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AFFORDING AGONY
How badly is the local economy being hurt by this war and the tariff situation, and then how hard is it for the elements of the local economies around the lake, in terms of personal experience and survivability? That is a really hard question to answer, as nobody is keeping any kind of knowledgeable tabs on the local scene.
The Geneva Shore Report makes an attempt, but the complexity of the collection of data is extreme. There are gasoline prices stuck at about $3.89 a gallon, with diesel up to five bucks or so. Everyone is being told on national television that the prices may well rise to six dollars a gallon or more by the advent of the summer months. What that means to regular citizens also means something to the visitors who support the communities around the lake by showing up in great numbers, filling the hotels, motels, and restaurants, and then the small business stores to the maximum.
As it becomes ever more difficult to get to work with increasing expense, and driving becomes much more difficult to keep jobs, where the tourist influx drops to a near Covid low. Trouble this way comes is an aging, dramatic statement about being on guard for either unexpected dire circumstance or expected. Earthquakes, as opposed to war damage and ruin. What is to be done as this nation proceeds to charge down a corridor or canyon of wanton waste and outright theft?
Does anyone remember the missing ten billion dollars in cash flown into Baghdad and that disappeared nearly on the tarmac? Two huge C-130 cargo planes loaded with stacks of hundred-dollar bills that simply went missing. The Congress finally investigated, but when Mr. Bremer reported the circumstances of the loss, he blamed it on the fog of war and, astoundingly, the committee and those attending cheered and clapped. Only then did I realize that they all had to be cheering because they were all sharing in the war booty. This kind of thing, usually not so blatantly, happens in war. Mr. Cheney became a billionaire as the vice president because of his wars. So did Bush Junior and Senior and even the British Prime Minister of the time. Any investigators or those with the power to investigate and hold accountable receive their own millions.
The fog of war pervades. The Iranian war characters pushing for war over there are asking for $200,000,000, and then $500,000,000 more to fund the Iranian war, and that’s without troops being put on the ground. It is kind of easy to calculate that at least $400,000,000 will disappear in the fog. All of this is going to cause taxes to increase, and the price of gasoline, natural gas, electricity, and food will continue to climb to places they’ve never been before. These are easy predictions to make, and the money expected to disappear will not allow the war to be stopped.
For Lake Geneva, this means expenses will climb while tourism declines. The road project is coming in 2027. Expect that the cost of that project will somehow require a great increase in how much Lake Geneva has to cough up. Right now, nobody is talking at all about that cost, and there is no effort whatsoever to hold down spending. Businesses will fail during the rebuild, further causing losses to the city. The price of tar, asphalt, and concrete is going to skyrocket.
There will be no satisfaction among the staff of the GSR when all this takes place. The leader of the country has dementia, which the country is going to discover is truly a rabid and contagious disease…not the occurrence of it, but the effect of it when all key decisions are made by the demented leader. Try to engage city leaders to stop spending. Lake Geneva does not need trolleys right now, or more six-figure employees, or a ‘harbor’ patrol, much less a harbor patrol pier, and so on. There is a great cost to not having any good sense.
