How to deal with decline in the rust belt?

[Alpine Trooper]

That argument doesn't hold up anymore. Kia is building a plant in Georgia. Toyota has a plant in Alabama, among others. Honda has several plants in Ohio, among others. It doesn't matter who owns the plant; American workers are still getting paid.

I specifically used Kia because it is a Korean auto manufacturer and because we can not sell vehicles in Korea. I did not say Honda or Toyota.

For the record, Honda and Toyota are not unionized either which is a shame as well.

American workers live in America, not KOREA. They deserve 30 an hour not 10.

Umm...

It's been declining since the 1980s. That's when manufacturing jobs started leaving the US. And that's a well established fact

The decline in the 80s is nothing compared to what has been experienced over the last 8 years.

 

[mangxema]

I specifically used Kia because it is a Korean auto manufacturer and because we can not sell vehicles in Korea.

Why does this matter?

I did not say Honda or Toyota.

True. I figured Kia was a generic foreign brand that happens to be cheap.

For the record, Honda and Toyota are not unionized either which is a shame as well.

Based on where there plants tend to be (the South), I don't think you can really hold this against them. Unions never took hold because of a very bloody history. No doubt, the companies are using this to their advantage, though.

 

[downtown]

Plus, their lives will be better in economically viable areas than they'll be in a futuristic, heavily subsidized, rustier Rust Belt.

I just can't buy the "its okay, they'll just move" arguement. If Ohio, Indiana, Western PA and Michigan keep bleeding residents into states like the Carolinas, or out west, we're going to have a state-level entitlement crisis. If every out of work factoy worker sets up shop in Alabama, they won't have the money to pay for roads, cops or schools. A solution needs to be enacted here as well.

American workers live in America, not KOREA. They deserve 30 an hour not 10..

But whats the point of that? It doesn't really matter what your factory workers deserve if there isn't a factory anymore.

Whats your solution? Do nothing?

 

[Stolen Rutters]

We're talking about how to deal with the decline of our rust belt. Anyone have ideas what kind of business I can start to generate jobs? I'm in the mood for solutions now that I've read the complaints in this thread. Unfortunately, we can't bulldoze half of my little town, since the University owns half.

I was thinking about government regulation compliance... help comanies to comply with the 20,000 pages of laws they have to follow. I need to find people around here with skills though.

Also, medical industry is a big growth industry here in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area.

If you have any other ideas, throw them my way.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Unfortunately, we can't bulldoze half of my little town, since the University owns half.

So bulldoze the other half.

 

[downtown]

We're talking about how to deal with the decline of our rust belt. Anyone have ideas what kind of business I can start to generate jobs? I'm in the mood for solutions now that I've read the complaints in this thread. Unfortunately, we can't bulldoze half of my little town, since the University owns half.

I was thinking about government regulation compliance... help comanies to comply with the 20,000 pages of laws they have to follow. I need to find people around here with skills though.

Also, medical industry is a big growth industry here in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area.

If you have any other ideas, throw them my way.

What does EMU specialize in? Thats the biggest draw to Ypsilanti isnt it?

 

[Stolen Rutters]

What does EMU specialize in? Thats the biggest draw to Ypsilanti isnt it?

The best programs at Eastern Michigan are Education, Business, and medicine. It's an amazing school for educating teachers. It's better than average for the other two. Ypsilanti also has one of the two major regional hospitals in Washtenaw County.

University of Michigan is 5 miles down the road, in nearby Ann Arbor. (Go Wolverines!) They have world class business, medicine, dentistry, engineering, law, social work... Wow, I just looked it up and 70% of the U-M's programs were ranked in the top ten nationwide, in various rankings lately. (Links are in the wiki article.) U-M Hospital is the other of the two major regional hospitals.

The two universities combined bring around 70,000 students to the area for 9 months out of the year.

Do any of these strengths suggest a potential business opportunity?

 

[joycem10]

Plus, their lives will be better in economically viable areas than they'll be in a futuristic, heavily subsidized, rustier Rust Belt.

Man, your casually dimissive attitude towards people who you, as an arch-democrat, must consider part of your party's base is why charges of elitism and disconnect attach so easily to your party.

I think the only obvious solutions are to move to a service based ecomony, the way my hometown has over the past 2 decades. There is no steel production in Pittsburgh (despite what ESPN and CBS may promote coming back from commercial at Steeler's home games) or much manufacturing in general.

