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The Death Of The Rust Belt
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
Their names are familiar to all of us: Cleveland, Flint, Youngstown, Saginaw, Gary, Toledo, Reading, Akron, Flint and Buffalo were all once booming manufacturing cities that were absolutely packed with thriving middle class families. But now most of the manufacturing jobs are gone and all of those cities are just shadows of their former selves. When you drive through many of these communities, you will notice that a lot of people have a really hollow look in their eyes. Decades of slow, steady economic decline have really taken a toll, and even the architecture in these cities looks depressed. But despite all of the decay, there is still evidence that there was once something truly great about these communities. Will we be able to recapture that greatness before it is too late?
A lot of writers make economics really complicated, but the truth is that it does not have to be. For example, if you want your country to have a great economy it has got to produce wealth. And one of the primary ways to produce wealth is to make stuff. Immediately after World War II, the United States had the greatest manufacturing base the world had ever seen and we outproduced the rest of the planet combined. Great manufacturing cities sprouted up all over America and the middle class thrived. It was truly a great time to be an American.
But then we decided to start shipping in cheaper products from overseas. At first it didn't create too much of a problem for our massive economy, but eventually the floodgates opened up and we lost tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities and millions upon millions of good paying jobs. Our labor pool was merged with the labor pool of countries such as communist China where it is legal to pay slave labor wages to manufacturing workers. Needless to say, our workers could not compete with that and our middle class started to shrink rapidly.
Today, there are many American cities that were once truly great that are now truly frightening to visit. For example, a recent CNBC article detailed the plight of Reading, Pennsylvania...
In August 2008, factory workers David and Barbara Ludwig treated themselves to new cars—David a Dodge pickup, Barbara a sporty Mazda 3. With David making $22 an hour and Barbara $19, they could easily afford the payments.
A month later, Baldwin Hardware, a unit of Stanley Black & Decker, announced layoffs at the Reading plant where they both worked. David was unemployed for 20 months before finding a janitor job that paid $10 an hour, less than half his previous wage. Barbara hung on, but she, too, lost her shipping-dock job of 26 years as Black & Decker shifted production to Mexico. Now she cleans houses for $10 an hour while looking for something permanent.
They still have the cars. The other trappings of their middle-class lifestyle? In the rear-view mirror.
I once had an aunt that lived in Reading. She is dead now, and so is most of the city. At this point, more than 40 percent of those living in Reading are impoverished and the city government is flat broke.
But similar things could also be said about the rest of the Rust Belt...
Perhaps no other region in the country has more eerie examples of urban decay than the once dominant industrial region known as the Rust Belt. Covering the Midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the region is plagued by a number of abandoned factories, houses and buildings that lay in crumbling ruins.
You can see some incredible photographs by Seph Lawless of the decay in the Rust Belt right here. The pictures are incredibly depressing, but it doesn't take too much imagination to see that these cities were once truly impressive.
Just take Gary, Indiana for instance. It was once known as "the Magic City" because it was doing so well, but now it is a rotting, decaying hellhole. The following is from an excerpt from a Daily Mail article about Gary...
Gary, a struggling city 30 miles south of Chicago along the shores of Lake Michigan, is a prime example of the trend.
Known as the ‘Magic City’ in the roaring 1920s for its spectacular growth, Gary is still home to U.S. Steel's largest plant, but the number of mill jobs has shrunk to 5,000 from 30,000 in the 1970s.
Gary's population in 1960 was more than 178,000, but it disintegrated to just 79,000 by 2012.
Some one-third of its residents live in poverty and the home and business vacancy rate is about 35 percent. Gary recorded 43 murders in 2012 - three times as many per capita as nearby Chicago.
At one time, Gary was the envy of the rest of the globe.
But now very few people would ever want to willingly live there.
The following is how James Kunstler described what he saw when he traveled through Gary, Indiana...
Between the ghostly remnants of factories stood a score of small cities and neighborhoods where the immigrants settled five generations ago. A lot of it was foreclosed and shuttered. They were places of such stunning, relentless dreariness that you felt depressed just imagining how depressed the remaining denizens of these endless blocks of run-down shoebox houses must feel. Judging from the frequency of taquerias in the 1950s-vintage strip-malls, one inferred that the old Eastern European population had been lately supplanted by a new wave of Mexicans. They had inherited an infrastructure for daily life that was utterly devoid of conscious artistry when it was new, and now had the special patina of supernatural rot over it that only comes from materials not found in nature disintegrating in surprising and unexpected ways, sometimes even sublimely, like the sheen of an oil slick on water at a certain angle to the sun. There was a Chernobyl-like grandeur to it, as of the longed-for end of something enormous that hadn't worked out well.
Sadly, what is happening to Reading and Gary is just a preview of what is slowly happening to the entire nation as a whole.
Since 2001, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities.
That is absolutely astounding.
Most of those jobs have gone overseas. That is why it seems like most of our products say "Made in China" these days. They are getting rich while our communities suffer, and then we have to beg the Chinese to lend our money back to us.
Meanwhile, we have a permanent epidemic of unemployment in this country. Back in the 1980s, over 20 percent of the jobs in the U.S. were manufacturing jobs. Today, only about 9 percent of the jobs in the U.S. are manufacturing jobs.
