Into The Shadow.

Have you ever wondered just what happens to all those people we keep reading about in the news, and in the government’s seriously flawed demography, who have just dropped out of sight in this depression? Yes… depression.

I’ve had it with the cutesy defining of a recession that in no way ended in 2009, as the politicians and their pet economic idiot savants claim. “Why, Skip” you say, “we had two quarters of positive growth in 2009″. Okay, and if you believe that math, I have some shares in Solyndra for sale for you, cheap.

Ask just about anyone in the great San Joaquin and Central Valleys here in California, agricultural regions that could have fed the world with their bounty, if the recession has ever ended. Ask them if they see anything on the horizon except more crippling regulation, taxation or punitive regulatory dictat from both the Federal Government and that runaway bunch of Marxist radicals infesting Sacramento.

There are pockets of chronic unemployment in some of those communities as high as 30% or 40%, with an average of a whopping 25%. A figure I found difficult to swallow until I heard them re-stated by some people in the valleys and by one of the few conservative lawmakers in California, Devin Nunes. I wish he was my representative. This guy is the real deal.

Parisian Rag-Pickers, by Raffaelli.

These people just don’t dry up and blow away… they don’t all end up on the welfare roles. What happens after the unemployment runs out? What happens to those who are not considered by an obviously out-of-control governance, more concerned with its own perpetuation than in the well being of its citizens?

They become the shadow society. Though they no longer show on the various statistics as actual people because they are assumed to have ceased looking for work when they run through all of the available unemployment payment extensions. They are out there. Okay, some of them will eventually find their way onto the welfare roles in one respect or another.

There are an unbelievable forty five million people on food stamps in America, undoubtedly our shadow people are among them. How many are there? 10-30 million? There are fourteen million people without jobs today. Those are just the ones we know about. Some few are the chronic homeless, a small group which would be about the same in an average economy, those addicted to alcohol or drugs or having mental illnesses who refuse treatment. Still an incredibly small number as measured against the whole.

The Shadow People have turned to a cash underground, barter, gleaner sort of life. You can see these people all over our city, by no means a great urban center, on the streets, avenues, alleys and lanes… searching for metal, cans, bottles and plastic that can be sold to recycling centers to provide a little cash. It brings to mind the rag-pickers and gleaners of 18th century England and France, when grinding poverty was the norm.

This is Barack Obama’s America. Is this what you want for yourselves and your families?
Think about it.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2011