Monday, December 25, 2006

A Bonafide Retirement Community

Salem, Indiana is making progress according to local officials. Rather than being a community of diverse industries, employment, and a community one can take pride in, it has become a retirement community. Investment and new business into the city has been nil over the past few years. The economic development of the community has been lacking for years and the town has a lot of disrepair. When are the local officials going to realize that your community has to be much more than a town full of fast food franchises?

Or do they want a retirement community that way they won't to worry about too many of the youthful people running the town and changing too much. After all, a little competition would hurt the local merchant class and the low wage economy here. Salem lauds itself as a city of progress but is instead a city that is regressing in economics, education, and basic civility. Instead of bringing up the community to modern US standards, it is woefully lacking in economic opportunity and industrial and business diversity. Why is it that the community continues to talk about educational opportunity and improvements yet little is ever done at the local level to address economic development.

Does the town actually value increasing tax revenues from an influx of small, medium, and large businesses or would it rather become a low wage retirement community full of low wage servants, idlers, and people with little going. Why don't the locals spend a little bit of time encouraging and promoting economic development? Is it because it would conflict with their own pocketbooks and therefore upset the proverbial apple cart?

Why has there been practially no new industry come into the county for 15 years? Yet major employers have closed or moved or even downsized. The local community brags about its educational system yet little is ever generated that is produced locally. I guess when you have low ambitions and low standards for education, conduct, and behavior, you can expect that. After all, in America it is increasingly against the flow to expect more or better from society and individuals at large.

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