The fact that Collins doesn’t understand this speaks volumes of her complete ignorance of this country. Does she understand that cities like Sacramento, San Francisco, Denver and even Atlanta were once boom towns? They weren’t created by government, they were created by private investors.

Obviously, that should read “1 percent UNemployment” in paragraph 5. Who was the numbskull who wrote this piece anyway? Oh, that would be me!

Libby Sternberg on July 27, 2012 at 8:10 AM

Too bad all of our politicians aren’t like you-quick to admit your mistake with a sense of humor, fixed it and moved on to the next challenge.

Collins uses her 820 words to first enumerate some of the benefits of 1 percent UNemployment…

Now why don’t you run along and write another vapid column about Seamus, dear.

Good lord, how do these poor people survive?!

Well for starters, they obviously completely ignore the advice of geniuses like Gail Collins… and Paul Krugman, Tom Freidman, Charles Blow, Frank Rich, and E. J. Dionne, too.

That’s how.

Come to think of it, maybe I have too much time on my hands, too, if I’m writing about her column on that topic.

No, no, Dear. You’re a brave soul to slog through the swamps of leftist sewage to save the rest of us from the nauseating experience.

Thank you.

Pecos on July 27, 2012 at 9:58 AM

The other problem is the government’s skewered support of housing targeted for these areas. When you’re dealing with the cyclical oil and gas drilling industry and with populations of a lot of young adults who are making decent incomes but may not want to buy homes, multi-family housing is what’s needed. And while in the bigger cities you do have developers for those, in the outlying areas you don’t, and the only type of apartment-style housing the feds will offer financial support for is Section 8 housing (and if you’re getting paid oilfield salaries, you’re automatically making too much for Section 8 housing).

So you have tons of available jobs, both in the oil sector and in the retail sector serving those workers. But unless they want to stay in a trailer with centralized shower facilities, new workers in the area have no place to live, and the feds will not help them get a place unless they’re basically unemployed and/or on welfare. It’s Barack Obama’s “You didn’t built that” to developers turned into “We won’t help you build that”, because the wrong kind of people (workers) would be the ones occupying those new apartments.

I’ll take boom town growth pangs over a long slow inevitable BHO directed economic death spiral any day of the week.

Difficultas_Est_Imperium on July 27, 2012 at 9:07 AM

+1

… granted, most of them are abandoned and burned-out…

One plus side to this piece, it shows what our nation would look like if everyone in America was employed doing nothing but building roads and bridges like Obama seems to think is the sole purpose of mankind.

But then comes the “downside.” Collins reports that these residents pay a price for their chugging economy. Dusty roads from all those trucks! Packed schools where children must learn in “modular units, some dating back to the ’80s.” Housing so limited that oil workers often live in “man camps,” and local teachers have to double up! And—oh, the humanity—there’s no mall, no good restaurants! Good lord, how do these poor people survive?!

Let me take a shot at this: The taxes being paid from all those employed people take time to translate into things like road improvements and classroom space. Even so, unless there is some other attraction to the area, there may be a lot of hesitancy to overbuild the schools if boom turns to bust. In fact, this may explain the lack of build-up in general. Nobody wants to build The Mall of America out there if in a few years, regulations nationwide open up, and folks don’t have to travel as far to work on a fracking field (HINT: Inhabitants of the “man camps” often have families who live far away, and can’t sell their homes at this time).