How Do We Repair Our Economy?

Financial FAQs

“The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining. [State of the Union Address January 11 1962]” President John F Kennedy

 

President Kennedy’s maxim at his 1962 State of the Union address—the almost universal truth that the time to ‘repair’ our economy is when times are good—may seem dated today. At one time it was possible, but not for everyone today.

We have record federal debt fueled by a succession of economic blows—sequential tax cuts that didn’t pay for themselves, recessions, the COVID-19 pandemic, high tariffs, and several wars over the past decades.

And foreign investors are fleeing U.S. government bond markets that literally finance one-quarter of our federal debt because of it, driving up interest rates. Our ballooning federal debt is fast crowding out other government spending; maybe even reducing social security benefits in about 10 years.

Now is the time to repair our economic ‘roof’ while times are good. We have soaring financial markets and 3% annual GDP growth rates that have powered economic growth of late to pay down the soaring federal debt that is already at World War II levels as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product.

Alas, there is no agreement on how to repair our debt problem. This is while another war is creating a 1970’s-style stagflation that will add $trillions more to the deficit.

International Energy Agency (IEA) officials, such as Fatih Birol, say the current Iran crisis is more severe than the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, and the 2022 Ukraine-war shock, combined.

And businesses are not hiring new workers because of the economic uncertainty. It is fostering what has been called “The Great Hesitation” by the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ cited the Baker, Bloom and Davis Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, a widely watched measure of policy-related uncertainty, that has surged to levels “typically seen during situations like the 2008 financial crisis (i.e., Great Recession) and the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Republicans aren’t showing much concern about the expanded deficit on their watch. Firstly, the highest tariff taxes since 1930 at the onset of the Great Depression has sharply raised every day prices. And the Trump administration’s immigrant shutdown is depriving the U.S. economy of enough new workers to replenish our labor force.

This is in part because Trump and the Republican Party have been unable to rein in the blatant racism of its Christian Nationalists’ policy that has branded almost all immigrant as undesirables. It has brought immigration to a trickle that once averaged one million entrants per year.

Yet immigrants have literally been the life blood of our economy and seed of economic growth. Stanford Business School studies have shown that immigrants represent nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and more than a quarter of the nation’s Nobel Prize winners.

President Clinton was able to create actual budget surpluses in his last four years—from 1996-2000—by negotiating with congress to limit government spending on the military as well, until GW Bush busted the federal budget once again with Republican tax cuts while borrowing $trillions more to fight his wars on terror after the 9/11 attack.

How naïve President Kennedy sounds today when he said in 1962, “Members of the Congress, the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress. We are all trustees for the American people, custodians of the American heritage.”

We need to repair more than the roof to survive as a democracy. But we must first realize we live under the same roof.

Harlan Green © 2026

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Equality Is Good For Everyone!

Answering Kennedy’s Call

“And on the tax front, it’s time for rich people like me to pay more.” Mitt Romney

Getty/Bettmann

This quote from a recent NYTimes Mitt Romney Op-ed is my Christmas message: Equal opportunity hasn’t been available to many Americans, even though it is part of the American Dream—America is the land of opportunity that is taught in schools and heard by immigrants.

Why? Because it’s a larger economic truth that not all Americans have accepted. Equality is good for everyone. It should be self-evident, a statement of common sense. The more equality of opportunity among us, the more we can better ourselves, become more productive citizens, which in turn increases our national wealth (and lowers budget deficits).

It was certainly the dream of immigrants, such as my mother, a British citizen born in Jamaica.

But there are times such as today when many Americans don’t believe it is possible, which is why we are living in another Gilded Age with the worst income inequality of the developed world. It is on a par with developing countries in Africa and has been the major cause of recessions and the Great Depression.

Many have bought the counter narrative by those that don’t like equality, such as Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters, part of the privileged few at the top of the income ladder who want us to believe they are the most qualified to create greater wealth for the rest of us.

