Philip:
I here reprise my role as Wet Blanket. If you look at a great number of the cities here named, you will notice biotech (read, among other things, embryonic stem cell research) or technology generally, or tourism. These are, notoriously, unstable bases on which to build a local economy. I grant you that Detroit is bad and that its decline should be a major talking point this fall, but touting the others as success stories rings hollow.
Tourism is a load of crap. Buffalo is trying to sell itself to tourists. It recently restored a small section of the old Erie Canal that ran through the city. Aside from the fact that the water is filthy with feces, medical wastes and other artifacts of storm sewer overflow, it is a postage stamp attraction that will attract virtually no one.
Tourism is also an excuse used by crapulous Indian tribes (such as the Senecas, in my neck of the woods) to justify their gambling emporiums: however, the money does not come from tourists, but from weakwilled locals, most of them lonely and foolish widows with time on their hands, whose families have moved out of the area because of the lack of family-sustaining jobs (as opposed to the "tourist" type -- hotel maids, bartenders and card dealers).
Technology is getting to be a joke as well. The Java technoid of the twenty first century makes a fraction of what the COBOL mainframer used to make. Many programmer and analyst jobs are being done by English-gargling guys and gals from the Indian subcontinent, who fully expect people like me to teach them how to do their jobs. Within a few months, most of them return to their homes with what seems like a fortune to their beaming families (Ganeesha be praised!!), only to be replaced by another wave of blank slates.
Somewhere along the line, corporate executives and politicians agreed that it would be a great idea to pull the rug out from under American workers by shipping the job base overseas. You are an idiot if you think that this was anything less than a deiberately designed government policy. The president most directly responsible for it is George H W Bush, though preceding and succeeding presidents down to the present day would have done exactly as he did -- H W was merely the corporate factotum of the moment.
[The Bushes excel in producing false solutions to real problems, although they are also adept at "solving" phony problems the same way. Though less repulsive personally than their opposite-number dynasty, the Kennedys, they have probably done far more to drive the country to ruin than Joe Kennedy's three ill-starred louts ever dreamed possible.]
The reason for this policy is hard to gather, even after amost twenty years. The lies and bullshit visions that were peddled to promote it are clear enough to Americans now, and still neither of the current candidates show the slightest interest, lip service aside, in restoring the American job base that the current generation of bureaucrats and "managers" have cheerfully given away. The whole thing is a rather incredible instance of national suicide.
Ralph:
Perhaps the reason for their success is that, as a country, we accept the mantra (term chosen on purpose) that we can't fight progress or that we can't turn back the clock or that that's just the way things are.
I think it is because we are too distracted by our toys and games to waste time thinking about serious problems that might affect our futures, or our children's. To the current generation, postponement of gratification means waiting until the condom is in place before humping what's-her-name that you picked up in that-bar-up-the-block.
And as for Newt Gingrich, he's great with I-told-you-so's after the fact -- that's the story of his career.
But what was Newt doing in the early 90's while every other republican in congress was falling into line touting globalism as the cure for everything from recession to syphillis?
He was falling into line touting globalism as the cure for everything from recession to syphillis!
After all, one can't claim credibly that the shambles that is Detroit is exclusively, or even primarily an outcome of the Great Society. All those tens [hundreds?] of thousands of auto industry jobs didn't move from Michigan to Mexico because of Lyndon Johnson.
One of the hallmarks of Detroit's downfall was/is the tearing down of the building that virtually every Detroit area resident was emotionally invested in. No, I'm not talking about Tiger Stadium, but rather the downtown J.L. Hudson's department store. At 33 stories and (my favorite anecdote) with 51 operator-driven elevators, its 2.2 million square feet of retail space was second only to New York's Macy's store in size. The atmosphere in the store even through the late 1970s was electric, not unlike London's Harrods.
PP, since you are new to the area, you might find these articles and photo galleries interesting:
http://info.detnews.com/
redesign...FTOKEN=18379967
http://www.detroithistorical.org...=289&
Page=first
The problem wasn't that the store closed, so much as the gorgeous building was not re-used for another purpose. For 15 years, it sat empty, awaiting a plan for redevelopment. Today, the site hosts an underground garage. Nothing sits at ground level.
