Oh, oh! Where have all the children gone?

We live in a county where some of the world’s best people reside. We are able to drive through some of the most productive farmland on earth, and Albert Lea is as naturally beautiful as any small town in America. So why do our children leave this area in droves when they become of age? Why do very few families move into our truly wonderful county? Much of our nation is prospering and growing rapidly, but if we drive in the area, it is easy to see vacant buildings and other evidence of a declining economy. This newspaper displays many pages of property foreclosures, but very few local job openings.

The cause creating the demise of Freeborn County’s economy is the decreasing number of wage-earning citizens. Since 1980, the United States population has grown by 28 percent, while the population of Freeborn County has decreased 17 percent. This is a 45 percent differential. This shortfall in the revenue base is the death knell of our beautiful city and county.

The plague is taking our children, and is creating fear in our business community, is the terminal sores of deathly taxes and life-smothering regulations. These ills have been created and are increasing by the actions of power loving politicians. If we continue to elect controlling, central-government types, it is a mathematical certainty that we will lose our children, our beautiful city and in the future all that will be left is a very large cemetery surrounded by a government cornfield.

 

Jerrold Dettle

Albert Lea