This Gilded Age was formed like the last Gilded Age of President William McKinley, from a concentration of power among the wealthiest oligarchs. Then it was monopolies in such as the newly created railroad and oil industries.

Today, it is small government policies of Donald Trump that mirror the trickle-down economic policies of President Reagan because enough Americans believed it, believed government was the problem and cutting taxes the solution, believed that equality is not good for everyone because we live in a zero-sum world with limited resources. What is given to one must be taken from another.

The conservative position espoused by 1970s Economist Arthur Okun, for instance, was that greater equality meant less market efficiencies to produce and so fewer incentives for greater wealth, since leveling the playing field meant leveling out the opportunity for large profits.

But that has never been the case. There has always been copious evidence that the opposite is true; that overly large profits have led to diminished household wealth and breakup of communities.

One can measure inequality with such as the CIA’s World Factbook that ranks inequality among nations. Those with the greatest equality also have less violence, greater freedoms, greater health, and guaranteed vacations!

Richard Wilkinson’s TEDx lecture and book with Kate Pickett, “The Spirit Level” is one of the best studies of the dire effects of income inequality on the quality of life. The most important factor, and a sign of dire consequences when inequality has approached the level of the Great Depression, are the US violent crime and incarceration rates, which Wilkinson discusses at length.

The U.S. is by far the most violent country in the world—worse than any other developed country with the highest incarceration rates. Efforts to reverse such inequality have begun on the local levels, even if congressional conservatives have blocked raising the miniscule national minimum wage of $7.25 per hour that was last set in 2009.

It is worth just $5 per hour today whereas blue states like California and Connecticut have raised their minimum wage to $16.90 per hour in line with rising livings costs.

And there is an increasing awareness of the income disparities, such as the fact that corporate CEOs now earn more than 300 times the income of their employees, and certain hedge fund managers have reported an annual income of $1 billion.

The Center for American Progress launched the Washington Center For Equitable Growth, which aims to deepen the economic critique of inequality. It was set up by Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, among others, who is known with his partner Thomas Piketty as the first economists to historically research the history of income distribution over the past 100 years.

The mission statement of the Center explains why it is needed:

“New research suggests that growing inequality in the United States may have broad social and economic effects — by reducing stable demand for goods and services, dampening entrepreneurialism, undermining the inclusiveness and responsiveness of political and economic institutions, limiting access to education, and stunting individual development. Yet our understanding of how these mechanisms interact with the broader economy is limited.”

Mitt Romney’s Op-ed has voiced one of the major issues confronting Americans today—how to fix the overwhelming federal debt load that threatens the ‘full faith and credit’ of the U.S. government.

“The largest source of additional tax revenues is also probably the most compelling for the fairness and social stability. Some call it closing a tax code loophole but the term “loopholes” grossly understates their scale. “Caverns” or “caves” would be more fitting,” said Romney

Donald Trump’s flailing attempts to use higher tariffs to pay down federal debt, when it is in fact another tax on all Americans, is maybe the most important reason to follow Mitt Romney’s advice.

Taxing the wealthiest that haven’t been “paying their fair share”—including Donald Trump’s billionaire supporters, would close one of the largest loopholes that is endangering the U.S. economy, as Senator Bernie Sanders continually reminds us.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Retail Sales Continue Decline

 Financial FAQs

“Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August 2025, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $732.0 billion, up 0.6 percent (±0.4 percent) from the previous month, and up 5.0 percent (±0.5 percent) from August 2024.” Census.gov

FREDretailsales

The financial markets rallied because the US Census Bureau’s August retail sales report showed consumers were still shopping and might save the holiday season for retailers. But it couldn’t hide the damage from the tariff wars.

The FRED graph of retail sales shows the huge monthly fluctuations in sales due to the tariff uncertainty. January retail sales (i.e., when Trump was sworn in) plunged 1%. In March it rose 1.3% to get ahead of Trump’s April 2 retaliatory tariffs. Then it plunged for two more months before Trump announced the 90-day reprieve, after which it rose 1% before beginning the monthly sales decline to 0.6% in August.

