WMD: My column from last week, musing about economic uncertainty here and in the Emerald Isle. Text follows below:
Economic chill looms heavy over Ireland, Vancouver
Warning signs ignored by many spend-crazy British Columbians
Barry Link, Vancouver Courier
Published: Wednesday, July 09, 2008"You guys should stop spending money on gadgets," said my father to my brother and me last week. My brother was examining my sleek, video and wireless-enabled MP3 player.
"You're going to need your money for gasoline and food."
My father, in his 80s, doesn't understand why my brother and I are interested in sleek, video and wireless-enabled MP3 players. But he also went through the Depression, the unimaginably bleak 1930s which as far as post-millennial public collective memory goes might as well have been the 1830s. Having grown up on a farm where the family at least had food but no cash, Dad is intimately acquainted with scarcity. His warning about an impending need for thrift, a notion also long disappeared from collective memory, is part of an increasing unease in the land about our economic future. Canadians are wondering if they should be scared.
Gas has gone up dramatically, with signs home heating fuel will follow. Food is more expensive. Last week, I noticed at least two local restaurants near my office had raised prices and, I suspect, cut back on portions.
Car sales are plummeting. Transportation fees for taxis and ferries are going up. Frequent Courier contributor Michael McCarthy, our resident prophet of doom who's been writing about energy issues for years, likes to hammer home the point that this is just the beginning. It's going to get worse.
Oh joy.
I sensed similar unease while visiting Ireland last month. The Irish, a pleasant people who live on a rainy flat bog ringed by mountains and overrun with what seem like hundreds of millions of sheep, are experiencing a hangover after years of partying as the Celtic Tiger. They beat up economically just about everyone for nearly a decade and a half, building up high-tech industry by day while downing gallons of Guinness and Jameson by night. Things were so good that Ireland's traditional population loss through migration reversed itself. E.U. citizens, especially from Eastern Europe, came in droves to take service jobs the locals no longer wanted or needed, which is one reason why many of the servers in restaurants during my trip were Polish, Slovakian or Italian.
Now, the Irish told me, the party is over, and after spending a couple of nights in County Mayo pubs, I believe when the Irish finally leave a party, it really is over. A recession has emptied the kegs and reduced the construction cranes over Dublin to a fraction of their number a few years ago.
But is it a recession, and perhaps merely part of a regular economic cycle, or is it something more profound? And is anyone paying attention to the warning signs? In Westport, a tourist town of 4,000 near Ireland's west coast, the word "bustling" was the only description that fit. The place was alive with pedestrians, cars, trucks, tourist buses and cadres of German, American, and French visitors. The French perpetually smoked, the Americans filled shopping bags and the six Germans at breakfast when I entered the dining room one morning in my B&B looked at me like they'd just committed a major crime. I asked no questions.
If they'd done anything, maybe it was simply to dare enjoy themselves at a time when the economic wheel is turning. Or perhaps their denial was showing. The Irish, too, appear to be in denial. Gas is well over $2 a litre, and has always been pricier than here, but the Irish drive everywhere, and quickly, which is something considering their roads are little wider than the shoulders on the No. 1 Highway. The local newscasts and newspapers were dominated by Ireland's stinging rejection through referendum of greater integration with the E.U. But there was little official talk of economic uncertainty, whereas some of the locals I met were nervous about what lies ahead. This year, the Irish and other Europeans are still going on vacation, moved forward by past financial momentum. But next year, as jobs go, household budgets tighten and prices rise, all bets are off. The Irish might soon want those service jobs back from the immigrant Poles.
We have similar or even greater denial here. In Kelowna last weekend, where everyone is highly pleased with the expensive new bridge spanning Lake Okanagan, I was shocked by the luxurious new condo towers going up. The ambition is to create a Yaletown-like neighbourhood along the waterfront north of the city's downtown.
This is hardly the stuff of food riots. If we're headed to a peak-oil meltdown and a reduced standard of living my father would recognize from 70 years ago, no one--from Galway to Gibsons--is preparing for it.
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