Colorado coming out of the recession? (Grand Junction, Fountain: salons, insurance, appliances)

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by DOUBLE H

It's funny that Wanneroo and Cosmic should mention that. Because I've been to a few hundred Bronco games in my day and my OPINION ISSSSS (drum roll please), yep, there's some empty seats going on here!

I know a lot of season ticket holders that will pull certain tickets out of their season ticket package (not ALL of them, but a few of them) and either go e-bay or to ticket agencies who are out of state. If they get 5 times over face they'll take it. They'll do the same with the parking permits. Sad, but true. There has been some layoffs with friends of mine associated here. There also was a substantial number of Patriot fans in the stands as a result of this. The Broncos next home game is November 9th and that situation will increase 50% when the Pittsburgh Steelers come to town. The Steelers have one of the bigger fan bases in the NFL. Trust me on this one.

And yea, it's a matter of money, or lack of, with a number of fans.

I certainly trust you. I am from Pittsburgh. A couple of years ago, a doctor I work with gave me tix to the Broncos/Steelers game, or should I say, Steelers/Broncos game? There were at least as many Steelers fans there as Broncos fans. People would be cheering when the Steelers did something good. It was amazing!

[Bob from down south]

Originally Posted by CosmicWizard

Shuffler wrote:

Only if money is no object!

If money was no object, I ( and probably anyone else in the same boat ) wouldn't be hanging out on this forum. We'd be too busy spending as much of it as possible on great adventures.

Just got back from a two-week "great adventure" in western Colorado. Major-league good trout fishing in the San Juan, Animas, and Arkansas rivers. Did a lot of driving and looking around in the back country...it really felt like half the state is for sale right now. Lots of empty retail space in more-travelled places like Durango, Pagosa Springs, Alimosa, and Salida--and what retail is there isn't 'zackly teeming with business. It's downright awful in smaller towns like Del Norte. Can't see how energy prices soaring (as the result of a devalued dollar) and a crushing tax burden to pay for today's insane debt binge won't put a bunch of twists in the tourniquet that's already around the tourism industry's neck. So no, I don't see Colorado leading the way to recovery.

Proclaiming recovery without jobs is a lie. At the gut level, I still have to wonder where all those people that used to work in all those empty stores and closed-down factories are right now. Without a good answer to that fundamental question, declarations of victory are exceedingly hollow. Borrowing trillions of dollars to pay people welfare for doing nothing is not going to bring us...Colorado or the country as a whole...out of recession. It's just prolonging the wait until the day of wreckening (sic).

[Bideshi]

Originally Posted by Bob from down south

the day of wreckening (sic).

Good play on words! I'll borrow that if you don't mind?

[zenkonami]

Originally Posted by Bob from down south

Borrowing trillions of dollars to pay corporations welfare for doing nothing is not going to bring us...Colorado or the country as a whole...out of recession. It's just prolonging the wait until the day of wreckening (sic).

There. Fixed that for ya. (Actually it's just as applicable the way you said it.)

[proveick]

Agreed 100% Bob, 2 more restaurants just closed their doors in Salida. Downtown is starting to look like a ghost town. I think some locals saw this coming in 2007 and sold their businesses then. I know of 3 that did. Proactice forsight. Don't think the worst is over yet. RP

[Bideshi]

The worst is yet to come, and unemployment is the unstoppable driving force. Forgive me for repeating myself, but a GM assembly worker in China makes $2 a day. TATA industries of India is selling the Nano car that gets 40 mpg for $2500 brand new. Where does that leave us? Out of work. Our only real hole card is agriculture if we play it right, but what are the odds with the way our government is being run? I'd like to be optimistic but we've come out of a period when massage therapists qualified for half-million dollar loans and the whole delusional house of cards has come down around us. We need to prepare for a new way of life, and a harder existence. People with real world hands-on skills will be OK, in my opinion. Cube dwellers may not fare well. A service economy can't function without real work being done by someone at some point. OK, rant mode off.

[maximusmgm]

Originally Posted by Bideshi

A service economy can't function without real work being done by someone at some point. OK, rant mode off.

Whats your definition of real work?

[CosmicWizard]

Even though my cube dwelling job of database programming doesn't feel like real work in some corner of my mind, I come home at the end of the day more exhausted than I did when I was doing real work like building houses or planting tress for the forest service. Swinging a hammer or a mattock was more physically demanding than manipulating a keyboard, and it was also more inwardly gratifying. For better or worse, the cube dwelling work pays better than real work in many cases.

[treedonkey]

The recession, unemployment rate, and housing market are three separate things. True, they are inter-related. But just because one improves, like for example the recession, does not mean that the other two will at the same time.

I think it will be tough everywhere for a while, and then even once it does improve considerably, it'll just be a relatively brief amount of time before we're all bogged down again.

[Bideshi]

I sincerely apologize if my concerns for the future insulted anyone, but I really believe our service economy is going to continue to contract. I don't think it was ever sustainable. My field also falls into that category (quality control). When there is nothing actualy being produced anymore, quality control is no longer needed, and so it goes.