And retail sales are reported without inflation factored in as I highlighted above. Today’s inflation rate is 3% and climbing, so ‘real’ retail sales on average have been increasing just 2%. And this must be in large part because of the decline in the number of shoppers.

The latest unemployment report showed there has been a -313,000 decline year-over-year in the working population mostly thanks to the ICE roundup of undocumented immigrants. Although less than 100,000 undocumented immigrants have been incarcerated by ICE, there are millions more hiding in their homes or elsewhere to avoid being arrested.

Also factor in the job decline from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The economy created half as many new jobs from early 2024 to early 2025 in its national benchmark reassessment of the job market—a loss of -991,000 jobs—amounting to about 71,000 new jobs a month instead of the previously reported 147,000.

This decline will eventually figure into economic growth as well, since consumers power two-thirds of GDP growth.

The financial markets are in a relief rally because the tariffs (i.e., import taxes) aren’t yet stopping consumers from shopping and eating. New car and car parts sales increased in August for the third month in a row. Car shoppers have been buying more vehicles than usual for the past several months to avoid anticipated price increases in the coming months as tariffs take full effect.

Americans have also spent more on certain items that are heavily imported, such as coffee and car parts, whose prices have risen (coffee prices are up 15%, thanks in part to Trump’s 50% tariffs in Brazilian imports).

Another critical category, restaurant sales, advanced 0.7% last month. Overall restaurant spending is up 6.6% in the past three months compared with the same three-month period one year ago.

People buy more prepared food when they are confident in the economy. They eat out less when they are anxious about their jobs, according to MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash, a commentator I like to follow.

Wednesday’s Federal Reserve rate cut could power more consumer spending and higher inflation. Many upper income earners are willing to pay the higher tab, but not the bottom 20 percent of income earners.

And the bottom 20 percenters are in the main Trump supporters. So, I for one hope the Supreme Court disallows many of the tariffs-by-executive order Trump is foisting on the rest of the world. They are counter-productive, since their goal is not really economic. They are tax increases on all Americans to aid in paying down the huge debt incurred from Trump’s gigantic transfer of wealth in his big beautiful tax bill.

So he will use any excuse to levy them. The 50 percent Brazilian tariff is an excellent example, since Brazil imports more from the US than it exports. Trump has said he did it to attempt to influence the outcome of convicted felon buddy Jair Bolsonaro’s trial. It didn’t work, of course, as Bolsonaro is going to jail.

Trump wants to be a dictator, and a major trait of dictators is the accumulation of enormous wealth, not to “lift all boats” as JF Kennedy once said, but their own boats while the rest of US sink.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

The Bully Mentality--III

 ANSWERING the KENNEDYS' CALL

Why has the bullying behavior of one political party intimidated some of our most powerful men? Reports say that billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and JP Morgan’s Jamie Diman won’t publicly endorse Kamala Harris, even though they have donated to her campaign and say privately they will vote for her?

Timothy Snyder in his latest book, On Freedom, tells us what is necessary to actively preserve and expand freedom, rather than remain quiet, which is the choice for American voters in this Presidential election. One must put their body, not just their money, on the line to successfully oppose authoritarians, as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelens’kyi has done in opposing Putin’s invasion of his land.

Snyder meant one must take a public stand, however dangerous it might seem, because freedom itself is on the line. When Snyder asked Zelens’kyi why he didn’t flee when Russian first invaded the Ukraine as many thought he would do, Zelens’kyi replied, “I could not have done otherwise.”

“He was in the company of others who were also taking risks,” said Snyder. “He understood the situation, he said, because of what it meant to represent others. A president, he said, was only the first grain of sand in a turning hourglass.”

Reuters-January 6

The news that some of our wealthiest men won’t publicly endorse Harris highlights the stakes in this Presidential race, and how fearful even powerful men can be before someone who threatens retaliation, including bodily harm, against anyone who opposes him.