Compare this to Los Angeles' marvelous re-invention and restoration of their Bullocks Wilshire department store, a similar though smaller building. It is now home to a law school, yet the building has largely been left untouched. Learn law in a retail palace, as it were.
http://www.swlaw.edu/campus/building
The fact that Detroit could not come up with a similar plan for adaptive reuse of Hudson's is emblematic of a lack of inventiveness and commitment to the central city.
FYI, none of your Detriot/Bagdad pics seem to be working.
Ralph,
You're right -- it wasn't because of Lyndon Johnson that those jobs left Michigan for Mexico. But LBJ's friend, Doug Fraser, can take a lot of the credit. Doug did a lot of good things for the UAW, but ultimately he presided over the dismantling of the Big Three.
Responsibility for the plight of Detroit lies squarely in the hands of its politicians and secondarily in the hands of its citizens who keep them in office.
The anti-business climate of the entire state of Michigan also comes into play.
One wonders if the people of Detroit are capable of self-government.
It's not politically correct to ask questions like this. But the Founding Fathers considered it obvious that free political institutions require a high level of civic virtue to survive.
Charles:
Hence, Detroit's collapse is due partly to the jailed Mayor and partly to the folks who keep getting him elected?
Crudely speaking, yes. Of course, Detroit has been misgoverned for decades. And it doesn't help that the business climate in Michigan is so poor.
Fr Brian,
I despise the corruption that has distinguished unions most of my life -- never belonged to one, often resented the unearned privileges of those who did.
But it would be nonsense to claim that unions are responsible for the mass migration of auto industry jobs from Michigan to Mexico and Asia, which is all I sought to point out. For such horrible malfeasance it takes a government, and the kind of "pro-business" attitude which willingly sacrifices the welfare of Americans in order to stroke Wall Street and putatively "American" corporate entities.
Certainly it is a complicated issue, but the broad dimensions of it become clearer and more detailed with each passing year: our government agreed to allow corporations to drive down their CODB by shipping jobs overseas, putting thousands of Americans out of work and contributing mightily to the urban blight that distinguishes Detroit, my home town of Buffalo NY, and just about every other city in the formerly industrial northeast.
What is unclear what was gained by such largesse. Was it seen as a strategem for discouraging nuclear proliferation throughout the third world? How's that working out, H W?
Our government had a choice between siding with its citizens -- and not just those citizens belonging to unions -- or with corporations. It chose the latter. The result is a dessicated industrial base, a country hopelessly dependent on the rest of the world for everything from bolts, screws and widgets to dollars, and a "middle class" whose survival depends on mothers and fathers holding down two or three candy ass jobs instead of one substantial one. The resulting moral blight -- forget about the "urban" variety -- ought to be intimately familiar to a man of the cloth such as yourself.
Fr Brian,
I despise the corruption that has distinguished unions most of my life -- never belonged to one, often resented the unearned privileges of those who did.
But it would be nonsense to claim that unions are responsible for the mass migration of auto industry jobs from Michigan to Mexico and Asia, which is all I sought to point out. For such horrible malfeasance it takes a government, and the kind of "pro-business" attitude which willingly sacrifices the welfare of Americans in order to stroke Wall Street and putatively "American" corporate entities.
Certainly it is a complicated issue, but the broad dimensions of it become clearer and more detailed with each passing year: our government agreed to allow corporations to drive down their CODB by shipping jobs overseas, putting thousands of Americans out of work and contributing mightily to the urban blight that distinguishes Detroit, my home town of Buffalo NY, and just about every other city in the formerly industrial northeast.
What is unclear what was gained by such largesse. Was it seen as a strategem for discouraging nuclear proliferation throughout the third world? How's that working out, H W?
