The Death of Patio Man

Monday's NY Times has an editorial about Patio Man: "He is the quintessential suburban American, the service economy worker, the guy who wears khakis to work each day, with the security badge on the belt clip around his waist."

It paints a picture of most of the suburban dwellers, the folks that I understand but I don't relate to at all. These people are apparently content to visit shopping malls as a form of entertainment, and think of their subdivisions as safe, rather than devoid of life. These people should be very perturbed right now, as it is their way of life that is the most threatened.

Suburbia is the most at-risk lifestyle in the threat of the looming tsunami of the economy. We haven't seen the wave crash yet - we've just seen the panicked animals flee the beach. Patio Man is too busy clinging to his lawn furniture - what is a Patio Man without his Patio? - to do the sensible thing and head for the hills.

The suburban middle class is most directly threatened - they couldn't take much more as early as July, so they must really be suffering now. Sprawl is utterly dependent on transportation, so after the election when gas at the pump goes back up, they'll be hurting again. Their house values suck, since no one can afford to pay obscene prices to live in the middle of nowhere, they can't afford to drive to get there, and they can't afford to heat, clothe, or feed themselves when they do.

The economic meltdown is further polarizing wealth in this country. The rich are pretending to be scared, in the same way that the Treasury Secretary insists that he didn't see this coming and McCain said the fundamentals of our economy are strong. It's true - they'll ride this out on the backs of the American workers, which are still supporting the wealthy in true aristocratic style.

The reality is that major money started moving out of real estate about 3-4 years ago, at the peak of the market. I've talked with thousands of real estate agents, and the dumb ones didn't see it coming. The ones who understood cycles knew that what goes up will come down, but everyone knows that you can always blame the market when it happens. There is no individual responsibility in a market - the blame falls on everyone, not on one person.

The most telling sentence in the Patio Man article: "He believes that he is responsible for his own economic destiny." There lays the delusion and fraud of the American Dream: only once you get to the point where you are rich can you be responsible for your economic destiny. The best that anyone else can do is just to hang on for the ride.