Thanks to the industriousness of Portland’s creative class of young, well-educated people, Oregon now has the third-highest food stamp rate of any state in the country. As shown in the chart below, Oregon was disgustingly below average in the 1990s, but shot up in 2001, the year the Portland streetcar opened, and has been in the top three since about 2009. Today, it is behind only Louisiana and Mississippi (and, it might be noted, DC), states well known for their hard work and creativity.
It wasn’t easy for Oregon to achieve the status of being number three. Back in the 1990s, most Oregonians on food stamps were rural residents put out of work by the decline in federal land timber sales. But that can only go so far, as there aren’t that many sawmills left that remain to be put out of business. So the creative class got to work, making Oregon one of the first states to distribute food stamps in the form of an debit card so there would be no stigma put on those using it. In fact, the card is called the “Oregon Trail” card, thus identifying food-stamp recipients with the brave pioneers who first settled Oregon 170 years ago.
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“There are people who get paid to go out and actively recruit people into the program,” says John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute. Thanks to their efforts, says the state program director, “a growing number of single adult men have applied” for food stamps that once were mainly used by mothers and children. The U.S. Department of Agriculture helped, giving the state a millions of dollars in bonuses for signing up so many new food-stamp recipients so fast. (Technically, it is no longer called the “food stamp” program but “SNAP” for “supplemental nutrition assistance program.”)
Further assistance comes from Metro, Portland’s regional planning agency, which is stepping up its campaign to coerce the region’s residents out of their cars by increasing the cost of driving. If you don’t have a car, you won’t have access to as many jobs, which means you’ll be more likely to go on food stamps. “It can be a win-win,” says Metro councilor Bob Stacey, who was one of the first attorneys hired by 1000 Friends of Oregon. (He was referring to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but he and 1000 Friends developed their anti-auto agenda long before climate change was an issue.)
Some might congratulate Oregon for its achievement and wish it well in its effort to overtake Mississippi and Louisiana to become number one in the nation. Others might wish that Portlanders could put this creativity and industriousness to use doing something that was actually productive instead of taking from the productivity of others. Until then, Portland will remain known as the place where young people go to retire.
Numerous studies have found fault with the logic or empirical claims of Florida’s Creative Class theory. The creative class thesis has also drawn criticisms for relying on inner city property development, gentrification, and urban labor markets reliant on low-wage service workers, particularly in the hospitality industry. Ironically the new taxes enacted only exacerbate the dire living situation and affordability of housing for the low wage workers being ousted by rising rents/taxes, etc.
Portland used to have a thriving forest products industry and was headquarters to a few such companies. But 30 years of environmental activism have chased away the forest industry. Companies are leaving the city left and right. Business are failing because the “creative class” are not exactly the clientele they want. They have imagination but no skill. I know someone who drove through Portland everyday; in his own words…”collapse is all over prime real estate is sitting just rotting. Streets torn up pot holes every where But wait…Portland just ordered millions of dollars for new bike lanes….Yea that makes allot of sense” Because freight is apparently delivered by bicycle. Speaking of rotting, has anyone ever been to Florida to see foreclosed homes. After a few months the houses begin to rot thanks in large part to the subtropical humidity that seeps in. My boss pays a fortune for a summer home in Florida keeping the growth of subtropical vegetation from consuming the lawn and keeping reptiles out of her pool.
While Portland’s reputation for livability and its creative class ethos has fulfilled the first part of that equation, it hasn’t done much in the way of invigorating their economy. It suffers an overabundance of overeducated, underemployed citizens and creates a great deal of competition for few jobs and therefore also depresses salaries. Or, as the IFC series Portlandia puts it, our city is where young people come to retire. The creative class aren’t exactly creating new consumer products, at least none for export. Even if it has lower cost of living it does not offset Portlands lower wages, and consequently it is actually less affordable to live in the Portland region than in other creative class cities like Seattle, Denver, or Minneapolis. Their high school graduation rates are lower than state average. Creative folks wanna just live around other creative folks in a fun city. I think the problem is that the creative types who live there are more interested in local ventures (opening new restaurants and bike and coffee shops) than in creating new export industries. They’re not interested in interstate or international commerce and not interested in investing capital in anything beyond the local community. Where as small towns revitalized by shale gas don’t consume their own supply, they sell it; That’s called trade. This whole Localism movement of local food, local cottage industry, green energy and inefficient transport is being shown for what it really is; an attempt to bolster an independent green anarchist economy; didn’t work out so well. It’s really just another youth revolt against the supposed evils and shallowness and blandness associated with corporations and big business. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Agriculture, Big Banks, Heavy industry, trucking, shipping, mining, manufacturing. It’s an agenda and mindset that appears fine when your in your teens and 20?s, not so fine later on in life. There’s a reason yuppies are so eclectic, they can afford to be, they can afford to skip a day of work.
