Economy Comments

I haven't said much about the local economy and I realized that I should detail a bit about what I've seen here in the last 3 years so that some day I can look back on it and know that I survived it.

When I first moved to CA, the high desert was a fairly decent place. It has it's ghettos but overall it was rural and pretty nice. Bought a nice house on the side of a hill, had a job at a very busy vet clinic that saw an incredible increase in business from 2003 to 2006. Apple Valley is less than 3 hours from Vegas, 40 minutes from terrific OC shopping, less than 2 hours from the beach.

Things were hopping here for a few years.

Then, in 2007 (right about the time I was getting a divorce) I started noticing a "slow down" at the clinic where I was working. Nothing major, just some slight changes. I didn't think too much about it and certainly didn't see a "crash" coming when we decided to purchase OUR veterinary hospital.

I started noticing a change in the "type" of people I'd see at the grocery store. In fact, in the course of one year, I was accosted 3 times in the parking lot of the store I normally went to - beggars and gang banging types. We started having strange people come into the clinic - some with resumes, one who told us he just got out of jail and needed to do some community service, etc etc. These weren't "normal" folks; these were what I'd affectionately refer to as "tweakers".

Just last week I had to decline sending medication home for a 22 year old cat because the owner kept calling me and asking for opioids by name. "Can I have some kitty morphine?" I normally would oblige for the sake of the cat, but the owner also told me she just got out of rehab... WTF?

So yes, I have started seeing a dramatic change in the demographics of my area, and that is the part that scares me. It's still gorgeous here, the weather perfect and my house is beautiful. We've had a lot of rain this year so everything is green, robust and healthy.

But the scenery is changing on a bigger front.

When I think back to when I first lived here, the cost of living was pretty cheap compared to "down the hill". Costs went sky-high with the stupid housing bubble, and are now back down to a decent range.

Let's get something straight: housing is NOT going to boom again in this area for many years. It might fluctuate, but the days of getting twice what you paid for your house are gone!

Foreclosures are abounding; businesses are suffering; I've heard recently about some local, very long term businesses folding. It's then that I feel fortunate that we are still in business. We are a part of the 3/50 Project (supporting small businesses) and we fight every day for what we do, for what we believe in and for our own ethics and morals.

That said, let me tell you what I am seeing on the veterinary front: people don't have any money to spend. Period. When they do, they are much more conscientious about it than before. They want cheap. There is a degredation going on in this country like none I have seen before.

What this is doing to my mindset? I refuse to buy "cheap" anymore. I HATE that I don't have a high end grocery store to shop at, that is owned by a local business; I HATE that I have to support "big business" on any level. This country is run by small businesses and raped by the big ones.

If we don't wake up and preserve certain qualities of our life, then those qualities will go away forever.

The middle class is being squeezed like never before; I never thought I'd be a part of this but I am. I am fighting to keep my employees and also fighting to protect my profession so it's not ruined by "low cost bottom feeders" who don't do anything but stab and jab and do shitty surgeries. But right now they are popular and quality medicine is in trouble. People don't seem to care; and I maintain that they will get what they pay for. In the end, it's the animals that suffer, as always.

I am beginning to doubt that it's worth it; people are generally stupid, they overbreed and they are egocentric and *never* do much of anything for the greater good anymore. Nobody stands for anything except themselves.

It's very depressing.