I pass a mega high school on my commute and I notice it has a sign of all the staff and teachers who are retiring after 30, 35, and 40 years. They picked an excellent time to get out of Dodge. No kid from K - 12 gets to go to physical school more than 2 days per week. They're all doing online classes. Property taxes in the hoity-toity Chicago suburbs are astronomical. The reason mine aren't that bad is because I live in a neighborhood with schools that are considered some of the worst in the area. They don't seem so bad to me but I didn't attend them; my version of high school hell was in the rich area.
People move to the suburbs for one reason: the schools. Online schooling can happen anywhere and as you mentioned, homeschoolers have already been doing it for years, so of course they have better and more time-tested curricula. Suddenly, everyone living in 4.5 bedroom cathedral ceiling heat sink specials with a homeowner's association that doesn't allow you to choose how you use your house and yard are in a real bind. James Howard Kunstler nailed it: they live in an arrangement without a future.
Before this all happened, most of the overbuilt suburbs were glutted with half-empty strip malls and half-empty office parks alongside abandoned, dying ghost malls with one or no anchor stores left. And still nobody can open a small business in these places because commercial rents are ridiculous, not to mention the crazy and expensive bureaucratic hoops one must jump through to get started and remain in business. My commercial rent in a dilapidated strip mall in a not-great section of a shi shi suburb is three times my house payment, and that includes tax & title.
I'll be interested in seeing what happens when gas prices inevitably spike. Demand destruction has made them artificially low, but as Oilman2 mentioned on JMG's Open Post, there isn't a whole lot of new digging going on and that's going to spell trouble down the road. My small business almost didn't survive and the situation is still precarious. I have been so pissed about it, I wrote my own screed about it that I've had no trouble losing long time friends over. The overreaction and the masks have nearly cost me my livelihood. I think I'll muddle through because I'm scrappy, but I get so TIRED of the lack of responsibility these people take for feeding the Nothingburger Flu Wendigo -- none of this would have gone down this way if they had kept their heads on straight.
My question is: When is it their turn to understand why you don't take a naive, sneering "let them eat cake" attitude because they are the ones in the bread lines? Does it have to come to a head where we have to make riot-enabling mayors and Emperor-governors walk a plank or a guillotine march? If I had a hundred bucks for every moronic Facebook toxic feminist vegan I have blocked for their Marxist BLM and Antifa bootlicking and elitist cluelessness, I'd be extremely rich. It's laughable how they virtue signal from their comfortable apartments and houses, suggesting that everyone just order food delivery and that any reason not to wear a mask is an excuse. I ordered food delivery one time during this thing to help out a struggling restaurant owner I happen to like. Cost me $45 for a light lunch. And they wonder why people who are poorer than I hate them so much.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2020-07-24 04:54 am (UTC)People move to the suburbs for one reason: the schools. Online schooling can happen anywhere and as you mentioned, homeschoolers have already been doing it for years, so of course they have better and more time-tested curricula. Suddenly, everyone living in 4.5 bedroom cathedral ceiling heat sink specials with a homeowner's association that doesn't allow you to choose how you use your house and yard are in a real bind. James Howard Kunstler nailed it: they live in an arrangement without a future.
Before this all happened, most of the overbuilt suburbs were glutted with half-empty strip malls and half-empty office parks alongside abandoned, dying ghost malls with one or no anchor stores left. And still nobody can open a small business in these places because commercial rents are ridiculous, not to mention the crazy and expensive bureaucratic hoops one must jump through to get started and remain in business. My commercial rent in a dilapidated strip mall in a not-great section of a shi shi suburb is three times my house payment, and that includes tax & title.
I'll be interested in seeing what happens when gas prices inevitably spike. Demand destruction has made them artificially low, but as Oilman2 mentioned on JMG's Open Post, there isn't a whole lot of new digging going on and that's going to spell trouble down the road. My small business almost didn't survive and the situation is still precarious. I have been so pissed about it, I wrote my own screed about it that I've had no trouble losing long time friends over. The overreaction and the masks have nearly cost me my livelihood. I think I'll muddle through because I'm scrappy, but I get so TIRED of the lack of responsibility these people take for feeding the Nothingburger Flu Wendigo -- none of this would have gone down this way if they had kept their heads on straight.
My question is: When is it their turn to understand why you don't take a naive, sneering "let them eat cake" attitude because they are the ones in the bread lines? Does it have to come to a head where we have to make riot-enabling mayors and Emperor-governors walk a plank or a guillotine march? If I had a hundred bucks for every moronic Facebook toxic feminist vegan I have blocked for their Marxist BLM and Antifa bootlicking and elitist cluelessness, I'd be extremely rich. It's laughable how they virtue signal from their comfortable apartments and houses, suggesting that everyone just order food delivery and that any reason not to wear a mask is an excuse. I ordered food delivery one time during this thing to help out a struggling restaurant owner I happen to like. Cost me $45 for a light lunch. And they wonder why people who are poorer than I hate them so much.