These men don’t understand what underlies the bully mentality of one political party that has no regard for election outcomes. Trump’s own niece has called Trump a coward, and in fact bullies do pick on the weakest who will stand down when opposed by those who stand up to them, say psychologists and psychiatrists.

I first wrote about a certain political party’s Bully Mentality in 2012. “Why do Americans have such a problem with bullies? Whether in schools, in politics, or on Internet social media? The result has been teenage suicides, horrendous school shootings by students who felt bullied or belittled, and now a whole political party that opposes anything that smacks of aiding the poorest, seniors, and less educated.”

Donald Trump’s threats of retaliation have only intensified so close to November 5. Trump aides such as General John Kelley, his Chief of Staff, says he is acting like a fascist who openly supports Russian’s Putin in his Ukraine invasion and has said he wanted “Generals like Hitler had” to put down demonstrations.

The real lessons Americans should take from such tactics of a wannabe dictator was first spelled out in Timothy Snyder’s best-seller On Tyranny:

• #1) “Don’t obey in advance—Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.”
• #2) “Defend Institutions—It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. So choose an institution you care about—a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union—and take its side.”
• #3) “Above all believe in truth,” as without truth there is no trust, and without trust there are no effective laws, which leads to tyranny.

Candidate Donald Trump, has made a point of blatant lying, meaning he wants his followers to believe whatever he says rather than objective facts such as global warming, or size of the audience that attended his inauguration.

What better example is there of real freedom and the preservation of our democracy than President Zelens’kyi and the Ukrainian people who are literally putting their own bodies on the line in opposing the Russian bully next door; for those Americans who remain silent?

Harlan Green © 2024

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Is This Another Upswing?

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

Something is going on in the American culture and psyche, a change that I believe will return us to a more optimistic era of hope and possibilities.

I see what Pulitzer prize-winner and Political Scientist Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) and co-author Shaylyn Romney Garrett describe in their new book, The Upswing; How America Came Together a Century Ago and How WE Can Do It Again, as a return to a more progressive “We” era, a societal coming together with less divisiveness than we have experienced in recent decades.

Simon&Shuster

“Americans Hate Divisiveness, We Need to Demand More,” is the headline of a recent PEW Research poll, in which: “57 percent of Americans believe that partisan conflicts receive too much attention these days. And 78 percent say there is too little focus on important issues facing the country. But if we want something different in the political dialogue, we the people need to demand it by rejecting divisive rhetoric and rewarding substance and solutions.”

I have called recent decades the Age of Narcissism. It was a time when “what’s in it for me” topped “what’s in it for us.”

Putnam and Garrett describe American history over the past 125 years with the “I-We-I” curve, using a series of bell-shaped curves to evidence the history of “a gradual climb into greater interdependence and cooperation, followed by a steep descent into greater independence and egoism.”

There is mounting evidence we have begun such a change that resembles earlier, more progressive eras. Putnam and Garrett have called it “The Upswing”, a return to the “We” era that we last experienced in the 1960s, before the Vietnam War and killings of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr., tore our country apart in a de facto civil war of red states vs. blue states.

The Kennedys and MLK, Jr. were the upholders of the last “We” era before we descended into our dark ages, accompanied by a greater lawlessness and distrust of our laws and institutions.

The sixties was the decade of greater voting and civil rights, income equality, and equal opportunities in education and the workplace with the enactment of anti-discrimination laws.

I came of age when President Kennedy promised a New Frontier of peace and end to the cold war that I also believed would happen after listening to him as a student and then volunteering for the Peace Corps. Kennedy instilled a ‘can do’ spirit that anything and everything was possible when he said there were better ways to serve the country than war: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Sarge Shriver, the Peace Corps first director, then adopted Rotary’s motto for PC Volunteers, “Service Above Self.”

