’t sound right, does it?  The real kicker: let business do what business wants and business will save everyone.

I’m not anti-business by a long shot, but I am very anti-dogma.  Enron was a business.  All those big banks that helped bring us to the brink of ruin were businesses.  Wall Street is a business.  Yes, Congress is a business. Like government, business can do harm and business can do good.  Like government, business can be generative.  Like government, business does not deserve our total, utter, faith and trust.

Here’s when the market really can cure all that ails you:

  • Perfect information is universally available, obtained, and understood on all sides of every transaction and hypothetical transaction.
  • Every consumer or investment choice is made by perfectly rational beings with the same exact meta-goals.

So, in other words…yeah.  Sounds good on paper.

Unfettered beliefs in the efficiency and tangential goodness of markets or government aren’t tenable forever.  At the local level, we long to believe that a rising tide will lift all boats, and, to a degree, I think it will.  But I also read a Thai proverb today that gave me pause:

At high tide, the big fish eat the ants.  At low tide, ants eat the fish.

I’m not calling anyone an ant.  But isn’t this idea basically the fear behind the fear the well-horned have of the Occupy movement?  And isn’t it the fear most people caught somewhere in the disappearing middle have in general, that when push finally comes to shove, when things get REALLY bad, it won’t be push and shove but blocks on fire, looting, violence, chaos?

Even if high tides lift all boats, low tides come regardless. Will we trust the government, the market, or will we invest now in each other, in communities, in partnerships, in new ways of being neighbors?