Why is Maine a poor state? (living, agriculture, transportation)

[Revi]

I think I agree with Northern Maine Land Man. This state is about 90% forested, but most of that belongs to big corporations. Unless you are a shareholder in those corporations you don't benefit. There are jobs, but a lot of them go to contractors who can be from anywhere. To live in this state means living on the margins. Still, I think that people will begin to figure out how to live in places like this again. We have a farmer's market in our town for example. Now the farmers who are in it are able to make a living off of their land again. This kind of local economy is growing, while the commodity farmers are having a harder and harder time making it. The larger economy is in trouble anyway. We need to recreate a local economy in order to make it around here.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by Revi

... We have a farmer's market in our town for example. Now the farmers who are in it are able to make a living off of their land again. This kind of local economy is growing, while the commodity farmers are having a harder and harder time making it. The larger economy is in trouble anyway. We need to recreate a local economy in order to make it around here.

Sustainable, subsistence farming is a growing sub-culture in Maine. More so than any I have seen anywhere else.

It takes years to figure out how to make it work, though I see new 'farmers' starting up each year.

[Northern Maine Land Man]

Only in education or medicine do people come to Maine and walk into a full time job with benefits and vacations. An occasional paper industry engineer or manger makes it and law enforcement officers from away get hired in the larger towns. Sometimes the LEO even becomes temporary town manager.

MOst people coming home realize that they will be doing more than one thing in the course of a year. That's OK. It has always been that way. The old saying is that Maine exports spuds, studs and kids. Well, the kids are coming home to the dismay of progressives who want everybody to live in government approved condos in "core service communities".

Read the article in Wednesday's Bangor Daily News where Evan Richert says that young Mainers should expect to have a lower standard of living, smaller apartments and lower paying jobs. That's the plan. Young Mainers disagree.

[bangorme]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

Read the article in Wednesday's Bangor Daily News where Evan Richert says that young Mainers should expect to have a lower standard of living, smaller apartments and lower paying jobs. That's the plan. Young Mainers disagree.

This is true, but is true all over the country. The economy is in the dumper, and the crushing debt will keep it there for quite awhile. Maine is a little worse, because of reasons I stated earlier. The days of your kids doing better than you did are over... at least for awhile.

[beltrams]

Originally Posted by bangorme

This is true, but is true all over the country. The economy is in the dumper, and the crushing debt will keep it there for quite awhile. Maine is a little worse, because of reasons I stated earlier. The days of your kids doing better than you did are over... at least for awhile.

Exactly.

Only in a very few places in the US is the economy doing fairly well, places such as Boston and the Bay Area of California. The reason those places are doing well is because of technology (computers and/or biotech) and colleges and medical facilities, and government spending. But even those areas will not stay good forever as the problems of the national economy eventually over take these prosperous places as well. Then too the college loan bubble is coming to an end, and that won't be kind to places like Boston (or to a lesser extent, some of the northern New England college towns such as Middlebury, the Dartmouth area, Colby area, etc.)

(BTW, has anybody seen what Dartmouth and Middlebury College did to the real estate and surrounding house prices of their respective areas over the past 20 years? There's a lot of hot air to release in those places for sure.)

Nationally, we have automation, off-shoring, and the decline of cheap (oil) energy availability walloping the economy most everywhere and those problems aren't going away.

Some places such as Florida, Arizona, Nevada, and parts of California and the Southern states thought they could use the housing boom to forever keep their economies going, but of course all that housing was predicated on cheap, phoney mortgage money and all the associated scams. All those places take even more energy to keep the lifestyle going than Maine does, and at least Maine has wood for heat. Ever try to run an AC on wood? As well, despite our Maine town centers shrinking some, we still have town centers that can make a come back. In many places in the Sun/Boom Belt, because much of the landscape is newer, post WWII, even post 1960s, the lifestyles are exceptionally sprawled out and much of the housing depends on mechanical cooling to stay habitable. Even Aroostook County, supposedly spread out as it is, in reality has much of us living fairly close to stores, town, and whatnot (because most of us don't actually live in the far off reaches of all the wonderful forest.)

Only the return of local economies, keeping as much local wealth out of the hands of governments and mega, international corporations as possible, coupled with a willingness to forgo some of the ridiculous wealth expectations of the past 20 or 30 years or so, will keep things going well in places such as Maine.

Maine has forests and decently-watered farm land, located fairly close to North East population centers. Compared to places in the South West and Plains states that are seeing their rivers and aquifers especially, dry up, I think we'll do okay here, relatively speaking, from here on.

Besides, we're not all that poor. Our foreclosure rates and vacant housing rates don't begin to approach those of the Sun/Boom states, and our unemployment rate in the formal economy isn't actually as bad as those other places' indices either.