This economy is based is medtech, financial services, legal services and tech. UPMC and Highmark BCBS are the major employers in the metro. We didnt have a real estate boom and we arent having a bust. The local economy is doing as well as, if not better that most of the nation and unemployment is relatively low. Compared to where we were in the last major recession, things are rosy.

The city goverment itself is close to a wreck, mostly due to the common problems of mismanagement, one party rule, corruption, machine politics and high taxes, but thats the same story throughout the so call 'rust belt'. My solution for city goverments is mergers with the metro area of vital services and goverment offices. The suburbs might not like it, but its the only way to control the thugs in most city goverments.

 

[BasketCase]

Yeah, that isn't exactly insightful or anything. The question is HOW

How about the same way it happened in the first place?

Before the Rust Belt was the Rust Belt, it was a big industrial center. But what about before that? Before it was a big industrial center, it was empty grassland or forest or whatever. Eventually somebody decided to take the big plunge, make an investment, and plunk down a silver mine or a factory.

The catch right now is that all the abandoned buildings make it an eyesore and discourage people from taking the "big plunge". It's not empty grassland--it's more like a set piece from a Mad Max movie. That's going to have to change, and somebody's going to have to foot the bill to change it.

 

[downtown]

The best programs at Eastern Michigan are Education, Business, and medicine. It's an amazing school for educating teachers. It's better than average for the other two. Ypsilanti also has one of the two major regional hospitals in Washtenaw County.

University of Michigan is 5 miles down the road, in nearby Ann Arbor. (Go Wolverines!) They have world class business, medicine, dentistry, engineering, law, social work... Wow, I just looked it up and 70% of the U-M's programs were ranked in the top ten nationwide, in various rankings lately. (Links are in the wiki article.) U-M Hospital is the other of the two major regional hospitals.

The two universities combined bring around 70,000 students to the area for 9 months out of the year.

Do any of these strengths suggest a potential business opportunity?

Haha, sorry bro, but I had to stop reading after you started blathering about how good Michigan is (I go to THE Ohio State University)

I like where you head is at though. What about some of the cottage medical industries? There are a lot of little industries that can be centered around college student labor, but I don't think thats anything to base a city around....

 

[Alpine Trooper]

But whats the point of that? It doesn't really matter what your factory workers deserve if there isn't a factory anymore.

Whats your solution? Do nothing?

Factory workers in North America have always earned decent wages and their wages drive the economies they live in. You can't suddenly pay them 1/3 of what they were making and then expect them to continue feeding the economy.

The auto manufacturers must be forced to pay them appropirate wages. The auto manufacturers must be forced to build their products in America or Canada. There is no other way about it and moving plants to other countries is unacceptable and it is the government and unions job to ensure these companies submit to the betterment of society they exist in and the communties which have provided for and created their business. Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler would not exist without the people they currently employ.

You see the difference in strategy when you look at American Unions which are submitting to the Big 3 through wage cuts and two tier wage systems and the Canadian Unions which will not tolerate, -ever-, these companies attempting to abandon the people which have built the foundations of their business.

The quality and productivity of North American auto workers is absolutely unmatched elsewhere.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Haha, sorry bro, but I had to stop reading after you started blathering about how good Michigan is (I go to THE Ohio State University)

I like where you head is out though. What about some of the cottage medical industries? There are a lot of little industries that can be centered around college student labor, but I don't think thats anything to base a city around....

I have always wanted to start a business locally, but automotive engineering has consolidated to the point that there aren't many opportunities in automotive for start-ups, especially with today's market forcing the established businesses to fight to hold on to the business they have. One friend of mine is having some success in niche database software, and I am doing fine with rental property, but landlording doesn't really make NEW jobs. I want to make more of a difference myself.

Off topic:

Yep, I went to Michigan. The difficulty of their Engineering curriculum was insane.

...For the people who aren't from the midwest, Ohio State happens to be one other of the good schools in the region, too, except when they play us in sports, of course. Then they suck!... (j/k) We can't seem to beat them in Football lately, but it was the other way around when I was in college (in 88-95 time frame).

(I can't believe I gave props to OSU... I must be slipping. )

 

[downtown]

Factory workers in North America have always earned decent wages and their wages drive the economies they live in. You can't suddenly pay them 1/3 of what they were making and then expect them to continue feeding the economy.

The auto manufacturers must be forced to pay them appropirate wages.

So whats to stop them from simply going out of business? Then nobody gets any wages. Are you saying there should be a seperate min. wage for the manufacturing industry or something? Who would want to build a factory here?

