What’s wrong with the USA
With all the political news and finacial disaster news, you might think this is a political post. It’s not. Honest.
As I was driving today I had a revelation as to one of the fundamental things that is wrong with the US, I saw it as I was driving, and then I saw three more examples of it before I got home. It’s a simple thing, and one that might not seem obvious at first.
Storage facilities.
Yeah, you know, those ‘rent a garage shaped space’ places that have cropped up all over the landscape like so many turds in a pasture. Sure, there’s valid reasons for having a storage locker, and they have always existed in some form or another. My grandfather rented out an old barn for storage.
But that’s not what we have here. Now we have flocks of these things everywhere. One of them on my route home is 5 stories high. What these represent is the gross over-consumption of the US. we have so much crap that we can’t fit it into our huge house, so we pay a couple of thousand dollras, or more, a year to rent a second garage.
Back in the late 1930’s members of my family lived in a 950 square foot house. Three girls, one brother, mother, father, and uncle. One bathroom. Now-a-days, a 1200 square house is barely large enough for a family of three, and I know plenty of couple who have much larger houses. And they still have too much stuff to fit in them. But they don’t want to get rid of any of that STUFF. They bought it, they own it, and they would rather let it sit in a off-site garage for years (and spend money on THAT) than get rid of it.
There’s one house in our neighborhood where the woman changes out most of the furnishings twice a year. She has summer furniture and winter furniture.
Really? I mean, serioulsy, really?
Well folks, we’re heading into Dark Days here and will finally be paying the tax for that Greed Decade, the 1980’s. Huge bailouts are starting, and wil only get huger. Maybe it’s time to take a look at the pile of crap in your storage locker and ship it off to a charity?
Chances are you’re going to need the tax-break.