The descent into darkness was also a time when many Americans were in the throes of “Deaths of Despair…” said Nobel Prize-winner Angus Deaton and Anne Case, who uncovered the damage done by drug use and suicides among the rust-belt workers who had lost their industrial age jobs.

Maybe the change from the darkness to light was first noticeable during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the weaknesses of excessive individualism became evident in the partisan divide over the treatment of its victims—when literal survival required cooperation over competition, regardless of the politics or religion.

Positive changes also occurred with modern technologies such as the Internet that enabled Americans to talk to each other more freely. This may sound counter-intuitive with the ‘anything goes’ frontier mentality of its abusers and propagandists, but it has enabled the younger generations to be seen and heard much more than older generations.

Pollsters have seen the changes in our younger generations towards more communality. They are the Internet generations that communicate and get their news via cell phones and laptops, are more ethnically diverse, and less intolerant.

PEW reported in 2020, “Generation Z represents the leading edge of the country’s changing racial and ethnic makeup. A bare majority (52%) are non-Hispanic white – significantly smaller than the share of Millennials who were non-Hispanic white in 2002 (61%). One-in-four Gen Zers are Hispanic, 14% are black, 6% are Asian and 5% are some other race or two or more races.”

The earliest era of great change described by Putnam and Garrett was when citizens and parties come closer together in the turn of the last century, the Progressive era, which gained full force when Vice President Teddy Roosevelt became the President with the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.

“The Progressive movement did not eliminate polarization, to be sure, but in reflecting reformist, egalitarian, and even communitarian sentiments among leaders of both major parties, it laid the groundwork for decades of declining polarization,” they said.

There is something else bringing people together, much of it involuntary—the growing threat of climate change. The overheating and droughts in major regions of planet Earth have caused massive migrations from areas of famine and overpopulation that is creating a more global population mix.

There’s a consequent backlash that is creating anti-immigrant policies such as Brexit, but it is being countered with the so-called DEI policies (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies created by progressives that increase egalitarianism, which is another way of saying it means to reduce the record wealth and income inequality fostered during the dark ages.

It will require more egalitarianism among developed countries with labor shortages such as the U.S. as we become even more ethnically and racially diverse. We have no choice but to welcome immigrants to maintain economic growth.

In fact, we see it already happening with the younger generations.

“A recent online survey found that younger generations are more optimistic than older generations about becoming wealthy in the future.  Fully 69 percent of Gen Zers and 54 percent of millennials who don’t consider themselves wealthy now said that they think that they will be wealthy someday, a survey by Lending Tree revealed, as opposed to 41 percent overall. The survey, conducted by Question Pro in early September was taken by 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 77.”

I have listed just a few of the changes for good that are coming. It’s happened in the past and WE are doing it again!

Harlan Green © 2024

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Global Connections TV Interview

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

Here is Global Connections Television interview about Building Community: Answering Kennedy’s Call, a memoir of my years of public service.

Global Connections Television (GCTV), the only talk show of its type in the world, has featured a myriad of guests ranging from leaders at the UN to the private sector to academics to non-governmental organizations.

Harlan Russell Green, a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkey, is the 2023 Winner of the Peace Corps Writers’ Publisher’s Award for his latest book on “Building Community: Answering Kennedy’s Call.” Mr. Green is a Rotarian, retired Mortgage Banker, and Editor/Publisher of Popular Economics Weekly, a financial wire service he began in 2000.

The US Peace Corps put him on an international trajectory that provided unique opportunities to work with the US Environmental Protection Agency, Caesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers of America, and several community development projects to create sustainable, livable areas.

One of his award-winning films was the “The Great Clean Air Debate.” With the UFWA, he produced “Fighting for Our Lives” and “Why We Boycott.” He also worked on projects with Rotary International and Partnering for Peace, an organization of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who are now Rotarians that strive to connect Rotary Clubs with Peace Corps Projects.