Before looking at Oregon’s disparity. Let’s look at the larger picture. California is the largest Welfare state. California, with just 12% of America’s population, has 34% of the nations welfare recipients. There really are two basic models for governance in this country, and we’re seeing the results play out in stunning high definition right before our very eyes. There’s the California model, which stresses the primacy of radical environmentalism, the overregulation of both the big and the minutiae of daily life, the imposition of high and punitive taxes. The unquestioned supremacy of big, bossy labor unions, and the celebration or at least acceptance of expansive and nannying government. Our government now dictates it’s appropriate to punish those too poor to afford health insurance by going after business that apparently doesn’t provide enough or fining individuals who don’t accept the care government provides. The result is perpetual fiscal peril, net domestic migration outward to other states, a scandalously horrendous education system, decaying infrastructure, stubbornly high unemployment, and the worst poverty and crime in America in recent decades.
In the inspiring and frightening words of a fictional character…
”You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it”
The real issue in Portland and Oregon is high unemployment caused in part by the highest income tax rates in the country, which start at the first dollar of income. Not only does the employee pay the tax, but the employer does, too; combine that with the second highest minimum wage in the country, and Oregon probably has one of the highest labor costs in the country.
When labor is expensive relative to other states, employers may not locate in that expensive state. (In fact, labor costs are the number one determiner of business site selection). Lack of job opportunities results in unemployment.
When people can’t find jobs, they apply for food stamps.
I have this feeling that the grass is greener… Here in Texas we have no state income tax, it’s a right to work state, and little in the way of social programs (comparatively). Of course we have outrageous property tax, more uninsured people and children (numerically and per capita), high rates of poverty, and some of the highest rates of violent crime.
I could go on about how our governor deregulated colleges and we saw tuition skyrocket, high rates of teen pregnancy, taking Thomas Jefferson out of text books because he was too liberal, high drinking and driving rates, etc, etc, etc.
I suppose my point is you take the good with the bad. I love Texas, but our ultra conservative, religious zeal, “fuck the poor” mentality, no state income tax, right to work, etc. etc. etc has got us into a whole heap of trouble. Portland (and/or) Oregon may be screwed up by the liberal elite and “creative class” but the libertarian utopia, pistol totin’, diesel truck driving, UN-intellectual elitist, anti-union, eye for an eye, closeted racist, jack-holes that run my state have us #1 in many dubious categories. Our problems are different, but just as bad.
Bennett,
You seem to have some issue, problems!
Just fighting fire with fire (or snark with snark).
Texas looks wonderful. The property tax rates are low by Oregon standards. I’d actually pay less there for more house. $242,000 = $3,300 a year or $700 less than I’m paying now. Also housing ownership is higher than California.
http://www.propertyshark.com/mason/info/Property-Taxes/TX/
Delete that comment, hit post before finishing the fact checking.
Looks like $242k = $6.5K which including income tax, is pretty close to what I’m paying to the parasitic sector.
Another way of putting it: The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
I think the Food Stamp program needs to be restricted to very basic staples, and the doritos and soda pop kinds of stuff removed from the Food Stamp program. This would help reintroduce incentives to go look for work as the economy recovers from the Great Recession.
As for the City of Portland, it’s wacked. It’ been this way since the turn of the Century. Recently, the City mandated sick leave for all, and subsequently, Franz bread which has been located in the city’s core for over on hundred years announced it was moving out of the city. Good intentions have serious negative secondary consequences the impulsive crowd at Portland City Hall refuse to understand, or wish to ignore for the sake of political expediency.
Good intentions have serious negative secondary consequences the impulsive crowd at Portland City Hall refuse to understand, or wish to ignore for the sake of political expediency
Totally true, but at what point do we stop calling them “good intentions” when they have predictably bad consequences? At this point, another term is needed.
I’m assuming the City Hall bunch has well-paid staff to crunch numbers and run predictive analyses on the possible impact of their decisions, yet they always seem to recklessly vault ahead. At that point, good intentions cease being good.
Another term is needed.
The problem with Food Stamps is it was originally designed for single mothers with little work or cooking experience. You can deny it all you want but that what it’s meant for; Single moms and the elderly. The program has expanded 1000 fold to include anyone, government responded to reform by adding conditions and restrictions. Originally Able-bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWDs) only receive benefits for 36 months. But people cheat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zti4Dj3bbgc
bennett
I suppose my point is you take the good with the bad. I love Texas, but our ultra conservative, religious zeal, “fuck the poor” mentality, no state income tax, right to work, etc. etc. etc has got us into a whole heap of trouble. Portland (and/or) Oregon may be screwed up by the liberal elite and “creative class” but the libertarian utopia, pistol totin’, diesel truck driving, UN-intellectual elitist, anti-union, eye for an eye, closeted racist, jack-holes that run my state have us #1 in many dubious categories. Our problems are different, but just as bad.
Bennett, I must agree with you, even though I drive one of those Diesel trucks!
There are poor people – and people that are poor through no fault of their own. And I am of the opinion that efforts to impose Smart Growth doctrine on people is likely to increase the number of poor people out there, especially when the effort is to impose Smart Growth on suburban areas (since at least some urban areas already have “natural” Smart Growth conditions).