Our government had a choice between siding with its citizens -- and not just those citizens belonging to unions -- or with corporations. It chose the latter. The result is a dessicated industrial base, a country hopelessly dependent on the rest of the world for everything from bolts, screws and widgets to dollars, and a "middle class" whose survival depends on mothers and fathers holding down two or three candy ass jobs instead of one substantial one. The resulting moral blight -- forget about the "urban" variety -- ought to be intimately familiar to a man of the cloth such as yourself.
Fr Brian,
Blaming the unions for the mass migration of auto industry jobs from Michigan to Mexico and Asia is just plain silly. Unions have never had that kind of power.
Such colossal malfeasance takes a government. Ours climbed into bed with global corporate entities and allowed them to take their jobs overseas. Americans were told of the many benefits which would flow from the dismantling of America's industrial base. Americans would all become highly paid engineers and technical gurus, while third world nebbishes produced the bolts, screws, widgets it takes to hold our machines together.
Democrat and republican politicians cooperated in foisting this travesty of governance upon Americans, and got rich together. Devastated communities throughout the industrial northeast and midwest were told to make like successful Darwinian species and reinvent themselves, perhaps as tourist meccas -- perhaps so that newly-enriched third world cosmopolitans will have some place to go to spend their money.
Without question corrupt unionism contributed to the problem. But blaming the mouse while ignoring the elephant is not helpful.
Please keep in mind, Fr Brian, that it now takes two or three candy ass jobs to support a family in the current economy. Mom and dad must spend more time away from their children than ever before. And what effect do you suppose such circumstances have on the attitudes of "middle class" Americans toward parenthood, artificial contraception, and even abortion?
I apologize to everyone. It appeared that my first response to Fr Brian never got through, so I had to rewrite it. When I looked, I saw three messages, the second a repeat of the first. PP, I think your server may need a dose of Drano [Is that still made in the US?].
Ralph:
While I'm not going to encourage you to drone on in triplicate, I recognized what had happened and scrolled down through the extras. I rather enjoy your writing, even when I don't find myself agreeing with you.
Charles:
Would you say that Detroit is a substantial argument for limiting the franchise or encouraging the growth of "third" parties?
Ralph: (again)
I say to my students and other teens who will listen that college isn't and shouldn't be for everyone. Most of the time I catch flack from administrators for saying it, but it's true. There are some people who will be happier, more productive citizens changing oil or woodworking or laboring in an assembly plant than learning about the finer points of Hegelian philosophy (sorry Philip) or other college academic pursuits. I think we agree that the problem in this country is that we would rather maintain the illusion of an ever more advanced society without acknowledging the need for a healthy one.
In that vein, there was a funny cartoon in the paper the other morning. A dad was talking to his daughter about "the old days" when we used two tin cans to play telephone. The daughter replied that it was hard to play telephone with no buttons for "texting". When I was little, my "network" was anyone who had a phone. We give the illusion of progress ever more in this day and age, yet surely the illusion will some day shatter.
AlexB,
Great links. Thank you for the history. Very interesting.
... There are some people who will be happier, more productive citizens changing oil or woodworking or laboring in an assembly plant than learning about the finer points of Hegelian philosophy (sorry Philip) ...
Chris, I think there are philosophers who would be happier if they avoided wasting their time on the finer points of Hegelian philosophy.
Chris, as to the illusions of "progress" and "networking," someone begged me to join Facebook, that loathsome pit of hell, which after two years I finally did: only to somewhat disappoint my friend and others. Facebook has this feature which allows members to answer the question, before the lurking cyberspace world: "What are you doing right now?" To express my own sentiments about the whole enterprise, I elected to post, as a permanently updated fixture of my page, the words: "passing magnificent wind."
Yes, exactly, Philip. How often do we hear, with ever increasing urgency, that we mustn't stand in the way of progress, that we don't live in an ideal world, so we must accept the facts on the ground as they are, that modern people are so much different from people of my generation or at least certain paleocultural members within it? These aren't arguments, but rhetorical flourishes intended to silence debate of the real issues. Christ received sinners and went among them preaching forgiveness. He didn't commit the sins in the name of walking in their shoes or being modern or progressive or Obamanian.
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