The economy and no Olympics (Chicago, Rio: 2014, condos, credit card)
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I don't know about you, but this little mess we've gotten ourselves into is no recession. I, for one, can see using "the D word" for it.
and whatever it is, I'm pretty sure what lies on the other side is a far cry from the halcion days of the 80s and 90s and early 00s. The era of Carrie Bradshaw having a different pair of shoes for every day of the year is gone with the wind.
So, sour grapes aside, did we really luck out by not getting the Olympics? My sense is that in the world we are in and moving further, such megaevents will be harder and harder to pull off. The money to generate the construction and infrastructure is not going to be there. The crowds will not be coming in the numbers we have seen in the past, IMHO, both through worries and hassles of travel and an economy nationally and internationally that will far less free flowing with money. So many of our exsesses are gone forever.
Is it just possible that Chicago actually dodged a bullet on this one and that getting people to make that long trip down to Rio in 2016 is just a pipe dream and a bad move for that city?
Not at all. The fact is the 2016 is way the heck out in the future. By that time the world will be a very different place. The spending on infrastructure that will happen in Rio will be very good for them and I suspect that there will be both a large push for attendance from the traditional tourist countries of North American, Asia and Europe as well as a new kind of developing country tourist push from countries with some sports aspirations in Africa and other places where the folks look at least a bit like the Brazilians, a fact that I am sure was weighed by the Olympic Selection Cmte...
The saddest thing to me was just how unambitious the Chicago plan was for infrastructure changes. The benefits that could have been realized to the South Side by doing more to both bridge the South Side separation from the lakefront (literally by decking over parts of the railway) and figuratively by locating a new hub of eventual residential density on the site of the Olympic Village would have really been transformative, and possibility a way to bust down some of the racial walls that still exists (are celebrated?) in places like Bronzeville. If the City is stuck with the Micheal Reese site I hope they can still see to the value of making that livable instead further expanding McCormick Place...
The spending on infrastructure that will happen in Rio will be very good for them ...
Assuming they get their act together first for the World Cup, then the Olympics. They hosted the Pan Am games a year or two ago and never completed half of what they wanted to have completed by the time the games started. I was in Rio a couple months before the Pan Am games and it looked like they had a year of work just to get the Pan Am Village complete. I am told there was no vegetation around the new buildings and some of the accomodations were not complete for those games.
Rio was my second choice for the Olympics in 2016, after Chicago, as I plan to take my kids there (also the World Cup in 2014). It is just that Chicago would have been easier and cheaper for me, and good for the city, I think.
I am more optimistic about the future of our country I guess.
The economic benefits of hosting the Olympics are greatly exaggerated. Some of the infrastructure improvements would have been nice, but those might come along anyway as the South Side has been getting better and attracting more investment recently without the Olympics.
i'd like to share some of the confidence i see here in a return to some of the things we took for granted prior to 2008. Unfortunately I've read far too much and have seen how little this nation is set to correct its problems.
This is a forum. And we can disagree. And I do. Respectfully I hope. I think a lot of the things that we took for granted have a definite gone with the wind quality to them.
I don't see this as a merely a recession (it is far worse than that) and whenever we climb out of whatever it is, we will be facing new realities.
My spin isn't what you'd like to hear, but I suspect that events like the Olympics will be far less lucrative with money and resources tighter and travel a nightmere.
I hope I'm wrong. But as noted, I've read far too much and haven't seen the sacrifice or the commitment to make things better, just faith that "things always turn around".
In times when social needs become greater and greater, spending on events like the Olympics makes less and less sense. And far, far too many Americans are at that tipping point on well into disaster in their personal lives.
During the Depression, the economy contracted by about half. When we come anywhere near that, then I'll consider getting on board and calling it the "D-word."
I don't mean to diminish the difficult times many people are facing, but some are treating what in the historical scheme of things is a mild recession as a catastrophic crisis. It's bad, but it ain't that bad. Makes me wonder if the country will be able to hold it together in an honest-to-God crisis any more.
During the Depression, the economy contracted by about half. When we come anywhere near that, then I'll consider getting on board and calling it the "D-word."
I don't mean to diminish the difficult times many people are facing, but some are treating what in the historical scheme of things is a mild recession as a catastrophic crisis. It's bad, but it ain't that bad. Makes me wonder if the country will be able to hold it together in an honest-to-God crisis any more.
it really is "that bad" for many Americans. And getting worse. If unemployment figures include the underemployed and those who gave up looking for jobs, it is somewhere around 18%.
I don't have a crystal ball any more than you do, Drover. And, like you, I hope that things get better. But sadly I have doubts that they will. We've exported jobs overseas and maxxed out our credit cards with no housing bubble in existence to give us a sense we really had equity. Our government is broken and dysfunctional. We spend more than the all nations in the world combined on our military. Our infrastructure is falling apart.