Sometimes I think Maine has an inferiority complex with southern New England/Boston's economy because that's what's closest and hence, what we see, but the latter is not representative of the national, US economy by any means. (Comparisons with Quebec and New Brunswick, on the other hand....?)

[mainebrokerman]

Originally Posted by bangorme

This is true, but is true all over the country. The economy is in the dumper, and the crushing debt will keep it there for quite awhile. Maine is a little worse, because of reasons I stated earlier. The days of your kids doing better than you did are over... at least for awhile.

Nope,,, cant agree with your broad brush

my son is going to do much better than I, even in maine

[Northern Maine Land Man]

"(Comparisons with Quebec and New Brunswick, on the other hand....?)"

I was flying home from Toronto, landing in Frederickton. The lady beside me said, "Oh, look; We are over the ocean. I said, "No, that isn't the ocean. That's Maine." There was not a light to be seen. Our path had taken us over Sherbrooke and Bromptonville, Quebec which is a thriving area. Suddenly there was total blackness. I explained to her that a century ago there were farms and villages down there, but they are all gone now. Millinocket was on my side of the commuter plane so she didn't see Millinocket. It was a clear night and soon she saw lights scattered all up and down the Trans-Canada east of Houlton. I told her that what she saw was the border town of Houlton and all the lights beyond were in Canada again. On my side of the plane I could see all the paper mills from Rumford, Jay, Lincoln and Woodland. Below that line there were lights everywhere with just a few dark spots like the middle of Washington County, now 19 townships or 425,000 acres where nothing will ever be built.

I was in a house in Talmadge that was scheduled to be demolished. On the dining room wall was a forestry map from the old St. Croix Pulpwood Company. I would love to have that map, but it didn't belong to me and I thought the owner might still want it. I hope it was preserved. Those are the 425,000 acres that Yale University bought and put into a trust so nobody could ever build a camp there.

I went to a meeting in Grand Lake Stream some 17 years ago when the environmental industry announced their goals for Washington County. I spoke against those goals. They were quite angry with me and one shrill woman yelled, "What do YOU PEOPLE want, anyway?"

I told her I was glad she asked. "I want my sons and grandchildren to have the same rights and opportunities that my father and grandfather had and it is my responsibility to preserve those rights. YOU PEOPLE don't want me or my descendants to have those rights." It got a round of applause. I do hope that mainebrokerman's son will do much better than he has. As an advocate for rural Maine for the last 38 years I'll continue to work to make that happen.

[mainegrl2011]

Originally Posted by mainebrokerman

Nope,,, cant agree with your broad brush

my son is going to do much better than I, even in maine

I tried to rep you, but gotta spread it around. Gen-Y homebuyers expected to transform Maine communities — Business — Bangor Daily News — BDN Maine Who is this Evan Richert anyway? What's his background other than former director of the state planning office and Orono's town planner? If it's the same guy, he graduated from Syracuse University in 1974. https://webapp.usm.maine.edu/MuskieW...?personId=1166

People need to stop all this gloom and doom about Maine and America. I don't agree with the broad brush either. 23 million people unemployed who had jobs and apparently wanted to work just doesn't seem acceptable to me. There doesn't seem to be enough improvement (net jobs) under the current administration. The key to economic prosperity is the free enterprise system/entrepreneurship. The U.S. has oil, but it must be harvested in order to be beneficial. Maine's economy has always been a struggle. That doesn't mean people can't be successful; just means they may have to work harder. I know Maine people with high school educations who started successful businesses that have been successful for three generations. There are areas of the country that actually have low unemployment. North Dakota, for example 2.4% largely due to jobs in oilfields. Job Service North Dakota

[Northern Maine Land Man]

"Who is this Evan Richert anyway?"

Glad you asked. He is a far left radical environmentalist who championed the COMPACT under Angus King. Many will remember the COMPACT. I'm not shouting. organizations with initials like NATO stand for something. The COMPACT stood for Citizens Owning Maine Property Are Considered Trespassing. It was thy keystone of their rural cleansing movement. He is still a key figure in the environmental industry in Maine.

[mainegrl2011]

Originally Posted by Northern Maine Land Man

"Who is this Evan Richert anyway?"

Glad you asked. He is a far left radical environmentalist who championed the COMPACT under Angus King. Many will remember the COMPACT. I'm not shouting. organizations with initials like NATO stand for something. The COMPACT stood for Citizens Owning Maine Property Are Considered Trespassing. It was thy keystone of their rural cleansing movement. He is still a key figure in the environmental industry in Maine.

thanks for the info...my suspicions were correct