The official definition of a recession is two back-to-back quarters of negative growth. Some of official signs of a recession are job losses and stalled out or plunging consumer spending. To those “official” signs we must add some of our own.
Food drives, coat drives and toy drives are all up. Sure, some of it is the season. The holidays do seem to bring out the givers in most of us, but this year is unusual. Pay attention to our calendar notices and you can see the signals of scarcity among us. Of course, you needn't flip that far, Tuesday's announcement that Renfro in Whitmire will be closing was a sure clincher that times in this county have just gotten officially tough.
Economists are just now diagnosing the recession. It is something that usually is quantified after the fact. Word is, this started sometime around the start of the year. That's the good news, because it means at least we have gotten this far. The bad news, we all know what that is: no one knows how long this will last. We know the situation is bad, but the question is, what are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about it?
There's a certain amount of xenophobia that comes along with a recession. Barter systems are the way to go when cash and credit is tight, and those generally work best among the people you know well. During the Great Depression communities all around the nation printed their own currencies and set up systems to keep goods and labor flowing locally. The same idea is gaining traction again. The handful of such systems in existence nationally are getting calls seeking advice on setting up local currencies, and one began last week in a suburb of Minneapolis. It's the ultimate way to buy local. Hey, China's been doing it for decades. The far Eastern country trades in one currency with international markets and its citizens operate in an entirely closed system of money within the country's borders.
Do we need our own currency here? That remains to be seen, and frankly we wouldn't suggest firing up the deskjet printers just yet. But it does bring an issue to the table. Surviving recessionary economies well requires ingenuity and a community spirit.
With Renfro closing, it is entirely possible that we are seeing a death blow to the Town of Whitmire. What that will really mean, who knows? Property values were down compared to other areas of the county prior to this announcement. The closing won't do anything good for those numbers. Whitmire consolidated its schoolchildren sometime back, so is probably not in any immediate danger of changes in that area. But jobs in an easily commutable distance are indispensable to Whitmire's long-term success. Attracting industry, both to Whitmire and to the county in general is a good solution, and one that every community and state around us is working hard to secure for themselves.
We must compete, and compete hard, for industries. In the meantime, we will collect food and presents and clothes. And surely some people will trade goods and services, or plant a garden. But we must not hunker down so far that we lose sight of the big picture. To survive we need growth, the positive kind, and we will need to support our economic developers and local government in the fight to bring in industry, jobs and a brighter day.
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