And an astounding number of our young men are just sitting at home instead of doing something productive. As I wrote about the other day, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.
Also, the percentage of working age Americans not participating in the labor force is up to 37.2 percent - a 36 year high.
Not only that, but the quality of our jobs has also steadily declined as we have lost good paying manufacturing jobs to overseas workers.
Right now, half the country makes $27,520 a year or less from their jobs.
No wonder the middle class is dying.
And of course there is so much more that could be said about this. For even more numbers about our manufacturing decline, please see my previous article entitled "Shocking Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America That Everyone Should Know".
These problems were not created overnight, and they are not going to be solved overnight either.
But as a nation, we have got to understand that we cannot consume our way to prosperity. That is only going to result in even more debt.
Instead, we have got to make the decision to produce our way to prosperity.
In other words, we have got to start making stuff in this country again.
That may sounds "crazy" to a lot of people, but it is possible. We have just got to have the willingness to do it.
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I'm against making stuff in a country where economic expansion is tied directly to the monetary inflation - where the FED issues debt to match and then steal every bit of productivity - where no asset can be made, unless someone first borrows money into existence (pledges the real asset not yet produced against a promissary note), and is then additionally taxes by the government on the movement of goods and delivery of services.
If one was able to own land, things on top of land as well as product of his labor, then I'd be in favor of an industrial renaissance. I'm not in favor of enriching the same parasites who were responsible for the demise of our economy in first place.
I don't want to work for the benefit of the government that wages wars against foes real and imaginary, foreign and domestic.
I don't want to restore vitality to the corrupt economy. I want the economy to be restored first to its origin and if collapse is what it takes to get there, then I'll tighten my belt and wait.
When we believe we can buy cheap imported shit and still have a job, we are fucked.
When we believe we can hire cheap illegal labor and still have a job, we are fucked.
When we believe we can borrow the money to buy the shit we can't afford, we are fucked.
When we believe we can earn a living without producing anything, we are fucked.
When we think the world owes us ANYTHING, we are fucked.
When we believe what ANYONE tells us, especially a politician, we are fucked.
Personally I think we are fucked.
Wisdom old wood you speak wisdom!
you forgot:
" when we start a sentence by ""when we believe"" then we are fuck
believing is the human mental gymnastic hability to put the unability to understand something in a volatil suprem concept than help the believer to feel better & just keep doing what he was doing before the doubt invade his brain.
Maybe not.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/17/news/companies/solarcity-silevo/
Elon Musk's other superstar company, SolarCity, announced a deal Tuesday that Musk believes will result in the world's largest solar panel plant.Solar City (SCTY) said it is buying panel maker Silevo in a blog post Tuesday. Peter Rive, SolarCity chief technology officer and co-founder, said the $350 million acquisition will lead to a factory in Buffalo, N.Y., and create more than 1,000 jobs within the next two years.
The plant will be "one of the single largest solar panel production plants in the world," according to the post, and it will be followed by one or more even bigger facilities in subsequent years. Rive said he hopes SolarCity will eventually create several thousand panel-making jobs.
...
Solyndra redux.
And how big is the taxpayer tab?
There will be no new Net jobs. Any gain by SC will be offset by layoffs at another power company. If we could export something from this plant it would be a win for US, but otherwise a zero sum game. By that I mean taxpayers get fleeced and Elon makes a shitload of money...again. Fuck you Elon!
.
The destruction of America's industrial heartland was a deliberate act driven by Wall Street greed, incompetent and/or paid off politicians, all aided and abetted by kowtowing mainstream media. Reporters in the 90s ignored the collapse of the steel industry, the demise of the garment industry and the offshoring of the American electronics industry. Now reporters are watching their jobs vanish as the middle class English speaking workers who bought newspapers and magazines are becoming extinct. Turnabout is fair play.
The big reason for the collapse of the American century is the excessive taxation of the middle class and American manufacturers. Social security taxes on wages shot up in 1984 to almost 15%, hammering the middle class. Japanese car companies like Toyota took full advantage of their K Street lobbyists to keep their taxes down. GE, which rebadges its foreign made consumer goods, like its fireprone Hotpoint dishwashers, doesn't pay any corporate income taxes. Starbucks pays its baristas $11 an hour with no pensions and the opportunity to develop carpal tunnel syndrome.
Looters run the United States and they are doing great, with the governmental leaders bailing out their friends by maxing out the National Debt, by allowing over the past thirty years the near unrestricted flow of narcotics and math into the United States by the Sinaloa drug cartel and by murdering anyone who might upset the apple cart.
I remember those fuckers coming to my house and forcing me at gunpoint to buy a Toyota car and a Samsung TV. Those fuckers!
The same people later came by and made me buy a house that illegal aliens built and now they force me to hire them to mow my yard.
I'm a victim, God Damnit! Somebody should do something.
Unfortunately for you, force by practicality is no different than gunpoint save for cleanliness.
I suppose you would buy the GM car that falls apart 5 seconds after the warranty expires, rather than the far superior Toyota.
Nobody in their right mind is starting a business in the US. You can't compete with the large corps, with their free money loans and their army of lawyers/lobbyists. And even if you can compete, you'll be sucked dry by all the socialists attacking you from all directions. Go straight to Mexico or Asia and have a fighting chance.
