The future

This is not a happy post. This is an update of a post from two months ago.

For the last five months, I have been gathering current data about the future of Los Alamos.

My current best estimate is that there is an 80% chance that I, like many others, will be a former Los Alamos resident within a year, possibly within 6 months.

The rationale - Los Alamos is collapsing and no one seems willing to stop the collapse. The collapse has been building for years.

The best estimate of the start date for the collapse is June of 2007 when LANS can fire people.

Current best estimates are that 2,000 current employees will no longer be employees by the end of September. In order to make the budget numbers, a significant number of those let go must be TSMs, including TSMs in weapons work. The loss of these people will not be a RIF because, by definition, a RIF is directed from the director's office. In this case, the director tells each division to make their budget numbers. Each division then tells each group the same thing. So, an equivalent number of people are let go but, definitionally, it is not a RIF.

Many of these talented people will then be fighting for a tiny number of jobs. The feel by many of them that universities are just waiting to hire them is apparently wrong. Universities have little free money and few free positions.

To keep the body count up, the Lab is hiring very junior people who do not have to be paid much. Since there is hiring of junior people and the cost of these people must be absorbed somewhere, an increased number of senior people must be let go.

To prepare myself for this collapse, I have been doing four things.

I have been working on and for biotech businesses far from Los Alamos.

I have been giving presentations to local churches about financial strategies that they can use to survive the collapse. A church that loses a significant fraction of its older members could face hard times.

I have been taking a lot of semi-professional pictures to capture the Los Alamos that I hoped would survive.

I have started to make financial estimates of damage that will be done to an average family by the June events. An average house in LA county is currently worth $400,000. By August 2007, this same house is expected to be worth between $228,000 and $300,000. The owner's equity is expected to drop from $168,000 to around $50,000. So each homeowner is expected to lose $100,000 of their net worth soon. This net worth may come back eventually. Based on a lot of data, 'eventually' would seem to mean 5-10 years or never.

Are there readers who want to have serious discussions about the future of the town, the Lab, and the county.