I began writing this memoir in 2017, after wondering how it was possible that Americans had elected a president suffering a severe mental disorder. Did it mean our democracy was dying or already dead, and Americans now wanted a demagogue as president who believed that he was above all laws and the constitution?

It reminded me in many ways of the 1960s when there was just as much social unrest and different ideas of democracy. This was the era of McCarthyism and communist witch-hunting, right wing against left wing political views, the civil rights movement, and an unpopular war in Vietnam that was fracturing American communities.

We coped with the dysfunction and cynicism then by searching for communities that could mirror our values and ideals, and when we found them, to contribute to their growth.

Former President Obama challenged Americans to inspire the youth to a life of service in 2017 after he left the presidency; and the youth he talked about are my target audience. He said then:

“We have some of the lowest voting rates of any democracy and low participation rates that translate into a further gap between who’s governing us and what we believe. The only folks who are going to be able to solve that problem are going to be young people, the next generation. And I have been encouraged everywhere I go in the United States, but also everywhere around the world to see how sharp and astute and tolerant and thoughtful and entrepreneurial our young people are. A lot more sophisticated than I was at their age. And so the question then becomes what are the ways in which we can create pathways for them to take Working to develop successful communities is as important today because of the deep divisions and the possibility of future wars.leadership, for them to get involved?”

Working to develop successful communities is as important today because of the deep divisions and cynicism today and possibility of future wars.

Harlan Green © 2024

Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Chapter Eleven - Building a Livable Community

 

Old Town’s Revival

As we began to redesign Goleta’s Old Town District, we realized our efforts might apply to a livable city as well.

As recently as 2005, the Institute of American Architects defined a such a community as. . . “broadly speaking, a livable community recognizes its own unique identity and places a high value on the planning processes that help manage growth and change to maintain and enhance its community character.”

Thoughts of forming a new city of Goleta were also revived, as the actual planning of Old Town’s future began. There had been several unsuccessful efforts to form a city since the 1970s. The Goleta Old Town Revitalization Committee, a mix of local officials and residents that wanted Old Town’s infrastructure and services upgraded, was now created, and I was appointed its chairman. Hearings were held in Old Town’s Community building so county planners could learn what Goleta’s residents wanted for a future town center. We were following the precepts of community organizing in bringing citizens together to solve some of the problems afflicting such a diverse community.

Goleta in many ways was a microcosm of small-town America and all that had happened to those communities since the sixties: rapid population growth with little concern for the environment. It had an early history combining both rural and urban life with industrial and research centers while being adjacent to the Santa Barbara Airport. I wanted to participate in this organization (that included some future Goleta city mayors), because it could aid in giving the Goleta Valley its “own unique identity” that planners and architects deemed requisite for a livable community.

I had read and was influenced by M. Scott Peck’s book The Different Drum, describing the elements that bring a community together to achieve whatever they want. His approach epitomized for me the essence of community development. Dr. Peck, a medical doctor, psychologist, and author of a better-known prequel, The Road Less Traveled, broke down the steps that a community goes through to come together in a meaningful way in The Different Drum.

He warned that the process could take time. Any community usually goes through four stages to reach agreement and to be able to function effectively, whatever its goals. He characterized these stages as Pseudo community, Chaos, Emptiness, and (true) Community.

Pseudo community is the first gathering of any group with the initial pleasantries and avoidance of conflict in the desire to be nice to each other. But it is a false community, because until the second stage of Chaos is reached, individual differences aren’t revealed, and a discussion of the real problems doesn’t surface.

Chaos described the early stages of our hearings when open discussions brought out the conflict between those residents who loved Old Town’s funkiness and cheap rents, and those landlords and landowners who wanted to improve their properties. The goal of the Old Town Advisory Committee was to bring the sides together. There was also a Goleta Beautiful organization that wanted to preserve and restore some of the more historic Old Town structures.