It didn't have to be this way.
http://store.mises.org/Product.aspx?ProductId=10883
Or, to quote the "physician" from Idiocracy, "Your Shit Is Fucked Up!"
It's the fault of those damned Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Indians, etc, for not continuing to live (briefly) on 1,000 calories a day and happily shit in the corner of their dirt-floored hovels, so that Americans could keep getting paid $20/hr for turning a bolt all day. [/sarcasm]
The 50s that American protectionists like Mr Snyder pine for were an aberration of cheap oil and rebuilding demand. The rest of the world wasn't going to stay down forever. Not sure how you plan to "start making stuff in this country again" -- if you mean by forcing people to buy US-made goods, don't come crying to me when prices for pretty much everything shoot through the roof.
+1
Every time one of these articles comes up (and of course I knew it was Michael Snyder before clicking on the link), there is the inevitable insinuation about how we need to go to full-blown protectionism with massive tariffs to protect us against the supposed evils of free trade.
Timken (US bearing maker) is lost next to the ultra-modern bearing plants I saw in S Korea (four of them).
That old bearing manufacturing paradigm of "one man, one machine" has been lost to "one woman, one machine, and the occasonal robot".
GM, Ford and Chrysler buy most of their new wheel bearings from Korea.
Those jobs are not coming back.
Jeez, Flint's got it so bad, it's mentioned twice!
In the same sentence no less!
Its really fucking sad! The slow death of America!
So Mr & Mrs Ludwig both lost their jobs and yet they didn't sell even one of the two cars they could no longer afford (and no longer needed with him unemployed)? It's hard to feel sorry for people with such utter financial idiocy.
what would thier neighbors think if they only had one car? shame on you.
The article didn't mention it, but I'm sure they have the latest apple products, cell phone contracts, cable tv and several packs of smokes per day.
We need to raise the minimum wage to $40 an hour so people like this don't experience a lifestyle change. /s
The US is still one of the leading nations in the world in manufacturing output. The problem for the old bolt-turners is that most of it has been roboticized or otherwise automated. Productivity compared to the 1950s is insane.
Germany still makes lots of stuff, is a competitive world class exporter and still has amazing towns with unionized workers making high wages, strong social safety net, high environmental standards, great public education....so question all American should ask, how can they compete with low wage China, have a strong, well-paid middle class and we don't.
The only difference I can see it, different politics. Labor is required to have seats on the boards, local banks fund community businesses, excellent tax-payer funded public education produces well-trained workers, fIRE industry isn't allow to pillage etc...Germany has basically done what we did I. 50s,60s, 70s, we built these great cities with vision. Now we think only way too serivice is to become more like third world nation. We could emulate Germany or Latvia or India....I keep choosing the German way, but most Americans are pretty sure we have to have low wages and no public investment and low taxes as way to make it.
Germans kept high wages and applied their skills to development of even greater skills...and technology. They have been net exporters becasue they could built extremely high quality and advanced products. Things people saw value in. America decided to concentrate on unions but no responsibility. We set artificial wages well above market wages while demanding less accountability for the work they produced. It was very simple. We lost sales, Germany gained them. Germans put Germany first. Americans put themselves first.
The German model doesn't work when you have to deal with identity politics (among people who can actually vote, so Turkish immigrants don't count) and paying for the entire world's security and medical innovation like the US has to.
Germany isn't spending impossibly huge sums on a global Military occupying force.
among many other "comparisons" that don't really matter at this late stage. . .
FINALLY... Finally... finally
Somebody mentions all the fucking wars.
(sigh!)
They got rid of the heebs
I can across this author, Ha-Joon Chang. His basic premise is that free market capitalism is a historical farce and that protectionism propels economies. Not sure I agree. Makes me wonder if Germany has a protectionist policy.
Another thing Germany has is an apprenticeship/education structure that offers more training than anything we have in the US. Apprenticeships here left with the jobs.
I worked in manufacturing until 2000 in the machine trades. Now the fools can't find the workers they need. I'd go back, but they don't pay enough and manufacturing is prone to lay-offs. They hire young kids at 10 bucks an hour. Eventually the kids get up to about 18 to 22 an hour though.
Now, I'm in a declining service industry at 53.
That's ok though, because I'll shovel shit if I have too. Nobody can take that away.
I have a small moldmaking company with all employees developed in house. I was in an apprenticeship but quit and advised the tool and die association to remove sanction for the truly rotten goomint union racket school.
We do fairly low tech, but all CNC machining and our goods are accepted by our customers without hesitation because they know that we produce quality. The worst thing that an employee can do is to try to push out "good enough" junk. One or two of those will destroy our reputation that rests upon two decades, and the nearly six decades of being in business.
Our surface grinders are older than anyone here as we were able to get the high precision and maintain it with pre-war machines.
Few in the USA can do that type of work and moat of the surface grinders are scrapped or should be.
The quality and attitude of the things coming out of high schools now makes me think that there is no future here. When I was young a high proportion of my cohort knew how to assemble an engine whereas now I have seen none in years. The ones that think they can have been hacks that would have spun the mains or rods on startup. Having to do that myself is a drag as there is no fun in helping them get the satisfaction of making a dead or dying engine run as new. I think that you get what I am saying as you likely see the same in your area. There is so little of the urge to learn in sub 25 year old people even when offered an opportubity that my group would have fought for.