I would argue that many conditions today are far worse than they were in the 1930s, a time when our industrial infrastructure was in good shape and we weren't in hock to China.
Lots of people agree with you, Drover, probably far more than agree with me. And I respect that. But there are so many of your fellow Americans who, like me, have followed the sad story of a nation living well above its means, a nation that has taken little responsiblity to correct its errors, and a nation frankly taken over by corporations who call the shots and seem hell bent on trashing the place. Which they seem to have succeeded in doing.
I'm not trying to go on any tirade here nor was my original post a desire to interject the state of the nation into a local issue like Chicago and the Olympics.
I was merely trying to focus on how events like the Olympics that were seem as positives at a time when money flowed freely and we had the "luxury" of putting glitz before substance. It seems like a different world today.
To me, the point isn't to look at our current situation and think in terms of how it matched up to the Depression (although innumerable responsible and people in the know are calling it just that) but to realize that today is a time when we are transitioning to new realities.
We'll never see an era of multi-million dollar condos rising like crazy in downtown Chicago, of billion dollar stadiums being built like Yankee Stadiu, nor any of the other excesses of what is now a bygone era. We are about to see what supply and demand as well as cause and effect means as we've squandered away what capital we had. We live on a planet with an expanding population that is way above what it can support with an environment and climate that is being destroyed. And our leadership in that very planet is being surpassed by others.
There are endless signs that we've had it as a nation. That part doesn't depress me nearly as much as the fact that we are doing little to make things better or even try to admit we have a major problem.
I'm no pessimist. I love my nation. Love to the point of being devastated by what has happened to it. Ten years ago, I would have never seen things in this light. But things change. And I do my best to try to understand those changes. Ultimately though, it comes down to me making my own assessments. Just like you do. But my assessment and those of so many of my fellow Americans is a nation very much in decline....and I say that with incredible saddness.
it really is "that bad" for many Americans. And getting worse. If unemployment figures include the underemployed and those who gave up looking for jobs, it is somewhere around 18%.
I don't have a crystal ball any more than you do, Drover. And, like you, I hope that things get better. But sadly I have doubts that they will. We've exported jobs overseas and maxxed out our credit cards with no housing bubble in existence to give us a sense we really had equity. Our government is broken and dysfunctional. We spend more than the all nations in the world combined on our military. Our infrastructure is falling apart.
I would argue that many conditions today are far worse than they were in the 1930s, a time when our industrial infrastructure was in good shape and we weren't in hock to China.
Lots of people agree with you, Drover, probably far more than agree with me. And I respect that. But there are so many of your fellow Americans who, like me, have followed the sad story of a nation living well above its means, a nation that has taken little responsiblity to correct its errors, and a nation frankly taken over by corporations who call the shots and seem hell bent on trashing the place. Which they seem to have succeeded in doing.
I'm not trying to go on any tirade here nor was my original post a desire to interject the state of the nation into a local issue like Chicago and the Olympics.
I was merely trying to focus on how events like the Olympics that were seem as positives at a time when money flowed freely and we had the "luxury" of putting glitz before substance. It seems like a different world today.
To me, the point isn't to look at our current situation and think in terms of how it matched up to the Depression (although innumerable responsible and people in the know are calling it just that) but to realize that today is a time when we are transitioning to new realities.
We'll never see an era of multi-million dollar condos rising like crazy in downtown Chicago, of billion dollar stadiums being built like Yankee Stadiu, nor any of the other excesses of what is now a bygone era. We are about to see what supply and demand as well as cause and effect means as we've squandered away what capital we had. We live on a planet with an expanding population that is way above what it can support with an environment and climate that is being destroyed. And our leadership in that very planet is being surpassed by others.
There are endless signs that we've had it as a nation. That part doesn't depress me nearly as much as the fact that we are doing little to make things better or even try to admit we have a major problem.
I'm no pessimist. I love my nation. Love to the point of being devastated by what has happened to it. Ten years ago, I would have never seen things in this light. But things change. And I do my best to try to understand those changes. Ultimately though, it comes down to me making my own assessments. Just like you do. But my assessment and those of so many of my fellow Americans is a nation very much in decline....and I say that with incredible saddness.
I find it strange that you claim to be no pessimist right after you lay out numerous reasons why we're going to Hell like crap through a goose.
Get a grip, man. I have to wonder how old you are; namely if you're old enough to remember similar economic recessions we were able to pull ourselves out of. This country has been through far, far worse than this and pulled through just fine. And we will do so again, no thanks to the Chicken Littles out there.
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