How to deal with decline in the rust belt?

[Kontiki]

Hey, I just read the Detroit has the largest concentration of Belgians in the US. Time to move, Colon.

[Colonâ„¢]

It's my calling, apparently.

[Dinner]

I'm glad we've actually got some good responses here. I posted this same thread on another website only to have it spammed to death by a couple of people who preached the end of the industrial age and how we should all go back to the utopia pre-industrial society.

[Darius871]

Youngstown

Here in northeast Ohio
Back in eighteen-o-three
James and Dan Heaton
Found the ore that was linin' Yellow Creek
They built a blast furnace
Here along the shore
And they made the cannonballs
That helped the Union win the war

Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
My sweet Jenny I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown

Well my daddy worked the furnaces
Kept 'em hotter than hell
I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer
A job that'd suit the devil as well
Taconite coke and limestone
Fed my children and make my pay
Them smokestacks reachin' like the arms of God
Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay

Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
Sweet Jenny I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown

Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from World War Two
Now the yard's just scrap and rubble
He said "Them big boys did what Hitler couldn't do."
These mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won this country's wars
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we're wondering what they were dyin' for

Here in Youngstown
Here in Youngstown
My sweet Jenny I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown

From the Monongahela valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalachia
The story's always the same
Seven hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world's changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name

And Youngstown
And Youngstown
My sweet Jenny I'm sinkin' down
Here darlin' in Youngstown

When I die I don't want no part of heaven
I would not do heaven's work well
I pray the devil comes and takes me
To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell...

- Bruce Springsteen

[LordShiva]

My Hometown

I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
Id sit on his lap in that big old buick and steer as we drove through town
Hed tousle my hair and say son take a good look around
This is your hometown, this is your hometown
This is your hometown, this is your hometown

In `65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
My hometown, my hometown, my hometown

Now main streets whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there aint nobody wants to come down here no more
Theyre closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they aint coming back to
Your hometown, your hometown, your hometown, your hometown

Last night me and kate we laid in bed talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
Im thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good
Look around
This is your hometown

- Bruce Springsteen

[DanS]

About that Springsteen Youngstown song, it's great. But he doesn't have a clue when he starts railing against The Man.

My dad delivered tanks to the mills up there. He was appalled at how little the workers did. And I'm sure they were paid excellent union wages to do it. My dad was the head of his small local for a time, but nowadays you don't hear anything positive about unions out of him. I'm convinced that it was the steel mills that turned him against the unions.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by LordShiva

Whar are you smiling about, that song's only about 1% less depressing than the other.

[CrONoS]

Originally posted by Darius871


Whar are you smiling about, that song's only about 1% less depressing than the other.

Lord get laid, two or three day earlier... he got the sickness of female people. He became totally irrationnal, crazy and out of controlll

[Darius871]

Originally posted by DanS
About that Springsteen Youngstown song, it's great. But he doesn't have a clue when he starts railing against The Man.

My dad delivered tanks to the mills up there. He was appalled at how little the workers did. And I'm sure they were paid excellent union wages to do it. My dad was the head of his small local for a time, but nowadays you don't hear anything positive about unions out of him. I'm convinced that it was the steel mills that turned him against the unions.

Even so, I'd blame the lack of foresight on the part of union leadership moreso than the rank-and-file members themselves. At least the former were in a better position to understand the long-term ramifications of the concessions they sought.

That's not to say that the unions should have accepted wages equal to those acceptable to overseas workers, since this assumption would ignore the countless expenses associated with dismantling a U.S. factory, building a new factory overseas, building a new transportation/energy/water/etc. infrastructure for the new factory, training an entirely new workforce, translators, government liasons, shipping goods over greater distances, etc. etc. etc.

A forward-thinking union leadership would have made extensive efforts to accurately estimate what those costs would be, and thereby determine wage scales that would on the one hand be much higher than the market value of members' labor (because lets face it, whatever overseas workers would settle for is the "market value"), but on the other hand deny a company the huge financial incentive to move its production overseas.

If union leadership had had that sort of foresight in the late 60's, the Rust Belt would be still flourishing today, but instead they just chose to cover their eyes and go down with the ship. At this point it's too late to reverse their blunder even if they wanted to.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Darius871
Even so, I'd blame the lack of foresight on the part of union leadership moreso than the rank-and-file members themselves. At least the former were in a better position to understand the long-term ramifications of the concessions they sought.

No offense intended, but that view seems naive to me. The rank-and-file were probably just fine with the situation until they showed up to work, but the gates were shut. It's human nature to take whatever you can get in the absence of any real push-back.

Well... anyway... I guess it's all gone no matter.

[FrostyBoy]

Told you ALL so.

Chicago is next. I mean London.

[SlowwHand]

Next door, an empty Victorian sits moldering, the wood of its window frames scorched. Lines of old hedges mark lot boundaries where once-proud homes stood.

That's a shame. I like Victorian.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by DanS
No offense intended, but that view seems naive to me. The rank-and-file were probably just fine with the situation until they showed up to work, but the gates were shut. It's human nature to take whatever you can get in the absence of any real push-back.

I don't deny they were "just fine with the situation"; what I meant by "better position" was that the rank-and-file's level of education and degree of exposure to crucial facts was so limited that from their perspective it's not surprising they felt "entitled" to their jobs. They understandably relied on the assumption that their representatives would take care of everything, so they could instead focus their attention to family/recreation type whatnot.

Union leadership, on the other hand, had enough education, consulting experts, and direct contact with company management to actually see the writing on the wall, and still did nothing. Because they had a much better vantage point from which to foresee the problem and devise mitigation strategies, they bore far more responsibility than the rank-and-file cogs, if not 100% responsibility.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
1) Shoot them all
1)a) Let God sort them out

Always a good idea.
Worked already in the Albigensian Crusade around 1200AD

[b etor]

phantoms
lol the girls team was not good. cool rink though.