Example:
Here is a welding machine. It will do TIG and arc and MIG all with wire feed if needed. I have microweld and miniature TIG also.
How many takers? ZERO, and that is a skill that pays very well and is in high demand.
I pay for schoolong for those that want to further themselves in something that is of use to me. It has been ten years since anyone took it up. Why? Have the public schools so destroyed the urge to learn that none give a damn on self help?
My best to you.
No, the schools have convinced the kids that they can all go to college and get high paying office jobs, where nobody actually does anything. Blue collar labor has been demonized.
So now all these kids can do is serve each other coffee.
german are dead on a timer.
know it.
population is getting old. in 10 years they are dead.
This is not rocket science folks. Take any product you buy that says "Made in China". Say you are assigned to make a plan to manufacture that product in Gary, Indiana ... or alternatively, manufacture it somewhere in China and ship it to Gary, Indiana. Your analysis will prove it cheaper to manufacture it in China and ship it to Gary than to just manufacture it in Gary. Why would that be? Well, for one thing, the Chinese don't worry too much about fouling their nest. We didn't either in the 50's. I remember visiting Pittsburgh then and the sky and ground were red and all smokestacks were belching ... a sign of prosperity back then.
When we left food on our plate we scorned by our parents "eat it, children are starving in China". Well, right after that our manufacturers discovered Japan and our products more and more came labeled "Made in Japan" which was synonymous for "cheap". In time Japan increased the quality of their products to exceed ours (thanks largely to a guy named Demming who was ignored here), and they became more expensive ... but still very competitive with anything Camden or Detroit were making.
Later, we had the electronics revolution and manufacturing moved to Indonesia and China.
There's two common threads that drove the migration of the manufacturers. (1) Government enforced rules; (2) Labor enforced rules. Americans were always willing to pay a lower price ... and always will be. Lower prices are possible where there are fewer rules.
I agree with much of your analysis, but are you suggesting we need more rules to prevent us from buying the "good deal", especially when it damages our economy? Are we simple children? Must we be forced to do the right thing? We could have said no. If we are stupid weak children, we deserve what we are getting. I don't accept that we are not responsible for this mess. We could have said no.
I'm not suggesting anything. I'm merely describing what has happened. Water doesn't run up hill. You can't make rules to get water to run up hill.
Government is now more than twice as big per person as it was in the 50's. Twice as many people are now dependent on government as in the 50's. Labor in Detroit and Camden became overpriced and the manufacturers first moved south ... then out of the country all together. Labor made rules to protect their jobs. In the end, those rules lost them their jobs. Government and labor and manufacturers tried making rules to protect themselves. They're called tariffs and sanctions and trade restrictions.
For a relatively short time they make water look like its running up hill. So black and shadow markets develop. Gravity wins in the end and water seeks its level taking the path of least resistance.
What puzzles me is why we 99% allow the 1% to demand we make water run uphill for them. We could take all the wealth of the 1% and spread it around to the 99% and we 99% on average wouldn't be much better off. But at least we wouldn't have to pay tribute to those incompetent 1%.
We can't make rules to make that happen. Rather, we must remove the rules that are giving that 1% such great advantages over the 99%.
They don't have rules in China? Something seems wrong with your analysis.
Pining for lost jobs to cheap labor overseas still. How many times is this blogger going to write about this. It really doesn't matter though, time to face the facts these jobs are never coming back. These blue-collar, peasant type jobs are slowly going to be replaced by robots. What's the point in trying to live in the past, these jobs would have been replaced by robots anyway. Take a look at Amazon's warehouse, Telsa's car factory, this is the future. It's like looking back at your youth and wishing to be that 17 year old free spirit again. What scares me is when Foxconn replaces there million factory workers with robots, and other companies follow suit. What do all these blue-collar types do? The population of the world is over 7 billion and probably 90% are blue-collar. Automation is going to make the majority of them redundant. Moore's law is if certainly happining, and in 20 years time, truckdrivers, cabbies, customer service reps, factory workers, fast food workers, etc. will all be made redundant.
I was born and raised in Flint, MI and 35 years ago was called, "a doomer" for saying, "Flint will collapse when the auto industry leaves".
+35 for superior insight.
I had a similar experience at a family gathering when I mentioned that GM will fail again. No one wanted to hear that. They insisted that "GM can't fail because GM is too big to fail". Yep, that's why I no longer bring up advanced economic topics at family gatherings.
The people did the dooming by not doing anything. That's the "positivity" crowd, just think positive & everything'll be alright. Actually doing something to make the situation positive, nope.
Move to Chester, PA.
All the beauty of North Philadelphia without the elite attitude of Camden, N.J.
That really needs a /sarc tag! LOL
Holy shit. One /sarc tag couldn't possibly handle that Triple Whopper.
There's no photo Lawless took, that I can't match in Phila.
Outsource all the manufacturing and go on Social Security Disability.
Live off the government tit and watch the debt climb and observe how long it takes before the fianicial system collaspes.
Can't help but notice they left out Detroit....but named Flint twice!!
They must have visited Flint....
We've come full circle. We don't make so much stuff anymore. But as a single entity... we sure as fuck blow shit up mo' betta than any other ten nations combined.
