"A successful society is characterized by a rising living standard for its population, increasing investment in factories and basic infrastructure, and the generation of additional surplus, which is invested in generating new discoveries in science and technology."
The Taylor County version of the Coconut Telegraph was alight yesterday with the news that the George Pacific mill over in Foley will close soon.
In a county with a population of just over 20,000, five hundred lost jobs is a big lick. In the short run, we should get ready for lots of boarded up spaces downtown, maybe fewer places to eat, and a country club already running on fumes after its uninsured whacking by Idalia either raising its dues for those who remain, or turning back into a pasture.
This being 2023, the armchair pundits of TayCo immediately put a political spin on things. Our local congressman, a MAGA urologist from my old hometown, attacked Georgia Pacific for leaving his constituents in a lurch right after the hurricane. A Facebook post questioned whether this is the result of "Bidenomics", as if the president had something to do with the closure. Surely the Orange One would've ordered the company to keep the mill running, even if it cost shareholders money! Isn't that what the Republican Party is all about, protecting workers in the face of ruthless capitalist exploitation?
Oh wait. Never mind.
What everyone seems to be missing is that this announcement almost certainly did not come as a bolt out of the blue. Things are changing dramatically but subtly around the Big Bend, right there in plain view. Several hundred new apartment units have sprouted out of the ground right behind Tractor Supply on Byron Butler Parkway. A huge new bank building nears completion a few blocks off of the downtown square. Our decorator at Wyldswood has trouble responding to us because he's busy with seven figure waterfront projects along the newly devastated stretch of shoreline around Keaton Beach. Word on the street is that Marriott is coming to our piney swamp, scouting a location for a resort close to the miles of pristine shoreline. Lots down by Jabo have quadrupled in price, and the buyers are paying cash.
We've seen this one before, just down the coast in Gulf County. The mill closes, and a town seems on the verge of collapse. The public dole swells as families struggle to buy groceries and pay their rent. But all around them new vacation homes sprout from the sand, new residents come to town along with new boutiques and eateries tailored to their decidedly non-country tastes. A fancy new hospital is equipped and staffed to handle an older, better insured population. Within a couple decades, one must look hard to find the traces of the old mill town that once provided a living for generations of locals.
There's a bright new future already emerging in beloved Taylor County. But it doesn't likely include the people who live there now.
At the same time, one can't get too dewy eyed about the demise of the mill, of "Buckeye" as it's been called long after that particular owner departed the scene. Over the generations the union jobs have vanished, leaving a generational divide between the retired millionaire workers now in their seventies, flush with stock options and legacy health care, and the current crowd laboring most of their lives at forty or fifty thousand a year with no pension and limited benefits. Better than the average wage in this neighborhood, but no one's taking a fancy vacation or installing a swimming pool behind their double-wide.
And the beautiful Fenholloway River that flows through twenty-something miles of jungle and pine barrens to the Gulf has long been known as perhaps the most polluted in Florida, thanks to the prior owners of the mill dumping millions of gallons of dioxin contaminated waste into its waters every single day for decades.
The mill's been a mixed legacy for Perry and for Taylor County, but it's also been a source of stability and a means of making a living for the folks who've chosen not to leave for the big city, to stay and raise kids here in their hometown. It's hard to picture how they'll hang on until the shiny new economy arrives to take its place, or to foresee what that transformation means for someone with the skillset the mill's left behind.
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