Another World Exists - Summer Begins in Madison

A few months ago I noted spring was here, another world is possible, and it exists right here in Madison.

This weekend was the summer solstice, which some people consider the official beginning of summer. My wife and I went to a nice summer solstice (aka Litha) celebration yesterday in Olbrich Park.

There was a bonfire, puppets representing the seasons, organizations with information about things people can do to improve Madison's lakes and streams, and plenty of kids running around playing. Parking contained as many bikes as cars.

If you live in a sprawling community where people commute from homes in one suburb to jobs in another suburb, where people don't know one another and are driven by fear and greed, it's not because of human nature. There are choices about whom you want to live with and how people plan the logistics of their communities. Values of a community reach a critical mass point at which most people go along with them.


Another world is possible, and often you can get to it without a passport.

Debtorship Society Derailed, But Clouded Thinking Persists

The New York Times reports that the percentage of people renting is rising in the wake the of the housing bust.

The article dances around the idea that the bust is reminding people that increasing rates of home debtorship is not a solution to social problems.

Nationally, rents have increased about 11 percent since 2005, when homeownership rates started to decline, though that growth is slowing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If these are nominal numbers, it means they've kept pace with inflation. You can go to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator and verify this by asking to convert the value of $100 in 2005 into 2008 dollars. It's $111.

That means despite the recent increases in the number of people renting, real rent prices have stayed the same. If there were more people than places to live, we would expect rents to rise. Thanks to the 2000-2006 boom, though, there is a surplus of places to live. That's why the rent price "growth is slowing" while inflation is rising, i.e. real rent prices are falling.

The article mentions a 68 y/o woman with low income, weak credit, and no significant down payment who wanted to buy a house with some friends. She and the non-profit who tried to help her become a homedebtor lament that it was easier to qualify a few years ago. It mentions this after several stories of how going deeply into debt to buy a house destroyed people's lives. The article leaves it to the reader to realize this woman was lucky not be able to get herself into this same situation.

The confluence of factors has largely derailed what Mr. Bush called “the ownership society."

The so-called ownership society is a good idea. A debtorship society is a bad idea. We need to focus on things that help people increase their income and net worth. It's an easier path to get into debt than to improve net worth. The easy path leads to the horror stories in this article. We need to be on the hard path.

McCain's Support for Nuclear Power is Right and Good Politics

As President Bush injected himself into the presidential campaign by calling for increased domestic oil drilling, McCain called for developing 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030.

Drilling for more oil is just delaying the inevitable. Nuclear power, on the other hand, will probably become a key source of energy as oil becomes more difficult to extract in the quantities that the world economy requires. My wild guess is that there's less than a 50% chance alternative energies other than nuclear can provide enough energy. It is most likely that alternative energy technologies will be used to store energy produced from nuclear sources.

I wonder whether President Bush and McCain coordinated this. President Bush tried to lay the blame for higher oil prices on Democratic policies. The attacks might draw regressives, who want to pretend like we can keep consuming our present levels of oil indefinitely, toward the Republicans. McCain's comments appeal to some progressives who realize that nuclear power may be the best option. This siphons some progressives away from Obama, whose support for nuclear power is tepid compared to McCain's.

Calls to Expand Domestic Oil Drilling Are Misguided

President Bush's call to expand domestic oil drilling is misguided. Today's high oil prices are an opportunity to develop alternative energies and to improve energy efficiency.

Oil is a finite resource. Alternatives must be found eventually. We should endeavor to transition to alternative energy sources on our own terms rather than struggling to maintain high levels of consumption for as long as possible.

In a crisis, we can always turn to offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR. In the absence of a real energy crisis, our energy policy should be to allow oil prices to remain high so we can transition to alternatives in an orderly fashion of a period of decades. If we attempt to sustain our current consumption until the last bit of accessible oil is extracted, the inevitable transition to alternatives will be much more painful.