I'm not sayin' it a good thing, just a fact.
Yet GM still "thrives".
I bought an import...but it really doesn't matter because Uncle Sugar will take money from Americans and give it to GM anyway. That's right, the guy on the GM assembly line who slides the radio into the dashboard will continue to make $79.95 an hour. But be a "patriot" and buy a GM vehicle anyway, but be prepared for the steering wheel to fall off when you drive it off the lot.
Government Motors, making motoring more Ford Pinto-like every day.
Actually the Pinto was a SCCA weapon when done up with the aftermarket drive train and handling goodies. BMW and Porsche had a tough time with them back in the day. Some slob with $6000 max into one was whipping the $40,000+ german cars.
I occaisionally think about building a Pinto "sleeper".
If only the steering wheel fell off, that'd be an improvement on GMs shitty cars.
FWIW I had the entire stickshift in NEW Pontiac come off in my hand while driving.
But that was back before GM turned things around.
If you shop at any big box retailer, you are killing America.
I noticed that you failed to mention three of the greatest job killers in America: High Taxes, Trade Unions and business regulations. This pattern was established with the early water powered looms. The area the Mill was in (New England) would get prosperous and the city or state would increase taxes and regulations on the mills, making them less profitable.
When the unions came in, that was the last straw: the Mills moved to the American South. When the same pattern happened 40 years later, then, the mills moved over seas. They were kept overseas because the US was running a foreign exchange deficit. That made American made goods more expensive than foreign goods.
Now, companies are moving back to the US. The hand writing is on the wall: the value of the dollar will decrease greatly. That will make manufacturing profitable again. Apple has started up manufacturing in Texas, far away from the rust belt. Toyota moved from Long Beach, Calif to Plano, Texas, north of Dallas. The draw was no unions, no state income tax and a lower cost of living for a much better lifestyle.
The reason most companies moved was that they were pushed out of America. There are plenty of difficulties in manufacturing overseas.
What an utterly stupid article. How do you spend that many words without asking "WHY" all of the manufacturing jobs went overseas.
In short, we GOVERNMENTED ourselves out of manufacturing. Sure, it sounded great when we started butting DC into everything - Union wages for this, minimum wage for that. But govenment intervention never ENDS small. There is no "EPA" in China, for instance -- and that one agency has destroyed more jobs in the United States than every other combined.
If this idiot thinks that our SNAP-addicted mental midgets that elect and reelect the basest elements of our pop culture to the highest positions of power AGAIN and AGAIN have even the slightest ability to create something - Before the governnent destroys the notion -- well, he's smoking crack.
Enjoy the decline, people. We're not coming back from this.
+1000
The cost of Government Day in 2013 was July 13th.
194 days into the year.
Wake up and smell the slavery.
I feel better.
Thanks Buttercup!
The murder of the rust belt is more like it. The paracites killed the hoast. Maybe after the locus die off something will take root.
Given that the South relies on stealing from the North to prosper, they're finally discovering that the North is running out of things for them to steal.
I see people walking by the 'beef' section of the supermarket reach down and pick up a steak and then put it back. They don't select another package they just move on. Beef, even hamburger, is too expensive for them now. On TV I see ads for 'Johnsonville Brats'. Well the fourth of July is coming and people want to BBQ something to 'celebrate' living in Obama's America. Italian sausage and BBQ beans will have to do for many this, the 6th year of the suit monkey's reign. The first Afro-American has achieved his goal. He has Afro-Americanized the American people.
We's gonna have fried chikin, watermelon and grape drank. Givin thanks to the HHNIC.
MmmmMmmm...this FN fambly gonna be plenty happy and 'free' on da 4th.
btw:
HH = head house
F = field
Mega corporations killed the American working middle class. Unless politics are willing to address the corporate culture which has hollowed out the American Dream, nothing will change. In fact it's too late to bring anything back to America. The Mega corps are already feasting elsewhere and the American consumer is being replaced with a Chinese consumer.
The race to the bottom has destroyed America.
Drugged disfunctional people cannot produce
But it's so much more profitable to trade paper than to make stuff and employ people. At least in this country. Abolish the capital gains tax. Tax capital gains like ordinary income. Remove the marginal incentive to trade paper rather than make stuff and employ people.
But now most of the manufacturing jobs are gone and all of those cities are just shadows of their former selves.
Ya? Why is that I wonder?
Snyder mentions: “But then we decided to start shipping in cheaper products from overseas. “
That is true and it started under Ronald Reagan. That is when the trade deficit started to grow.
But JEESUS! How can you NOT mention the shipping of whole manufacturing plants out of the USA along with the jobs?! Mother FUCKER!
You people did this! You were the folks that gave and are still giving tax incentives to move jobs! Remember when Bush Sr, and Clinton and Robert Reich said “This is a good thing!” ?
You wanted to destroy the Unions that provide leverage in wage negotiations.
You wanted to import crap BECAUSE it side stepped the cost of environmental sanity!
YOU were the ones to advocate the lowering of our trade tariffs!
YOU were the ass holes who wrote out NAFTA and GATT trade deals!
Libertarians, Free marketers…you did this to us! FUCK YOU ALL!
How dare YOU try to forget it.
