Re: [GBlist] re. Piece of the "pie" and other guilt trips

["J. M. Shepherd Field Notes" <fieldnotes2002@yahoo.com>]

Hello Green Builders,

I am new to this list, and have so far just been reading and learning. I am a middle-aged student
of residential design & autocad...gone back to school chasing down my old dreams. Will be finished
with my degrees in December, and plan on coming out of the chute completely green. I love this
list, I am the only "green" student in my school. The recent thread on the piece of the pie is
something that really tugs at me, so here's more on pie eating...

I've been driving the back roads of the South for many years and have watched some interesting
changes, particularly during the last 8. Repo lots for mobile homes have been filling up to
overflowing. Small mom & pops have been going under. Entire low-scale shopping centers and
complexes in low-income areas have been closed out & weeds are growing up in the once filled
parking spaces. I'm seeing many more businesses which loan money until payday crop up. There are
places where you can get a loan on your car title. And most used car lots are now financing on the
spot. By themselves these things don't seem like a lot. 

The vast majority of people I know drive on interstates and avoid the areas I travel through like
the plague, and the things I mentioned above never make our local newspaper. When I mention these
things to people, they tend to look at me like I am a fool. But it certainly seems to me that our
economic "crisis" is nothing new, not when you look at the whole pie. 

In another town I lived in, it was popular with the elite crowd to fly down to South America and
spend a month or so wandering around, picking up locally made trinkets and art to return with it
and sell it at a huge profit. I asked some of these people about what they paid the local artists
in S. America and would then listen to a lecture about how much rice (or whatever) a couple of
bucks would buy down there. I admit I know nothing about macro or global economics, but it seems
to me a trout dinner with wine here is a trout dinner with wine there. 

Thanks for being here folks,

Jean 


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