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It isn’t popular to sound the alarm. It never has been. Not when the music is still playing inside government buildings and the lights are still on. Not when public paychecks keep arriving on time and official budgets still look healthy on paper.
But outside those walls, in the real Duluth, the economy is already buckling under a weight that keeps getting heavier.
You can feel it everywhere if you know what to listen for.
It’s in the way small-business owners pause before answering how things are going, doing quick mental math as they talk. It’s in the empty tables at restaurants that used to be booked solid. It’s in the half-filled bleachers at winter sporting events that once drew crowds no matter the weather. It’s in the “for lease” signs that appear, disappear, and then reappear again.
This is not a recession that announces itself with a crash. It is a slow-motion squeeze.
Property taxes are up. Utilities are up. Insurance is up. Payroll costs are up. Supplies cost more. Borrowing costs more. Shipping costs more. Every single input that keeps a business running now costs more than it did a year ago, and in most cases much more. There is no hidden margin left to absorb it.
So owners do what they always do. They raise prices. They cut hours. They postpone hiring. They delay repairs. They stop taking risks. Eventually, some of them close.
That hits workers first. When hours get cut, spending gets cut. When spending gets cut, restaurants, shops and service businesses feel it. When they feel it, more cuts follow. It becomes a loop, and Duluth is now stuck inside one.
Retirees are feeling it in an even more unforgiving way. Social Security doesn’t rise with property taxes. Pensions don’t adjust for water and sewer increases. Utility bills, groceries and insurance all climb while fixed incomes stay fixed. So seniors tighten up. They stop eating out. They stop traveling. They stop shopping. They stop going to events. A whole layer of spending quietly disappears.
Renters are next. Landlords are staring at the same rising property taxes and utility bills as everyone else. Those costs will be passed along. They always are. That means rent increases are coming, even as wages lag far behind the cost of living. The math doesn’t work any other way.
Even sports feel it. Attendance drops when families have to choose between tickets and groceries. Youth programs struggle when fees get harder to pay. Local teams lose their buzz when the community is too worried to show up.
From the outside, none of this looks like a crisis. City offices are open. Government jobs are stable. Budgets keep growing because they were built in better times. Contracts keep locking in higher costs. New plans keep stacking future obligations on top of old ones.
That creates the illusion that everything is fine.
It isn’t.
Public agencies don’t feel downturns first. They feel them last. Revenues lag reality, and by the time shortfalls show up in spreadsheets, the private economy has already been bleeding for months or years. By then, storefronts are empty, families have moved and trust has been damaged.
And here’s the part that makes this moment so dangerous: sounding the alarm is politically uncomfortable. It requires trade-offs. It requires cutting or delaying things people like. It requires admitting that the old assumptions no longer fit the new math.
So instead of sharpening pencils, government drifts.
Taxes and fees creep higher not because anyone wants to punish people, but because nobody wants to make the choices that would stop the creep. The bill gets sent to the only group that can’t vote on it: small businesses, renters and seniors.
Some readers will nod their heads at this. Others will say it sounds negative. That split tells you everything you need to know. If you’re living on a public paycheck, the storm still feels far away. If you’re running a business, living on a fixed income or paying rent, it’s already here.
This is what an economy looks like when it’s being held together by habit rather than momentum — when people keep showing up not because things are good, but because they have no other choice.
That isn’t stability.
That is endurance.