"In other words, we have got to start making stuff in this country again."
Oh, Really?! Then advocate all the things you jack offs got rid of. Scrap the trade deals, raise tarriffs on targeted industries.
You really want to stop the race to the bottom that your STUPID libertarian ideology has created? Open up the FDR play book that worked like miracle-grow for our economy and start putting the fist to the morons who still spout the free market bullshit.
Read a book.
http://www.amazon.com/Pieces-Eight-Monetary-Disabilities-Constitution/dp...
LOL... The crank, Edwin Vieira Jr. must be your relative.
Cthonic, you took the wrong turn in your life when you started taking these folks at the "Mises Institute" seriously. It is all just a NO TAX movement masquerading as a sincere economic movement.
They simply don't want to pay taxes. Period. That is all there is to them.
Lol, yeah the Libertarians wrote passed and signed those trade treaties, abused Fannie and Freddie, repealed Glass-Steagall, and granted China WTO most-favored trade nation status, not. How many Libertarians are even in Congress, like none!? Throughout history, people have died from mobs because morons like you, who somehow gain a glimpse of some portion of a truth, err in assigning, with deep voice and exclamation points, blame to people you know nothing the fuck about. BTW free markets are what civilized men aspire to; your railing would be better directed towards free trade. Go read a fucking book.
That is right, Cthonic. It was the libertarian *philosophy* to let the market have its way. That philosophy permeates Washington today as it serves the purpose of the supremely rich.
Charles Koch is a BIG libertard and he is a force to oppose the raising of tarriffs, opposes unions, opposes tax policy that hurts job out-sourcers, opposes environmental laws. The Kochs are big on there industry going to the poorest lands and then importing goods back to the USA.
Cthonic! On one level, this is about greed and the will to pay low wages and drive up profits.
On another level it is about your idiot philosophy and concepts of what economics work best for the USA.
No, LIBERTARIANS are weak as a party. But I speak to your bad ideas that give cover to GREED and AVARICE.
Your moronic call to "free markets" must make the Chinese oligarchs giggle.
I've got better things to do than argue with a moron. I suggest you focus your rage not upon an idealogy or a personality but rather upon the key enabling institutional couple in this entire clusterfuck, the twin beasts Internal Revenue and the Federal Reserve System. Goodnight.
"twin beasts Internal Revenue and the Federal Reserve System." Doesn't this canned talking points libertard crap embarrass you? Do you mumble about the "gold standard" to people on the streets as well? Do people try to give you money just to get you away from them?
Yes, Cthonic...Good Night. But all that kool-aid you are drinking will surely make that a tough one.
concentration of wealth is what is killing us
With regard to all of this discussion, I have two comments:
1. Why is every Wal Mart full of cars/trucks with union stickers all over them?
2. All of this can be changed easily if individuals made wise choices and maintained their basic principles.
Union stickers? What Walmart are you talking about?
At its high, 30% of workers belonged to unions. Today it is <11%. The decline in the Middleslass share of income tracks DIRECTLY with this trend.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/18/union-membership-middle-class-i...
"All of this can be changed easily if individuals made wise choices and maintained their basic principles."
All of "what", arby? Inherited wealth is not the central means of financial success in the world today. We no longer live in a meritocracy. Yes, you can pull a rabbit out of your own hat and invent the next internet but that is even more random than choosing who your birth parents are.
Domestic manufacturing was displaced so that the federal government could spend, for decades, far more than it's able to bring in via tax revenue. In effect selling worthless treasury bonds to the world in return for the world's labor and resources. The US turned the Triffin dilemma into history's largest Ponzi scheme. Once the world had its fill of foreign currency reserves however, the Fed had to take over expansion of the Ponzi by inflicting QE. After the Fed, the Belgians, then who, who is going to cover our government's spending problem. The answer could very well be: nobody.
Time to come to terms, america.
"Sadly, what is happening to Reading and Gary is just a preview of what is slowly happening to the entire nation as a whole"
True, dat. Contributing to the long term decline of our country is the fact that we will NEVER EVER become a net producer of goods. Global wage arbitrage is here to stay. The system is structured on old economic and employement fantasy, extending credit that is increasingly more difficult for the labor force to reckon. It will end badly, and the only solution is for americans to work for wages being paid overseas. The american dream - dead in america but very alive elsewhere - was thrust by us upon the world, ideologically at best, militarily at worst, and now karma is coming full circle.
"we will NEVER EVER become a net producer of goods"
-TOTAL BULLSHIT
We have the historic model of the FDR administration. We have the present day model of Germany and Sweden. intrica8, the only things holding us back from doing the right things are 1) libertard zombie ideas long since proven false and, of course, 2) greed/corruption.
"the only things holding us back from doing the right things are 1) libertard zombie ideas long since proven false and, of course, 2) greed/corruption"
which is the entire point - We CAN possibly remedy much through sensible policy making but government remains the big obstacle because they no longer serve the people. They're out to maintain and protect the status quo.
The solution must come first with fixing the campaign finance system.
Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law Professor is trying to build a movement to reduce the influence of big money that drowneds out the needs of the common citizen.
Wiki:
Rootstrikers[edit] Main article: RootstrikersChange Congress, founded by Lessig and Joe Trippi, the Fix Congress First project, and the Rootstrikers project were created to help volunteers to address the problem of money in politics.[36][37] In November 2011, Lessig announced all three projects would become part of the United Republic organization, along with Dylan Ratigan’s Get Money Out campaign.[38][39]
NH Rebellion[edit]From January 11th until January 24th, 2014, Larry Lessig and many others, like New York activist Jeff Kurzon, marched from Dixville Notch, NH to Nashua NH (a 185 mile march) to promote the idea of tackling "The Systemic Corruption in Washington." He chose this language over calling it "Campaign Finance Reform," stating that "Saying we need campaign finance reform is like referring to an alcoholic as someone who has a liquid intake problem." The walk was to continue the work of NH Native Doris "Granny D" Haddock. The NH Rebellion will march again on July 4th and 5th.
wrote it dayz ago...
corruption. no way to unstuck of the way. world wide plague.
The unions killed American manufacturing. The reason foreign goods are cheaper is because unions have jacked the cost of manufacturing in America through the roof.
kanoli, it is all relative. Unions built the middle class and you folks destroyed the unions. Yet we still don't see our trade deficit shrinking.
Why is that? I hear you hate unions for some reason. Care to share your personal anecdote? 'cause it would not be a surprise to me that you are just a paid shill from some right wing think tank.
Consider: The rise of the right wing saw the collapse of the unions and the collapse of the US middleclass going on 40 years now.
Why do you hate the USA so much?
Do you also include staffing agencies? They're no different.
The internationalists concept of "Free Trade" is what killed American manufacturing. Plain and simple.
I blame the Repugnicans primarily for that. I was born and raised in Battle Creek, Michigan. I remember Detroit and its suburbs in the late 1940s and all through the 1950s and 1960s.
I lived in Birmingham, Michigan from the early 1970s to 1981 and watched and suffered as the political, economic, and cultural decay from the infestation of the ebonic plague really started to destroy the area. I bankrupted my construction business and left Michigan for Southern Florida in 1981, after Jimma Carter, the forerunner of Barack Ovomit, and the Demoncraps of the day had dragged us into a national "Malaise". It took nearly a decade to get back on my feet.
I have watched as every trade agreement this government has signed onto has opened our ports and borders to slave labor and prison labor products, killed our manufacturing, and lowered wages in all areas of business......While the FED and the Welfare State has consumed the remnant of our wealth and turned our children and grandchildren into parasitical progressives and moral degenerates.
The rapid destruction of the greatest nation in the history of the world has not been by accident or incompetence. It was planned and accomplished by the international moneysuckers who brought us the criminal concepts of fractional reserve banking, legalized counterfeit currencies, permawars, and cultural and moral degradation.
Our Constitution has not been able to withstand this onslaught and we are now in the end game wherein we are losing our freedoms and liberties and are descending into tyranny.
I am 75 years old now, so I won't have to tolerate the growing tyranny for long. I read "The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion" for the first time about 40 years ago. I have a hardcopy which I review and peruse from time to time. The faux-Hebrew/Babylonian/Khazarian/Liberal/progressive jihadists have pursued their satanic plan relentlessly and have accomplished everything they set forth to do in the Protocols. The Protocols are Western History written in advance.
Copies of The Protocols can be downloaded free over the Internet. If you don't read it you are steeped in ignorance and easy prey for the satanic minions who are executing the plan.
The world dictator they are preparing for will appear soon, but he will never fully consolidate his power over all humankind.
I am not dismayed , because I have read and studied The Book, and I know who wins in the end........and it aint Satan.
ok grand pa' time to take your pills & get the fuck out of the computer to go to sleep now.
btw, your book is a lame propaganda written in 1901 by russians for nicolas II to turn him antisemitic... the plan failed, just to say.
also, hitler qoted your book in mein kampf, so... you are just an olf mother fucking american fachist.
do me a favor, unplug the machinery & let yourself go with a nice long morphin shot.
ppl like you make youth go mad, listening your sick brain stories.
well, maybe they didnt help-but youre saying you like to see slave labor paid $1.00 an hour to make your plastic men from Mars? (baubles)
Oops, I accidentally clicked on (more of) Michael Snyder's 60 IQ drivel.
I'm outta here...
Have you actually ever been to any of those places for more than a drive-through?
Thank the South for stealing from the North as well as those that sell off to foreign powers.
And how did it come to pass that David and Barbara need 80 hrs of work per wk at $20 per hour to maintain a middle class lifestyle?
Mr Synder just informed us that we've been importing cheaper consumer goods. So while we were importing cheaper consumer the cost of living was going up requiring more labor at higher rates and causing US labor to further price itself out of more markets.
One might guess the cost of something was rising rather noticeably. Something that wasn't generating much in the way of economic opportunity or growth or efficiency. Gee what could it be?
No matter what jobs Mr Synder and these commenters have, they are way, way overpaid.
The US government and big business colluded to intentionally build up Asia at the expense of the American people and to distance what would normally be called leadership (but is not) from their employees and constituency. That is a fine "thank you very much" to the people who made big business and the US government possible for the parasitic cronies.
It was done with intent and malice because those who lead are lazy, uncaring and corrupt. It was not an accident.
Before this decline is over the rust belt will become the rice belt and all those foreign language students will discover that spanish is not so valuable when addressing their boss.