Dr. Peck’s third stage is Emptiness: a time of resignation, when the group or organization gives up their individual prejudices, ideologies, control needs, and begins to see what can be accomplished as a group. In Old Town, it wasn’t until the second year of the hearings that this happened. More Old Town residents were put on the committee, and we began to see a vision of what a revitalized Old Town could be for the Goleta community.

After many hearings and dialogues with planners, architects, developers, and residents that included a weekend Design Charrette that I will discuss in a later chapter, the committee members began to have a sense that we were all in this together and would be able to create something beneficial for the community.

Dr. Peck wrote:

". . . initially I thought this book’s title should be “Peacemaking and Community”. But that would put the cart before the horse. For I fail to see how we Americans could effectively communicate with the Russians, (or any peoples of other cultures) when we don’t even know how to communicate with the neighbors next door, much less the neighbors on the other side of the tracks."

In our culture of rugged individualism— in which we generally feel that we dare not be honest about ourselves, even with the person in the pew next to us—we bandy around the word, “community”. . . [but] if we are to use the word meaningfully, we must restrict it to a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other.¹

The Old Town Revitalization Committee needed two years and 100 hearings to finally form the Old Town Revitalization Plan.

Once the Plan’s CEQA (California’s Environmental Quality Act) study was approved—a study required to name and mitigate the environmental hazards we might encounter—the County applied to the state of California for the formation of a Goleta Old Town Redevelopment Plan, which would allow a percentage of the tax monies to be withheld for use in Old Town to upgrade its housing, improve San Jose Creek that flowed under its main thoroughfare, and infrastructure.

The final report approved by the County on June 16, 1998, stated: “The purpose and objectives of this Redevelopment Plan are to eliminate the conditions of blight existing in the proposed Project Area and to prevent the recurrence of blighting conditions in said Area.”

¹ Peck, M. Scott. The Different Drum. Simon & Schuster, 1987. P. 56

Building Community Answering Kennedy's Call Book Review

 

Amazon.com

Building Community, Answering Kennedy’s Call by Harlan Russell Green A Peace Corps Writers Book, 2022.

This memoir will take members of ERFSA back to the “good old days” when you might have been protesting the war in Vietnam or marching for Civil Rights before, during or after finishing graduate school. Building Community, Answering Kennedy’s Call certainly did that for me. The author, Harlan Green, joined the first wave of Peace Corps Volunteers in 1962 on the verge of graduating from UC Berkeley, with much uncertainty as to what his next step should be.

This was his lucky moment because the experience of trying to mobilize villagers in a remote Turkish village stayed a course for his life. In this brief, but well written and engaging memoir, Harlan takes to Ishmet Pasha with neither electricity or running water in 1962. Fortunately, Harlan had learned basic carpentry skills with his father while growing up and through a sincere effort to learn the Muslim villagers’ language so he could understand what they wanted, in addition to what he thought they needed, the tough experience yield results as well as path and philosophy he carried forward after completing the two year mission.

The story becomes increasingly interesting and its significance is peeled back Harlan Green returns to the States to become involved in other social movements of the 1960s and 70s. He studied film making in San Francisco and then was hired by the Environmental Protection Agency where he honed his camera chops on such issues as airplane safety and urban air quality in Los Angeles. Recounts of later work as a film maker for with Ceasar Chavez and the United Farm Workers during in 1974 are especially compelling .

This is a quick yet serious read. It could never be called a “blast from the past” because of the depth of the author’s commitment to bringing positive change into our world. It would be inspirational for undergraduates. I wished momentarily for a syllabus that I could include Building Community , Answering Kennedy’s Call as required reading.

Harlan Green © 2023

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Who Is Our Loneliest Generation?

Answering the Kennedys Call

theatlantic.com

Much of my forthcoming book, Answering the Kennedys Call; Solutions in Public Service and Community-Building for the Future documents how we can rebuild the broken communities and sense of isolation that is afflicting so many Americans today.