The auto manufacturers must be forced to build their products in America or Canada. There is no other way about it and moving plants to other countries is unacceptable

Okay, so your solution is to pas laws prohibiting businesses from moving operations to another country?

Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler would not exist without the people they currently employ.

And if they don't also employ some people in Brazil, Mexico, or China, they will also cease to exist.

 

[downtown]

I have always wanted to start a business locally, but automotive engineering has consolidated to the point that there aren't many opportunities in automotive for start-ups, especially with today's market forcing the established businesses to fight to hold on to the business they have. One friend of mine is having some success in niche database software, and I am doing fine with rental property, but landlording doesn't really make NEW jobs. I want to make more of a difference myself.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I wish more people thought like this though...then I think we wouldn't have so much of a problem.

We have a lot of data entry/entry-level marketing companies in this area, to take advantage of the huge student population. Another popular company thats recently moved in is the College Painters. They hire a bunch of college students to manage and hire out small house-painting companies in little suburbs around the area. The kids get great experience running a small, low-risk business, as well as pretty good wages...and if you have a few of these running at the same time, you make a lot of coin yourself.

Their business model was pretty sucsessful, so we're starting to some other industries try out similar models for themselves. If I didn't have a job in Arizona this summer, I think I would be doing it.

 

[JohnRM]

Looks like one city has the right idea.

As to the rust belt: Get college educations.

Those states have some of the best public university systems in the country.

Somebody's silver spoon is showing. We're not all blessed with people to pay for our educations you know. Besides, if we all went to college, we'd be competing over just as few jobs.

 

[JohnRM]

I think that Youngstown has got it right. You've just got to accept reality and roll over the urban blight. You've got two choices. Leave it and hope that for some reason the people and business comes back (and it won't) or wipe it out and give in to the contraction. Open spaces, empty and ready for development are much more appealing to both residents and business than broken down neighborhoods with decaying ruins of what used to be. It could get even worse than that, such as with the case of Reading, Pa. where you have the decaying ruins of a shrinking city throughout the middle part of the 20th Century becoming reoccupied by immigrants from Puerto Rico and other parts of the globe who are poor and destitute, and now you have a city full of these people who provide a terrible burden on the city's services and provide almost no tax base to speak of. The neighborhoods are even worse off now than they were and the gangs are running rampant, along with the drugs, throughout the city.

 

[Alpine Trooper]

So whats to stop them from simply going out of business? Then nobody gets any wages. Are you saying there should be a seperate min. wage for the manufacturing industry or something? Who would want to build a factory here?


Okay, so your solution is to pas laws prohibiting businesses from moving operations to another country?


And if they don't also employ some people in Brazil, Mexico, or China, they will also cease to exist.

I think Mexico is part of North America and the Big 3 have had a long relationship within Mexico. Feeder plants tend to migrate to Mexico, not automotive assembly plants.

Most Mexican vehicles have to be manufactured to operate in that area of the world because of the sea level (ie must be turbocharged) and it makes sense that certain vehicles are built in Mexico as well.

The Big 3 are not going to go out of business simply because they pay people wages they deserve, their biggest problem economically is the lack of socialized health care in the United States.

At minimum feeder plant workers should be making $15 an hour, assembly plant workers are usually in the upper $25-30 an hour range. None of this is unreasonable, they were always well paid. Skilled trades should be in the 30-40 an hour range.

And yes I believe laws should be passed prohibiting these companies from attempting to move out of North America. It would also put North America at a significant disadvantage if we were suddenly unable to produce tanks and ammunition because all of our factories were shut down and in now operating in China.

Im more content with machines eliminating jobs then companies attempting to please share holders with rediculous profits by moving to countries where they can pay people 5 dollars and hour rather then investing in technology.

Why does this matter?

No one should be allowed to flood our market with cheap k-car technology vehicles that cost below $10,000 and destroy the market for used domestic vehicles. Especially if we are not allowed to sell vehicles in their country.

 

[Swedishguy]

Somebody's silver spoon is showing. We're not all blessed with people to pay for our educations you know. Besides, if we all went to college, we'd be competing over just as few jobs.

Funny, in Sweden everyone has an equal chance to go to college.

 

[Alpine Trooper]

Funny, in Sweden everyone has an equal chance to go to college.

That I am and will always be very jealous of. Consider yourself extremely lucky, my student loans are near 25,000 right now.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Funny, in Sweden everyone has an equal chance to go to college.

Here, you have to pay, usually by borrowing. I left school with about $30k in loan debt.