Knock all the buildings down, build a new concrete platform, fill it with 10 feet of top soil , make these abandoned cities farms.
If there were no real-estate taxes on these lands, I would buy them, but who is going to go buy these worthless cities land, when its just going to rot, and cost you money for taxes?
Like who the fuck would buy a house in detroit? , only way I would even consider it is if it was like a buy one, get 5 free deal and they waived the realestate taxes for 10 years.
The only people who still live in these carved out pumpkin cities are the people too poor to move, or people who have no where to go.
Best thing that could happen is, people from all around the nation just squat in the houses and homestead them, eventually they will own them and they can rebuild the wastelands.
Just wait until all you rust belt haters run out of water. You'll be flocking back to the great lakes states like never before seen. Buffalo NY - my home and one of the world's future great cities. Other than the snow - great weather and unlimited access to fresh water.
I have an idea: Britain could repopulate these areas for you. All it would take is a revolution to bring about a democracy. It might feel a little weird at first as Britain has never really had such a thing, but the thinking majority might get used to the idea. Then we could let you have a few million whose loyalties lie elsewhere. Plus a batch of public sector system servers who think they exist to serve them.
No, I don't know what you are going to do with them either, but you have a history of being far better in some areas of multi-culturalism than us ;)
PS: We will need your CIA to destabilise the septic isle first. Is that ok?
Time to restore full funding to the Real IRA.
Is this to cull their crooks, banksters & tax collecting lackies? Excellent! Then, with an upward adjustment to the temperature, I could be back on a beach in Co. Mayo. Heaven......but, alas :(
Just a moment: 'August', you do know my "loyalties elsewhere" phrase is referring to radical muslims, don't you?? !
I had a summer job in the late 70's in a union manufacturing plant. My job involved reaming 3 holes and screwing in 12 snaps/screws in an upside down bus seat frame. I secured the frame in a jig before doing the other procedures. The hardest part of the job was putting the screws in the snaps. To make time and a half I had to do 18 in an hour. A blind one armed monkey could do 18 in an hour. I was usually done with 144 of these frames by the last break at 930 pm and sat in the break room playing poker until 1130. Since it was a union job and my rate was made the foreman couldn't ask me to sweep floors or empty trash bins. Well I was a young lad at the time and didn't realize that someone was watching my production and after 3 weeks the rate was raised to 24 to make time and a half. I now was done with 172 frames by 1030 and played poker only an hour. Rate was raised one more time to 30 pieces per hour which required a full 8 hours work to make time and a half. I was met in the parking lot by the lifer day shifter and the drunk 3rd shift lifer who threatened to slow me down if I didn't slow down. They were my dad's age. I felt sorry for them but I told them there was one way to slow me down and that was right there right then in the parking lot. They didn't but they did however slash all four tires on my car later that week. The security guard at the gate in the parking lot of course saw nothing. Unions. Smoonions. My brother broke a strike job with his drywall company to finish a high rise over in Detroit in the early 80's and changed motel rooms every week and had two bodyguards with him whereever he went. One bodyguard alomst lost an arm when someone on the fifth floor pushed a rolling toolbox off the building aimed at my brother and it landed on the bodyguards shoulder. Would have killed him if it landed dead center. Don't talk to me about unions. A man or woman will work for whatever someone with more money is willing to pay them. I have never had a paycheck signed for me by a poor person. I worked in a butcher shop learing a trade for 3.50 an hour in 1974. I had a buddy who got hired to drive a forklift in a union shop for 7.23 an hour. He learned nothing beyond that. After a year I was up to 5.30 an hour. He was at 8.20. All he did was bitch and complain about management. Bitch and complain about how much the CEO of his company made. Bitch and moan about how bad second shifters were mistreated. I asked him if he wanted to trade jobs with me straight up. It got real quiet. All of life is about choices. Americans choices are running out.
My brother in law is a tool and die maker. He has been at the same shop for 30 plus years. There are 90 men in his shop and he is 29nth on the seniority list. It is non union. He said there used to be 2 apprentices for every die maker. There were young men standing in line in the 80's to learn this trade. Last week I visited back home in Michigan and he was excited because he had an apprentice for the first time in 4 years. He said there were 5 apprentices now in his shop. This is the most in years. If you give people food and housing they have no desire to work. If you wont work for ten dollars an hour why would you strive to get to 14?
AMEN X 1000. This is exactly the perspective that 99% of the pro-union idiots don't get.
i think the biggest take away from these replies is not the humor, most of which is always good, but the fact that so many seemingly educated people here at ZH are still touting the Dem vs Repub thing, as if there was EVER a fucking difference.
I'm tired of hearing this dogma about how we need our "blue-collar" jobs back. Did any of you fuckers ever work in a factory? Did any of you live in these armpits before the factories left? Ten guys making a widget is never preferable to one guy making ten widgets. You Amish assholes should go work on a farm for a day.
After WWII the US was left with the only industrial base on the planet, and we have reaped those benefits ever since with diminishing returns every year since.
+1 on that, all what ppl want is free time. not arrassing day in a factory, main reason of the, cheaper elsewhere politics.
problem is, when robotics will be in the place & no human work will be valuated excepting the robotic concepters et fixers... how the mass will have money to buy goods...