One facet of broken communities is the growing sense of loneliness and unhappiness in newer generations, due in part to the dominance of social networking with smartphones, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Child Psychologist Jean Twenge says the iphone generation, those born between 1995 and 2012, are now the loneliest generation in a 2017 Atlantic Magazine article, and book, iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us..

“Psychologically, they are more vulnerable than Millennials were: Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.”

Social Scientists first saw an increase in Americans’ feelings of loneliness in the 1970s—at the same time as the advent of the World Wide Web (the Internet), and the personal computer first introduced by Apple in 1976. But then it was the millennials who were the most affected, and unhappy—the children of the baby boomers.

The University of Chicago’s annual General Social Survey has also found that the number of Americans with no close friends has tripled since 1985. “Zero” is the most common number of confidants, reported by almost a quarter of those surveyed. Likewise, the average number of people Americans feel they can talk to about "important matters" has fallen from three to two.

And the results of rising loneliness have been mixed, as the title of Twenge’s book highlights—they are somewhat slower to mature and acquire social skills to successfully negotiate adult life. There is greater social isolation as teens focus on their phones—even sleeping with them under the pillow—rather than acknowledging their physical surroundings. This especially affects their physical health; they spend less hours sleeping (averaging 7 hours vs. 9 hours needed by most teens).

“It’s not only a matter of fewer kids partying; fewer kids are spending time simply hanging out,” says Twenge. “That’s something most teens used to do: nerds and jocks, poor kids and rich kids, C students and A students. The roller rink, the basketball court, the town pool, the local necking spot—they’ve all been replaced by virtual spaces accessed through apps and the web.“

Rising levels of depression and suicides are the most alarming results from such social isolation, isolation that runs counter to our evolutionary development—when social skills were necessary for survival that enabled them to recognize friend from foe.

Girls have also borne the brunt of the rise in depressive symptoms among today’s teens. Boys’ depressive symptoms increased by 21 percent from 2012 to 2015, while girls’ increased by 50 percent—more than twice as much. The rise in suicide, too, is more pronounced among girls. Although the rate increased for both sexes, three times as many 12-to-14-year-old girls killed themselves in 2015 as in 2007, compared with twice as many boys. The suicide rate is still higher for boys, in part because they use more-lethal methods, but girls are beginning to close the gap.

The Kaiser Family Foundation in conjunction with The Economist has been measuring loneliness among U.S., U.K., and Japanese citizens. More than a fifth of adults in the United States (22 percent) and the United Kingdom (23 percent) as well as one in ten adults (nine percent) in Japan say they often or always feel lonely, feel that they lack companionship, feel left out, or feel isolated from others, and many of them say their loneliness has had a negative impact on various aspects of their life.

“People experiencing loneliness disproportionately report lower incomes and having a debilitating health condition or mental health conditions,” said the @KaiserFamFound/@Economist survey. “About six in ten say there is a specific cause of their loneliness, and, compared to those who are not lonely, they more often report being dissatisfied with their personal financial situation. They are also more likely to report experiencing negative life events in the past two years, such as a negative change in financial status or a serious illness or injury. Three in ten say their loneliness has led them to think about harming themselves.”

It is part of the larger breakdown of American communities studied by Robert Putnam in his ground-breaking book, Bowling Alone, the Collapse and Revival of American Community. Putnam warns that our stock of social capital – the very fabric of our connections with each other - has plummeted, impoverishing our lives and communities.

This means communities must be strengthened, with more focus put on bringing neighborhoods together. One aid is with national social networks like Next Door that seeks to bring neighbors out of their homes, computers and iphones to connect and help each other with day-to-day concerns, like cleaning the streets, advertising lost and found items, or just knowing who are their neighbors.

Nextdoor’s virtual communities—that now cover more than 180,000 U.S. neighborhoods, including more than 90 percent of those in the 25 largest cities—are becoming representative of the country’s actual populations, say its San Francisco founders.

This is social networking at its best—building community again by humanizing the tech tools that have been dividing us.

Harlan Green © 2018

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen