Over the last 50 years, Detroit has lost almost a million of its former 1.85 million people. About three-quarters of those one million people were white.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Even stiffs are moving out of Detroit.
Well, this is destined to be a depressing comments thread.
lol, Democrats
About three-quarters of those one million people were white.
What are they now?
alkali,
A good chunk of them are likely greyish green.
This surely proves something about an ideology.
What happened to the metro area, does anyone know? Is it just the city proper, or the whole area, that's losing people?
Let's ask the really uncomfortable questions that no one wants to ask letalone answer. Has any American city ever benefited from African American leadership? Has white flight ever resulted in anything except crime and social disfunction? Doesn't the fact that the author considers that most of the people who left Detroit were white relevent rest on the racist assumption that the less white and more black a city is the worse off it is? Would anyone point to black flight as a relevent factor in the decline of a city?
Freddie is right. This is a really depressing thread.
"Has any American city ever benefited from African American leadership?"
Shirley Franklin of Atlanta and Adrian Fenty of Washington DC are excellent mayors. I pulled those two examples right out of my a**. Any amount of research on wikipedia would turn up more.
I think you had in mind the many african american mayors who came to power using racially divisive, 'stick it to whitey' politics, a la Marion Barry. Well I hate to break it to you, but that particular phenomenon is not confined to black people. White people have been electing officials based on their promises, explicit or implicit, to keep minorities down for 150 years. You can ask the South -- still to this day the nation's poorest, fattest, least educated region -- how well that has worked out for them.
Here in Philly, Nutter's been doing a good job.
"Shirley Franklin of Atlanta and Adrian Fenty of Washington DC are excellent mayors. I pulled those two examples right out of my a**. Any amount of research on wikipedia would turn up more."
Having lived in both cities, I can say those two are only good mayers in relation to the losers who went before them. Both Atlanta and Washington city governments were a complete mess when they took over. They only look good because it would be impossible to look bad given the mayors who came before them. Fenty in particular is a good example. Just because he hasn't been arrested for crack, doesn't make him a good mayor. Washington DC still has terrible public services and a murder rate that is a national embarassment.
As far as the South goes, the South has done extremly well economiclly over the last 30 years. Cities like Charlotte, Raleigh, Houston, and Nashville are economic dynamos that put places like Washington DC to shame. Further, step outside of Atlanta to Marrietta and you will find plenty of economic growth. Clearly, you have never actually been to the South or know anything about it beyond your prejudices. I would say things have worked out quite well for the South over the last 30 years. A lot better than they have worked out for the Northeast.
"I would say things have worked out quite well for the South over the last 30 years. A lot better than they have worked out for the Northeast."
Well, you're still fatter, dumber, less educated, and poorer. So keep up the good work.
The thing also to remember when looking at old cities like Detroit or Philadelphia or Boston even is the commanding presence they had over the economy 50 years ago. In the 1940s Pennsylvania was the arsenal of democracy. Everyone knows the story of Detroit. In contrast, the South was still recovering from the Civil War and the West was largely unpopulated. The economic shift from the Northeast to the South and West over the last 50 years has just been astounding. Those cities are dying. Every year they lose populations. A few of them, Boston and New York, are just too big to fail. But clearly places like Detroit and Buffalo are not. Look at it this way, York was the second largest city in England during the middle ages and was an economic hub of the wool trade. Meanwhile, places like Sheffield and Manchester barely existed if at all. Times change.
The numbers are actually even worse. The white population went from a peak of 1.5 million to a mere 90,000 today. The white people fled because of race riots, a crime wave that turned the city into a war zone, and mayor who blamed all problems on the evil white people. There is a word for this. It is called "ethnic cleansing".
If you want to be depressed further, check out the account of two missionaries working in the city http://www.detroitblog.org/?p=542 and a tour of the ruins of Detroit ( http://detroityes.com/home.htm ).
Actually John, I'm a native of Gwinnett County, GA. I like it so much down here that I've never even bothered to visit the northeast at all. That doesn't mean I'm blind to all the bad things about the place. It is a factual statement that the South, relative to the rest of the country, is still poor and uneducated, in large part due to the legacy of racial hatred and division left by the civil war and reconstruction.
Do you think the timing of the economic growth in the South is a coincidence? It is absolutely not. Minorities gaining civil rights, and the attendant change in societal attitudes, had everything to do with it. Economic growth began to be seen as a win-win situation, instead of a zero-sum game where a gain by minorities was a loss for whites. Not to mention that talented workers from other regions began to see it as an attractive place to live and work. Think of PW County in the DC metro area... lots of people not interested in buying houses there, despite the low prices, because of the county's well-known struggle against illegal immigrants and the toxic racist atmosphere it has created.
The Detroit metro area is still enormous, and I understand that the suburbs are not shrinking. The population seems to have shifted in the region, beginning with regular suburban development in the years after World War II.
The race riots of the late 60s seem to have accelerated "white flight," but they weren't the only cause. Same with some rather bad city governments, and the explosion of crime and random violence. The latter drove plenty of non-white people to suburbia or other parts of the country as well.
Something that people don't talk about much in this context is Dutch Elm Disease. There were neighborhoods in Detroit that looked gorgeous when they still had their elm trees. Once the trees were gone, however, the neighborhoods looked bleak and blighted. Middle class people shopping for houses almost certainly would have considered the places with the trees, but not without.
As a counter to Detroit, I would point to Chicago. Why does a city that shares the upper-midwest industrial characteristics and history with Detroit manage to thrive? I would submit that one of Chicago's great strengths is its black middle class. A previous poster mentioned the success of Atlanta which also has a historically significant black middle-class.
"Think of PW County in the DC metro area... lots of people not interested in buying houses there, despite the low prices, because of the county's well-known struggle against illegal immigrants and the toxic racist atmosphere it has created."
Actually, people don't buy in PW county anymore because it is full of immigrants and the crime rate has gone up significantly. Toxic racist atmosphere? What a joke. You have to understand that Washington liberals love immigration but would never let an immgrant, at least not a poor one, live in thier neighborhood. Go out to Manassas sometime. It is full of Latin American immigrants. Cheap house or no, no white Washington yuppie is going to move there anymore than they will move to the immigrant areas of DC, unless of course they can gentrify them out of the market like they did around metro center.
As far as the South goes, it grew because it had lower taxes, fewer unions and more opportunities. The Civil War actually gave the South a comparative advantage over the North because it destroyed the intrenched economic interests there. Mancur Olson has a really good chapter about it in his book The Rise and Decline of Nations. It is over 25 years old, but still true today.
"Do you think the timing of the economic growth in the South is a coincidence? "
I think economical and efficient air conditioning had more to do with it.
Of course! It makes perfect sense that the comparative advantage that the south got from the civil war took over 100 years to actually show up in the economy.
Wait, so what exactly are the point of your posts? I think you were in the middle of saying that black people are bad for the economy and bad at governing, when you got distracted by spouting off against yuppie liberal northeasterners. Please carry on, don't let me keep you from making a damn fool out of yourself.
John writes: "Those cities are dying. Every year they lose populations. A few of them, Boston and New York, are just too big to fail. But clearly places like Detroit and Buffalo are not."
Boston is a relatively small city, actually.
I like how John came in with a post that made it all about race. I realize Sailerites go to that otion first, but I suspect that industry collapses and shifts have more to do with the declines of cities than race does.
And employers started moving south because they wanted a cheaper, more compliant work force. Land was cheaper, energy costs often lower, etc.
This call-and-response by rickm is priceless:
""I would say things have worked out quite well for the South over the last 30 years. A lot better than they have worked out for the Northeast."
Well, you're still fatter, dumber, less educated, and poorer. So keep up the good work."
While there has been growth in the suburbs due to the outflow from Detroit over the past 40 years, the overall metro area is not booming, especially with the decline of the domestic auto industry.
I read an interesting theory about the destruction of Detroit compared to other cities where there has been rebirth. Since Detroit had a fair amount of affluence from the auto revolution and Detroiters were far more likely to own a car, people were more likely to live in houses rather than in apartments. This created more sprawl and more single unit housing. So the residential areas in Detroit are far different than that of NY or Chicago, where businesses are more mixed into the residential areas.
So while a person out of college can live in a building with a bar underneath it in Chicago, most housing in Detroit is in neighborhoods consisting of houses, farther removed from any form of commerce or recreation.
Njorl is correct- without air conditioning the south is unbearably hot and humid from June to October.
I'm a former Detroiter. I now live in LA. The population of the City of Detroit now resides in its suburbs. They sit on overcrowded freeways, and just pass through on their way to another suburb to work or play. There are a handful of attractions that bring people in from time to time, but that's about it. With the auto industry in decline, it will get much worse not better.
Much of what went wrong was poor government. People lost the sense that they had an interest in what happened in the City.
The decline has gone on for so long that the places I remember loving as a child no longer exist. Boarded up, crumbing or torn down. It's so dramatic that there are web sites with images of it.
It is probably the saddest place in the country -- next to New Orleans.
"without air conditioning the south is unbearably hot and humid from June to October."
As is Philadelphia.
rickm,
Philly is tolerable without air conditioning (if one grew up in the South, that is- northerners don't handle heat and humidity well), but places in the south are 72+ dewpoints all summer long, plus the average highs are 90+ everywhere but along the coast.
I live in the Northeast, now, and I do it very well without air conditioning. I know I couldn't do it in Little Rock.
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, which at the time (70s) touted itself as "one of the ten safest cities in America," although it sat some 25 miles from the "murder capital of America".
In 1950, Detroit had ~1.85M people, about 300K of whom were black. By 2000, the black population had more than doubled (to 780K) but the total population had been more than halved (down to 900K). That means the white pop of Det 50 years ago, 1.55M, was cut more than 90%, down to 115K.
When you do the math, you discover that white people left Detroit at the rate of 7.8 per day, or nearly one every three hours...24 hours a day, every day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for half a century.
Amazing.
They lost more than half their population? Look, I know you're a libertarian and all, but I think at this point anyone but the most die-hard anarchist nutcases would agree, we'd really better put GPS collars or somethin' on the people that're left.
Somebody above questioned why Chicago is thriving and Detroit is still struggling?
I guess it's true in a relative sense. Chicago is an undoubtedly impressive city to visit. Unlike Detroit, Chicago is still a financial center.
But Chicago can't touch the growth rates of the west and south. And like Detroit, the decline of hard industry has hit the city itself (especially the south side) hard.
Yeah, John no one in a Northern city would ever live near a poor immigrant. Um, try Google-ing a place called "New York City" some time. You won't seem quite so ignorant.
FYI, unions like the UAW are the reason workers in the North were middle-class decades before their Southern brethren. Dental plans, shoes for everyone, the chance for kids to go to college, etc -- the usual mid 20th C. Northern decadence, huh?
Yeah, John no one in a Northern city would ever live near a poor immigrant. Um, try Google-ing a place called "New York City" some time. You won't seem quite so ignorant.
FYI, unions like the UAW are the reason workers in the North were middle-class decades before their Southern brethren. Dental plans, shoes for everyone, the chance for kids to go to college, etc -- the usual mid 20th C. Northern decadence, huh?
Yeah, John no one in a Northern city would ever live near a poor immigrant. Um, try Google-ing a place called "New York City" some time. You won't seem quite so ignorant.
FYI, unions like the UAW are the reason workers in the North were middle-class decades before their Southern brethren. Dental plans, shoes for everyone, the chance for kids to go to college, etc -- the usual mid 20th C. Northern decadence, huh?
This just shows how people are still wedded to outdated notions regarding the supremacy of white European cultural values, like future-oriented thinking, resolving conflicts in a non-violent manner, taking pride in working and not being a government parasite, etc - the values that define what some arrogantly call "civilization". Well last I checked Zimbabwe still works, without any of those things. Let them leave - they are missing out on one of the vanguards of the future US culture. They should have stayed so their kids would have learned to adapt to alternative cultural norms; it's no fun being a minority.
John wrote:
Has any American city ever benefited from African American leadership?
Cities like Charlotte, Raleigh, Houston, and Nashville are economic dynamos that put places like Washington DC to shame.
I suppose those are dynamos with no thanks to Harvey Gantt, Mayor of Charlotte (1983-1987) or Lee Brown, Mayor of Houston (1998-2004). Perhaps you've heard of Ron Kirk, Mayor of Dallas (1995-2002), another Southern city that isn't commonly considered an economic basketcase.
"Well, you're still fatter, dumber, less educated, and poorer. So keep up the good work."
Here's the question: if it weren't for the high black population in the south, would the region still be "fatter, dumber, less educated, and poorer"? This is typical lefty dishonesty. Take any Northern state, add enough average Southern blacks to make the state ~50% black, and then see what your statewide stats look like.
Why is that stunning? What fraction of the Detroit population was white 50 years ago?
A very quick google tells me that in 1970, 16% of the US population was non-white, and in 1998, 27% of the US population was non-white.
So, people moved out of Detroit. Unless Detroit had a very different racial mix from the rest of the country 50 years ago, it looks like minorities were slightly more likely to leave than whites.
Set race aside for a moment. Could this be flight by the upper middle class? People with money and education are leaving, making Detroit worse off. Perhaps it just turns out that the upper middle class is primarily white, but if it were mostly black we would call it black flight?
delurking,
The demographic makeup of Detroit went from predominately white to predominately black during this 50 year period.
And I would remake the point I made earlier in a more subtle way- people die that were not replaced by inmigration- this surely accounts for a large fraction of the "lost population".
The South's economic growth also had a lot to do with air conditioning and the lack of unions.
Unfortunately, I am a native of New Orleans. Not as bad as Detroit but still horrible, unless you are well off enough to insulate yourself from the horrors.
One additional note about the economic growth of the south - at the same time blacks were moving to northern cities, they were moving out of the south.
In Mississippi and South Carolina, for example, Black numbers decreased from about 60 percent of the population in 1930 to about 35 percent by 1970. I think it was in part the end of the black majority in the deep south that made the end of legal segregation and voting discrimination possible.
Re: What happened to the metro area, does anyone know? Is it just the city proper, or the whole area, that's losing people?
Originally it was just the city while the metro area sprawled just like metro areas all over the country. However Michigan has been in a near-depression for most of this decade and the metro area is bleeding people now too since there are few jobs to be had. (I got out at the beginning of this collapse, back in '99).
Re: Why does a city that shares the upper-midwest industrial characteristics and history with Detroit manage to thrive?
Chicago is ideally placed as trade hub, right between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi valley, a midway-city between the industrial northeast and the agricultural midwest. Chicago also has great cultural institutions. Detroit ought to be a powerful trade hub too, but no one has ever figured out how the city can capitalize on its location on the busiest border crossing in the US, and Michigan's cultural institutions were never found in Detroit, but instead localized in Ann Arbor around the University of Michigan.
Re: So while a person out of college can live in a building with a bar underneath it in Chicago, most housing in Detroit is in neighborhoods consisting of houses, farther removed from any form of commerce or recreation.
While there are probably fewer buildings with bars right underneath apartments in Detroit (though I'm not sure how common that is in Chicago either), the old Detroit neighborhoods were very walkable before they were abandoned, often with retail businesses and, yes, bars just up at the street corner.
Re: Has any American city ever benefited from African American leadership?
Dennis Archer (who is Black) was a decent guy and he did his best to turn Detroit around. But then the people of the city saw fit to replace him with the current venal thug. Still, I don't think we can do much finger-pointing at Detroit when we consider whom America as a whole has put in the White House.
Re: if it weren't for the high black population in the south, would the region still be "fatter, dumber, less educated, and poorer"?
Yes. There's a whole large class of folks in the white South who middle class Blacks look down their noses at. To use a term from Gone With The Wind: Po' White Trash.
Re: Perhaps it just turns out that the upper middle class is primarily white, but if it were mostly black we would call it black flight?
Detroit has suffered Black flight too. Much of the Black middle class long ago removed themselves to Southfield and a couple other nearby suburbs.
On that subject, I recommend Roger Lowenstein's new book. Lowenstein demonstrates that a series of UAW heads had a pretty good idea of how susceptible their benefits were to Stein's Law.
As someone who works in Detroit and lives in a close-in suburb, I have a couple of thoughts. For starters, Detroit made the mistake of not annexing the suburbs. So when the center city got into trouble and population shifted, Detroit lost its tax base. I lived for a while in Columbus, Ohio, which did not make this mistake. The minute a developer even looked at a cow pasture, pow, it was part of the city. So Columbus had money to fix problems downtown before they became disasters.
This has been aggravated by the fact that this truly is the motor city. Many people work in the car business and love cars, and we have a freeway system that makes 40 mile commutes commonplace. If you want to empty out a center city, that will help accomplish the task.
As many have observed, metro Detroit is still doing pretty well, even with a severe downcycle in the auto industry. It's just that metro Detroit now covers about 1/6th of the state.
Left unsaid so far is that many of the foreign car companies that have built factories in the U.S. have steered clear of Detroit. In a lot of industries you have a cluster effect, where new companies set up shop near existing ones, to benefit from the same ancillary professionals, specialized labor market, research universities, and other local resources. In the auto industry, the benefit of experienced factory workers apparently doesn't outweigh the high costs of UAW labor, so foreign companies tend to build their factories elsewhere.
"Over the last 50 years, Detroit has lost almost a million of its former 1.85 million people."
This has been the history of most large older American cities -- Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, St Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Gary, Kansas City, Baltimore. Even cities now doing relatively well (Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Fransisco) are below their population peaks. Chicago, for example, was 3.6M in 1950 but only 2.8M now.
"What happened to the [Detroit] metro area, does anyone know? Is it just the city proper, or the whole area, that's losing people?"
Over the time that Detroit was shrinking from 2M to under 1M, the metro area grew to ~5M. It sprawled and has generally prospered up until the most recent auto downturn. Oakland County is (or was, until recently) one of the wealthiest in the U.S. (Oakland Hills hosts PGA events quite often -- the PGA this year).
Washtenaw Country (a bit farther out) is home to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. It has continued to do quite well even during the general downturn in Michigan, boosted by the university, a major presence by Toyota (Toyota Tech Center), and the recent arrival of Google, among others. Even farther out, Livingston county was the home of rapidly growing exurbs, but it has been hit by the auto slowdown and sub-prime meltdown.
I'm a transplant to the area (living in Ann Arbor) and like it quite a lot -- but I have to admit I get to downtown Detroit only rarely (even though it's only 40 miles or so).
there are 2 main reasons for the collapse of Detroit:
1. The unions. The unions, while in their day gave their workers good benefits, were oligarchies disguised as populists. Quite frankly, once American car manufacturers became entrenched in Michigan, the unions could force the management's hand on many issues--because moving out of MI and finding a more suitable place incurred too high a cost. The unions operated like a person who controls the only water well in a Texas town--they may not be mayor, but they have all the power.
However, as transportation costs eased (thanks, lol, to the car industry, among others) and new technologies made building cars in Kentucky and Alabama more viable (especially since they had no unions there), the unions lost their bargaining power. However, instead of adjusting their demands and scaling back, the unions stubbornly expected the same payouts as before. Such near-sightedness (due in no small part to the corruption and criminal natures unions often fall prey to) ultimately forced GM's hand. What is more, with foreign companies (i.e. Toyota, etc.) able to enter the market and use American Labor (and thus undercut the "made in america" argument GM uses), those companies still stuck in Detroit lost market share.
Because the unions didn't adapt, they lost out, and Detroit has suffered greatly--jobs were lost, and people moved away to find real ones. If the unions lost power completely, Detroit most likely would make a comeback. Fat chance, considering the union support is what the dying politicians of Detroit rely on.
2. School busing/end of segregation. Like it or not, this is true. Through courts, non-blacks were forced to mix with blacks, bringing poverty and crime to areas that previously had not been subject to it, and making people mix with blacks who did not want to. What is more, with busing, even in neighborhoods where blacks couldn't economically enter, the children of non-blacks would be forced to either use bad schools with violence problems or be placed in classrooms with blacks, who were considered undesirable.
When non-black families couldn't even legally resist having their children mixed, they ran to the suburbs and private schools, although the fear remained that the federal courts would try to bus even then. In short, the non-blacks ran to places where blacks couldn't mix with them--places too expensive to have them.
This second reason is the elephant in the room here. The enforced end of segregation, while noble in cutting down discrimination, ultimately hurt blacks economically, as non-blacks who'd previously lived side by side with black neighborhoods fled for fear that they would be forced to be integrated, and blacks had their neighborhoods and social structures torn apart in the name of equality.
There's nothing wrong with the Detroit Metro area that can't be fixed with the judicious application of W-80s from a substantial elevation. http://nukeitfromorbit.com/
As has been mentioned, the difference between Detroit and Boston, Chicago, and Manhattan is that the latter 3 have industries that generate vast wealth and rely solely on white-collar workers. Chicago and NYC have finance, NYC has media, and Boston has medicine/bio-tech and computers. The 3 survivors also have many elite universities while Detroit has UM (not exactly elite, though a few decent researchers) 30 miles out of town and then the horrible collection of schools downtown.
At will employees who can spend huge amounts of money in town vs a unionized workforce of blue-collar factory workers - shockingly the city focused on white-collar industries does well. Detroit's white-collar workers are more akin to government bureaucrats than actual professionals. It's like greater DC without diplomats, lobbyists, trust-fund political kids, medical research, or defence contractors.
I was born in Livonia (points to palm of right hand) and my family moved out of one of the Detroit suburbs in the mid-80's. Coleman Young was one of the reasons we left.
There was a huge undercurrent of "the folks in the city have been overlooked by the folks in the suburbs long enough!"
When money got moved around the city, it came from the suburbs and went into the downtown. Every single time... meanwhile, he constantly kept pointing out that undercurrent of how the folks in the suburbs were oppressing the folks in the city.
We moved. Looks like most of the folks in the suburbs did too.
In response to the number of people who've wondered about population in the metro Detroit area overall, Detroit city proper has lost (and is still losing) citizens, while the metro area is growing. That growth, rather than taking place in existing, inner-ring suburbs, is moving ever-outwards, and while the city itself has faced overall population loss over the last several years, over the last eight years, there has been an influx of about 30,000 younger people moving into downtown Detroit.
On a separate note, I don't think it's fair to blame unions for the decline of Detroit, as the problem with auto industry job losses was never the vibrant labor movement in metro Detroit. Rather, the movement of auto jobs away from Detroit was inevitable, just as were the movement of textile jobs away from the Carolinas, and the movement of leather tannery jobs away from New England. Manufacturers are bound to seek out a cheaper labor market.
And it is likewise inaccurate to suggest that the end of segregation is responsible for Detroit's decline. Rather, there was a horrible racial politic that has plagued the metro area for about a century at this point (race riots having not begun, as is conventionally remembered, in 1967, but having actually taken place in 1943 and throughout the 1800s in Detroit).
For those of you really interested in Detroit (and the similar problems that have plagued any number of other dilapidated Rust Belt cities), I cannot more heartily recommend "Origins of the Urban Crisis" by Thomas Sugrue.
Jack M writes: "The unions, while in their day gave their workers good benefits, were oligarchies disguised as populists. Quite frankly, once American car manufacturers became entrenched in Michigan, the unions could force the management's hand on many issues--because moving out of MI and finding a more suitable place incurred too high a cost."
Amazing. It's hard to believe there's someone who doesn't think mismanagement by US auto companies had anything to do with their decline, but the vapidity of right-wing analysis keeps on surprising me.
"Through courts, non-blacks were forced to mix with blacks, bringing poverty and crime to areas that previously had not been subject to it, and making people mix with blacks who did not want to."
Of course the flight would occur before the crime arrived, but at least you seem to admit that racism is one factor in white flight.
The 3 survivors also have many elite universities while Detroit has UM (not exactly elite, though a few decent researchers)
Well, Michigan consistently ranks in the top handful of public universities along with Virgina, North Carolina, UC Berkeley and the like. And the graduate programs do better still -- the law business, engineering and medicine are all top 10. And that's among all universities, not just publics. Chicago has both Northwestern and the University of Chicago -- but Michigan enrolls more students than both together.
The problem for Detroit, though, is while UM is valuable for the metro area, it doesn't do much for the city itself. Too far away. It would probably make sense for the SE Michigan region to make Ann Arbor its symbolic center of gravity, and ultimately that may happen (GM is in Detroit, Toyota is in Ann Arbor -- you do the math).
Let's assume that racism is the A+ #1 factor in White Flight, LMJ.
What is the proper response? Telling people that they shouldn't be allowed to vote with their feet? Or that if they vote with their feet that they are racist? A wall to hammer the point home, maybe?
Jaybird replies: "Let's assume that racism is the A+ #1 factor in White Flight, LMJ.
What is the proper response? Telling people that they shouldn't be allowed to vote with their feet? Or that if they vote with their feet that they are racist? "
If they're racist then they shouldn't be upset when someone points it out. And since it's the current conservative reflex to deny any conservative, anywhere, is or ever has been a racist, or that racism has any consequences, I enjoy holding their feet over the fire occasionally on the issue.
I consider the whole issue of white flight to be a chicken or egg situation. I suspect that in most cases the neighborhoods in question are declining before the dreaded minorities move in. Housing stock getting older, more functional obsolescence, infrastructure rot, and so forth. These days the dreaded minorities are black. At other times they've been Irish or Italian.
Re: The unions.
You can make a case that public sector unions have caused some of Detroit's woes, but not that the UAW has had much to do with the woes of Detroit city proper. Most of the auto factories were located in the suburbs, and in farther-out cities like Flint.
Re: Through courts, non-blacks were forced to mix with blacks, bringing poverty and crime to areas that previously had not been subject to it, and making people mix with blacks who did not want to.
Busing was endlessly proposed but never actually put into effect. I grew up in the area in the 70s and 80s, and never once attended a school farther than 4 miles from home. Nor did I know anyone who was bused long distance for racial integration purposes.
Re: The enforced end of segregation, while noble in cutting down discrimination, ultimately hurt blacks economically, as non-blacks who'd previously lived side by side with black neighborhoods fled for fear that they would be forced to be integrated, and blacks had their neighborhoods and social structures torn apart in the name of equality.
Your racism stinks to high heaven. Yes, desegregation casued some of Detroit's woes, but put the blame where it mainly belongs: on racist white people. Meanwhile, it's also true that a fair number of Black middle class (and upper middle class) also left Detroit since once housing was desegregated they could live outside the red-lined ghetto areas.
Re: As has been mentioned, the difference between Detroit and Boston, Chicago, and Manhattan is that the latter 3 have industries that generate vast wealth and rely solely on white-collar workers. Chicago and NYC have finance, NYC has media, and Boston has medicine/bio-tech and computers.
In the 90s the Detroit metro area (not the city itself) had a booming IT industry, I know because I was part of it. A coworker of mine from Amarillo TX was advised to jon hunt in the area by a career counsellor because IT jobs were plentiful, paid well, and yet the cost of living was much lower than in Silicon Valley. I really do wonder what happened to that all that tech industry, which I had expected to diversify the economy enough so that it was no longer auto-dependent. Yes, it took the same big hit all tech took in 2001-02, but it never came back. Something killed it off, I'm not sure what. (And please don't answer "unions", because this was not a union industry).
Re: I was born in Livonia (points to palm of right hand) and my family moved out of one of the Detroit suburbs in the mid-80's. Coleman Young was one of the reasons we left.
???
Coleman Young was mayor of Detroit not Livonia. Why would your family leave Livonia, a very decent middle class suburb which does not even share a border with Detroit?
Re: When money got moved around the city, it came from the suburbs and went into the downtown. Every single time... meanwhile, he constantly kept pointing out that undercurrent of how the folks in the suburbs were oppressing the folks in the city.
Yes, Coleman Young was notorious for blaming the suburbs for everything except the weather. But no money ever went from the 'burbs to Detroit: no mechanism existed to effect that transfer.
Nevertheless, while Columbus is marginally better than Detroit, it is still a dump.
White people have been electing officials based on their promises, explicit or implicit, to keep minorities down for 150 years.
While that was morally just as bad as trying to "stick it to Whitey", the big pragmatic difference is that Whitey comprises the lion's share of the tax base and college degrees. You can't fund a city on the backs of poor blue-collar workers. Chase away the white folks and you find your poverty and crime problems increasing even as the available tax base to fight them is increasing.
I don't know where I read it, but I remember reading in (Forbes?) some list that Detroit was likely to become a ghost town in the next 50 yrs. That may happen b/c of black flight, which is why PG county in MD has been growing. Those who can escape will. And with an inept city gov like Detroit, who can blame them.
On a side note, I think that for urban areas to survive and flourish there must be a critical mass of bohemians/tech-savvy/yuppies/post-college students putting down roots for a few years. Richard Florida has written about this. These are the type of people who give a city energy. If there are enough of these people, people from around the country will come in and the city will flourish. Climate/natural beauty do not matter. This is why Minneapolis, Seattle are growing in affluence despite their climates. I just don't know of anyone in these categories who is thinking about moving to Detroit.
MoeLarryAndJesus and JonF-
Below is an account of one family from Chicago who experienced white flight first hand (source). From what I've read and personally experienced, this kind of account is not uncommon, and is very similar to what happened in Detroit:
---------------------
My late father-in-law was a classical musician and union leader and my late mother-in-law, who may have been an even better musician but who suffered too much stage fright to play concerts, was a public school special education teacher. As late as 1966, Austin was all-white, with so little crime that my future wife walked a mile to first grade with her third grade sister every day. After school, the sidewalks of this neighborhood of three story condominiums were packed with children out playing while their mothers made dinner. (These days, when kids are chauffeured everywhere by their parents, the old Austin sounds like it was a paradise for both children and parents.)
After World War One, most blacks in Chicago had been restricted by chicanery and violence to living in a small, densely populated district on the South Side. This complete segregation broke down in the late 1950s. And then the increase in welfare payments in the progressive Illinois of the 1960s brought up from the rural South a lower class of blacks.
When Austin started to integrate around 1966, many of my in-laws' friends told them to sell out as soon as possible, before the neighborhood went all black.
But, as good liberals, my in-laws stood up for integration. And the first blacks moving in were middle class. So, they joined an anti-tipping liberal group of neighborhood home-owners started by fellow musician Father Edward McKenna—a composer who has written a couple of Irish-themed operas with librettos by Father Andrew Greeley. Members swore to each other they wouldn't sell no matter how black the neighborhood got.
Well, the crime rate, which had been non-existent when the neighborhood was all white, started to soar. Housing prices fell, and soon the middle class blacks were selling out because underclass blacks were moving in. The members of the pro-integration group started to break their promises and move out. My in-laws stuck with their vows. But, then in 1968, rioters looted all the stores in the neighborhood after Martin Luther King was murdered. (My future wife called her mother to the window: "Hey, Mom! Look—free TVs! Let's get some!" Her mother sent her to her room). And their small children, my future wife included, were mugged three times on their street.
So, my in-laws finally sold, losing about half of their life savings. They bought a farm 65 miles out of town, where they didn't have indoor plumbing for their first two years of fixing it up.
The last time I visited Austin—in the 1990s, three decades later—it looked like a war zone, with about one third of the houses abandoned or torn down.
------------------
What would you all recommend that this family do? Were they racist for moving out of the city?
These days the dreaded minorities are black. At other times they've been Irish or Italian.
Of course, in 1850, the Irish were violent, drunk, diseased, and degenerate ( I am Irish-American myself). They did not escape this situation by blaming racism or anti-catholicism. Nor did they escape it via welfare, school busing, public schools, affirmative action, or anything else from the modern liberal playbook. The escaped from internal moral, cultural, and economic improvement. (Read all about it.)
When ethnic group A says to ethnic group B, "We don't want live around you because you are violent and degenerate" and ethnic group B, is in fact violent and degenerate, perhaps the answer is not to accuse group A of racism, but to fix the problems of violence in group B. Why hold blacks to any different standards than the Irish were held to?
Libra writes: "What would you all recommend that this family do? Were they racist for moving out of the city?"
Nope, they weren't. Nor has anything I have written suggested that they were.
"Of course, in 1850, the Irish were violent, drunk, diseased, and degenerate ( I am Irish-American myself). They did not escape this situation by blaming racism or anti-catholicism. Nor did they escape it via welfare, school busing, public schools, affirmative action, or anything else from the modern liberal playbook."
They escaped from it by gaining political power (through sheer numbers more than anything else) and giving themselves all of the public jobs they could get. Don't tell me about the Irish experience in America, chuckles, I'm as Irish as they get for someone not born in Ireland. And they were no more "violent, diseased, and degenerate" than most other big waves of immigrant groups coming from poor countries have been said to have been. Poverty is the real factor.
"Why hold blacks to any different standards than the Irish were held to?"
Why indeed.
My parents were mildly conservative, by the standards of the 60s and 70s-- my father a Republican (Eisenhower-Nixon wing; he later despsied the religious Right types), my mother a conservative Democrat and a Catholic. They were of course disturbed by all the upheavals of the 60s, but they were also decent and fair people-- and had no truck with racism. We came to be friends with a Black family, the wife being a teacher at my grade school. We visited them from time to time in their neighborhood (which was racially well-integrated) about a mile from our own home. I recall having a lot of fun on those visits, since they had kids my age too. Anyway, these people never accepted an invitation to visit us since our neighborhood was not integrated and some of our neighbors had a reputation for bigotry. Among them was a bitter, angry couple who hated everybody-- Blacks, Jews, Democrats, college students, the poor, you name it they hated them. I will not repeat their diatribes which were richly salted with slurs that would have embarrassed Archie Bunker. Anyway, when my mother was dying of cancer her Black friend finally came to visit at our home. Not long after, Mrs. Bigot (who was also the neighborhood snoop) came hotfooting it to our door to lecture my dying mother on how she should never ever let one of THEM in our subdivision since next thing you know they'd be moving in. Told of this, my father went into a rare temper the like of which I never saw before or after. He paid a visit on Mr and Mrs Bigot and read them quite a riot act. Weeks later, when they sent flowers to my mother's funeral, he ordered the flowers removed, he would not have a gift from such people.
I learned my attitude about racism from my parents-- my Republican father and my conservative, Catholic mother.
Yes, Coleman Young was a nasty scapegoating blowhard who ran Detroit into the ground. But when he ranted about racists he was not inventing things that did not exist.
rickm in his quote about the south puts his fingers (unintentionally) on why democrats have had a difficult time winning national election in the south.
Calling potential voters fat, dumb, and stupid is probably not the best technique to get them to vote for you. I'm sure the republicans appreciate your efforts.
TJIT quotes and writes: " Well, you're still fatter, dumber, less educated, and poorer. So keep up the good work."
Calling potential voters fat, dumb, and stupid is probably not the best technique to get them to vote for you. I'm sure the republicans appreciate your efforts."
I wasn't aware rickm was running for office.
I'm sure glad Repiglicans never say anything derogatory about anyone, though.
DaveinHackensack said,
Good point, they have mostly built those new factories in the southern states because of the availability of a hardworking, smart workforce. Don't tell rickm though, it might give him the wrong idea about people in the Southern states.You can't talk about Detroit without talking about the auto industry. It was three companies but consider them one and Detroit was the world biggest company town.
Strangely Detroit is one of the oldest cities in North America, 400 years. It never was very big, till Henry Ford came around. Then it filled up with transplants, many of them from the south, white,then black. Eminem's 8 Mile refers to 8 Mile road, below which, after WWII the FHA would not make a loan. Figure it out.
So you have a new population, poorly educated, with a particularly toxic racial environment. The economy never diversified and while into it's third century it didn't have any tradition, to speak of. It was an accident that it grew to near 2 million people, most of who never dreamed of getting an education, since the money was good on the line.
Detroit is surreal. You can drive along in a nice neighborhood one moment and be in a desolate wasteland the next. In a certain sense as the abandoned homes and buildings are removed and nature comes back to fill the void Detroit is becoming one of the greenest cities in the world.
The metro area is the repository of a vast pool of knowledge and talent in manufacturing. The bottom is in there I believe. Detroit in general too is my guess. Not that it will ever have near 2 million again. It never should have to begin with.
Other stories of urban decay on this scale could unfold in the future. Phoenix springs to mind. A city that exists to... build a city. If it doesn't grow, it dies. Then no water.....
TJIT quotes and writes: " Left unsaid so far is that many of the foreign car companies that have built factories in the U.S. have steered clear of Detroit."
Good point, they have mostly built those new factories in the southern states because of the availability of a hardworking, smart workforce."
No, they're going for workers who will work for peanuts and shitty benefits. And for cheap land and states that will give them whatever they ask for in the way of tax breaks.
While the workers in the south are enjoying good paying, high quality jobs working at foreign car makers.
The workers in Detroit are suffering with having zero jobs with 100% of the benefits they like.
Strangely, some folks think that is good for Detroit.
Moe writes of foreign auto companies,
"No, they're going for workers who will work for peanuts and shitty benefits."
$24 per hour is pretty good pay for a high school grad; there are college grads working for a third of that at Starbucks. That's why when foreign auto companies open new factories in the U.S. they get swamped with applications.
TJIT writes: "The workers in Detroit are suffering with having zero jobs with 100% of the benefits they like."
Holy shit, Batman! ALL of the jobs are gone?
Put the bong down and stop taking those pills Rush Limbaugh gives you, chuckles.
Foreign auto companies have long stated that the union mentality of the State of Michigan is why they build their plants in areas other than Michigan. Auto executives from Volkswagon recently stated this when they skipped over Michigan for their latest North American plant.
Another problem in Detroit is that the local government is often run as if the city still has two million people. The city empoys too many people who get very little done. Kwame has so many relatives and flunkies on payroll, and city council had workers, who just happen to have been related to other councilmembers, getting paid for forty hours of work a week, while attending college in New York full time.
Oh, boy... I've lived in the Detroit area for 30 years now, so I guess I've earned my spurs as a Detroiter (true Detroiters will trash the area at will, but bristle at any trash talk from an outsider).
In my opinion, the administration of Coleman Young (1973-1993) was the turning point. Coleman made it plain that Detroit was "our" city (our meaning African-Americans), and that outsiders weren't welcome. Well, that's easy enough to understand, and anyone who might have been willing to do some urban homesteading got the message. As a result, what there is of an urban hipster vibe in the Detroit area happens in the burbs of Ferndale and Royal Oak. Or, for older and more affluent types there's Birmingham (million-dollar mid-rise condos in easy walking distance to shopping and restaurants, anyone?).
I also shouldn't leave out that the Young administration wasn't interested in anything that wasn't a mega-project (Renaissance Center, GM Poletown plant), so let the attractiveness of Detroit to smaller entrepreneurs go to hell, and the Detroit City Council's (the most dysfunctional legislative body I've seen) opinion that anything that didn't need massive subsidies must be capitalist oppression and ability to block anything they didn't like (I recall it took K-Mart about five years to get Council approval to open a store).
So what we have now is a Detroit with a few reasonably nice neighborhoods (Indian Village, Palmer Woods), and a remainder of the city where well-maintained houses sit next to burned-out hulks. And what do we do about that? I wish I had a good idea at this point.
"Kwame has so many relatives and flunkies on payroll, and city council had workers, who just happen to have been related to other councilmembers, getting paid for forty hours of work a week, while attending college in New York full time."
Just like the Irish, right Moe? That explains why New York City turned into a wasteland like Detroit right after the Irish took over the civil service. Oh wait -- that must have been in Bizzaro World, because that didn't happen in New York.
JNF, I didn't live in Livonia, I was *BORN* in Livonia. I lived in a Detroit suburb in Wayne county (Canton? Yeah, nobody knows where Canton is... think Plymouth). There was no mechanism for taxes to go from Canton to Detroit? Fair enough (I was a kid at the time). My parents complained about their taxes going there. Probably something most folks considering white flight said.
I do think that White Flight, in the case of Detroit, was avoidable on the part of, among other people, Coleman Young.
Fred quotes and writes: ""Kwame has so many relatives and flunkies on payroll, and city council had workers, who just happen to have been related to other councilmembers, getting paid for forty hours of work a week, while attending college in New York full time."
Just like the Irish, right Moe? That explains why New York City turned into a wasteland like Detroit right after the Irish took over the civil service. Oh wait -- that must have been in Bizzaro World, because that didn't happen in New York."
Fred, I realize you're dumber than a box of bowling balls, but even you should be able to look up Boss Tweed's story and learn something for once in your miserable wingnut life.
Brittain33: I live in Houston. Lee Brown was an idiot. We thrived despite, not because of, him.
Houston's mayors have less power than they do in many other cities...for example, we have no zoning, labor unions are weak (meaning they can't trade favors to the mayor), and abundant land for suburbs nearby undercuts any ambitions a mayor might have.
MLJ, you really are an obnoxious twit. A remarkably ill-informed one at that. And I say that as someone who agrees with a lot of your views. Don't you have something better to do with your life than sit around all day slinging none-too-clever insults at people you've never met?
"And I say that as someone who agrees with a lot of your views."
Sure you do, fuckbucket. Sure you do.
I suppose those are dynamos with no thanks to [...] Lee Brown, Mayor of Houston (1998-2004).
Your comment was obviously meant to be sarcastic, but Lee Brown was a terribly incompetent mayor. He didn't race-bait and he wasn't corrupt (though some around him were as I suppose is generally the case in big city politics), but Houston's continued success really is in spite of his stewardship.
Ron Kirk generally got pretty high marks, though.
Nope, no racism around here.
"Nope, no racism around here."
Some of their best friends are black.
JonF - Your racism stinks to high heaven. Yes, desegregation casued some of Detroit's woes, but put the blame where it mainly belongs: on racist white people.
It wasn't whites that gutted Detroit in three decades of killing, robbing, and burning. Or destroyed its schools and social services with too many undisciplined, unbehaved, unmotivated students and welfare parasites.
The general pattern of civilization is the same. ASians, Latins, whites, Indians, Arabs can generally point to high civilizational accomplishments, progress and that their people generally live in low-crime neighborhoods in cities that be they rich or poor, generally work.
Not so blacks. Where there isn't much civilizational history or record of accomplishment, and black run areas from Africa, to Parisian baneuls, to the Caribbean and Latin America, and US cities - tend to be dangerous, parasitic shitholes.
Those are just the facts. It is true that black middle class people have escaped that curse and carved out pockets of reasonably advanced civilization for themselves, as have black elites in Africa. But the general pattern in black-run polities is that the rest of the blacks overwhelm that middle class and set a course of destruction, parasitism, dangerous criminality, and decay that no one of other races and those blacks with the means to isolate themselves from the black majority - wants to live near, go to school in, or risk their lives working or visiting there.
chris ford = Steve Sailer = Fred = Jack M = DaveinHackensack... etc.
It might be useful to consider that all 3 American car companies are in trouble. Now, it could just be coincidental that all 3 companies have had poor management, bad designs, poor luck or there could be some kind of systemic problem that affects all three of them...like the UAW.
I guess it could be some other systemic reason like American workers in general, or the quotas that they got to protect them, or maybe it is just coincidence.
These are the type of people who give a city energy. If there are enough of these people, people from around the country will come in and the city will flourish. Climate/natural beauty do not matter. This is why Minneapolis, Seattle are growing in affluence despite their climates. I just don't know of anyone in these categories who is thinking about moving to Detroit.
One of the things that has changed is that the central city matters more now than in recent decades. The city of Detroit has been a shambles for 40 years, and even as bad as Kwame Kilpatrick is, he's an improvement over Coleman Young. And Dennis Archer (Kilpatrick's predecessor) was quite good, but sadly too smart to stay mayor of Detroit for long, it turned out.
During all that time, though, most of the suburbanites felt safe in ignoring the city. It was a shame, you know -- they missed the days when their mothers had taken them downtown to shop at the Hudson's flagship store during the holidays -- but what could be done? And it didn't seem to matter very much -- the Grosse Pointes, Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham, etc all prospered just the same. Who really needed a central city?
But now central cities have become cool again and they matter more for defining a metro area, and people in SE Michigan have one that is shabby and dysfunctional...but really have no good ideas what to do about it. It's not even clear it'll be possible to get rid of Kwame--electronic tether and all.
Re: Foreign auto companies have long stated that the union mentality of the State of Michigan is why they build their plants in areas other than Michigan. Auto executives from Volkswagon recently stated this when they skipped over Michigan for their latest North American plant.
And of course there are no unions in Germany or Japan. Left unsaid so far is the fact that foreign car companies are also building factories in Canada, where there are unions, but where they are not on the hook for employee healthcare costs.
Re: That explains why New York City turned into a wasteland like Detroit right after the Irish took over the civil service.
New York City did have some awfully bad times. Place nearly went bankrupt and there are some neighborhoods you would be advised not to enter without serious firepower at your back. As someone else posted NYC is just too big to fail, it's a (THE) major port of entry, a tourist destination, and it has the whole Wall Street thing going for it.
Re: I lived in a Detroit suburb in Wayne county (Canton? Yeah, nobody knows where Canton is... think Plymouth).
I lived in Canton for two (boring) years. The place is nothing but a bedroom 'burb built on old cow pastures. No "there" there.
Re: My parents complained about their taxes going there.
Your parents were incorrect. Canton's local property taxes went to Canton's schools, etc. Some of your parents state income taxes and sales taxes may have gone to Detroit, but the reverse is also true.
Re: Now, it could just be coincidental that all 3 companies have had poor management, bad designs, poor luck or there could be some kind of systemic problem that affects all three of them...like the UAW.
Or the rising price of gasoline... or US healthcare costs...or the wonderful training in mismanagement that US business schools provide...
Certainly Detroit is a case study in a lot of problems: racism, the ossification that unions can cause, etc. But it also reflects another pathology in the American soul -- the tendency, when things get tough, to head for the wilderness, get out the plow, and start over again. So in Metro Detroit, you have lovely mansions abandoned, and new ones built in a corn field 20 miles away.
Tired of the unions or the mistakes the American automakers made? Then let them die and welcome someone new to build new cars in new plants in green fields with new workers.
If anything proves to be the tragic, fatal flaw in American greatness, it will be this frontier mentality. If anything gives me hope, it is that my daughter's generation seems to recognize that this economic equivalent of slash-and-burn agriculture is a colossal waste, and unsustainable.
Wellington Webb was mayor of Denver for a number of years and helped transform the downtown into a place one might like to live.
"But it also reflects another pathology in the American soul -- the tendency, when things get tough, to head for the wilderness, get out the plow, and start over again."
What if I get a job offer that's better than the job I have here?
What if I have children and I want them to have good schools and the best way to do that is to move to the other side of town/the state/the country?
Is saying "hey, I can move!" pathological?
Or are you warming up for a rant against illegal immigration and wanted to establish your bona fides first before you started ranting about how those lettuce pickers should use that individual industry to make Mexico a better place?
Jaybird -- Eventually you run out of places to run. And after you have abandoned your steel and auto industries to China and India, you have no job to go to.
Seriously, though, there has to be a middle path. Nobody I know wants to give up the freedom and dynamism of the U.S. economy. But allowed to go too far, it will turn us into a second-rate political and economic power.
And of course there are no unions in Germany or Japan. Left unsaid so far is the fact that foreign car companies are also building factories in Canada, where there are unions, but where they are not on the hook for employee healthcare costs.
However, those companies have yet to unionize in Canada (as far as I know), while I have the strong feeling that it would be difficult to keep an auto plant in Michigan free of unions. Also, Canada usually offers heaps of corporate welfare to get companies to locate there.
Even if the union problem is just one of perception, that perception exists in the minds of those in Germany and Japan about Michigan. They aren't shy about expressing it in words and in actions. While they do have unions in those countries, Toyota and BWM build over here in part to escape the high costs of these unions.
If you accept as a given that unions create higher wages and benefits for workers compared to non-union workers, then it's not controversial to say that employers could lower their labor costs by manufacturing in non-union areas. Nor should it be controversial that a company with lower labor costs will be more competitive than a company with higher labor costs.
These all spring naturally from the first premise, that unions can extract higher wages and benefits for its members. If you support unionization, this is part of what you're getting in the bargain.
It doesn't mean that unionized companies are doomed to failure. Higher labor costs could be offset by higher productivity and being less competitive doesn't mean being non-competitive. It does make it harder though. Given the additional handicap, management needs to be that much better than the competition to succeed. The Big 3's management have clearly not been up to the task.
If you accept as a given that unions create higher wages and benefits for workers compared to non-union workers, then it's not controversial to say that employers could lower their labor costs by manufacturing in non-union areas.
It's not just labor costs, it's the inflexible work rules that are a problem. And also the threat of strikes. For example, the UAW struck GM plants this year, supposedly over 'local' issues, but they just 'happened' to be plants making a couple of GM's popular models and everyone knew the real reason for the strikes was to pressure GM to pressure American Axle to settle ITS strike with the UAW. Ultimately, GM had to kick in a couple hundred million to make a settlement happen between the UAW and American Axle. None of the foreign companies with non-union plants EVER have to deal with that kind of crap, and that's a significant competitive advantage.
I think that many who solely blame the unions for the demise of Detroit are missing the bigger picture. Management at GM and Ford have undoubtedly shown extreme incompetence and more than possibly culpable negligence over the years. These companies honestly believe in the concept of "executive talent" which is one of the more ridiculous ideas ever promoted in the business world. Back in the day, management at GM was highly populated with technically knowledgable engineers. Now it's full of people whose only real "talent" is counting beans. Creation is not in their psyche.
I mean, they didn't have any "talent" that predicted higher fuel prices in the face of increased global demand? Really? All these excs are interested in is the short term and their next million dollar gig. If I had my say at these companies, I would run these people out of town with pitchforks.
That said, the knee-jerk response of some to defend the UAW is laughable. Do they make business decisions? No, not directly. But there actions are inextricably linked to overall business decisions and the direction of product. Marginal revenues vs marginal costs? They also share the blame, and unfortunately they will have to be part of the solution, if there is one.
The UAW is an arrogant, unmeritocratic and highly nepotistic organization. Getting a position is highly dependent on whom one knows. Favoritism to workers with seniority crowds out many of the younger (and very talented) technicians and mechanics who end up in shitty contract positions hoping for the day the UAW comes a calling. Oops, nobody cares about them, do they? But my roommate's semi-retarded, drug-addicted, absolutely skill-less brother got hired in making about $75,000 per year. Good thing that his mother was sleeping with a union rep.
I currently work as an engineering consultant to the industry in research and development. I have had personal discussions with managers in European companies who have told me, to my face, that they will always avoid the UAW. Not unions. The UAW. And Toyota and Honda may have a plant in Ontario (which I have been to, both immaculate), but they have yet to unionize, though they have been trying. Incidently TMMC was voted in Canada's 100 best employers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%27s_Top_100_Employers
I spent most of my adoloscence and a good part of my adult life in the Detroit area. Much of my family was supported by the auto industry. My own mother was UAW for 30 years. I could trot her here on these interwebs and she would tell you the same thing that I am, but she can't use a computer. I guess that she never had the incentive to learn. :)
As for Detroit itself, those who fled to the suburbs have themselves partially to blame if they don't like the state of their central city. The residents have themselves partially to blame for continually electing those who would incite racial hatred and reinforce the strong racial boundaries. If there is a solution, it will require all of us (and our monies) to work together to make it livable again.
PS - I currently live in Plymouth and would absolutely love to live in downtown Detroit if I could only find one damn supermarket to frequent. The place is a fucking wasteland unless you like Church's Chicken.
And, whomever suggested that UM is not an elite university should have their head checked. It's nationally ranked in the top ten in nearly every major field. How much more elite does a school need to be?
I'm not even a fan.
Re: And, whomever suggested that UM is not an elite university should have their head checked.
The real complaint is that it's a public university and middle class people can still (kinda) afford to attend.
Heh. They're moving to the South, to work in the Saturn and Toyota plants in Tennessee.
Because the South offers them a better life.
Take that, you Yankee, Swede-loving, ice-shovelin,' snowball-chuckin' snow-monkey bitches! :D
Jason Van Steenwyk writes: "Heh. They're moving to the South, to work in the Saturn and Toyota plants in Tennessee.
Because the South offers them a better life. "
A cheaper one, anyway. It's funny how the first thing rich Southerners do when they make a lot of money is buy a place to live elsewhere. The second thing they do is send their kids to school up north or out west. You know - where almost all of the good schools are.
Even George and Barbara Bush spend about as much time in Texas now as the Queen of England does.
You've never heard of snowbirds? Gulf coast retiree communities? Ever notice how many northeasterners head to Miami in their retirement? The barrier islands of the Carolinas?
You know how much real estate those Yankees have been buying down south?
Dude. You need to get out more.
Re: Ever notice how many northeasterners head to Miami in their retirement?
Not any more: Miami-Dade and Broward counties are losing their white Anglo population (Palm Beach County is barely keeping even). But peninsular Florida was never Southern culturally. It went straight from being a frontier region, complete with powerful Indian tribes, to a conglomeration of Northern and Caribbean peoples.
As for elsewhere in the South, it generally takes a certain percentage of northern immigrants in an area (including secondary immigrants moving out of Florida) before an area becomes a major draw. Northern Virginia has reached that point. So has the Raleigh-Durham-Greensboro axis, and (though quite localized) Asheville. Gatlinburg TN is approaching that point; Nashville may get there. Meanwhile large areas elsewhere in the South remain untouched of northern influx.
Miami-Dade and Broward counties are losing their white anglos because it's too expensive to live down here (I live in Broward) Why? Because the place got TOO expensive, and you still have to put up with the big city problems.
Well, why did it become too expensive? Because so many northerners were buying up property down here! (along with Latin Americans and rich Russians). Why? Because it's a great place to live. Hardly anyone is FROM down here. Almost everyone either came from Latin America and the Caribbean (Dade) or from up north somewhere (Broward and Dade).
Now what's happened is that a lot of the people who moved here from up North are leaving because of onerous property taxes, overcrowded and underresourced schools (it didn't get this way because Northerners didn't move South) and difficulty obtaining homeowners insurance.
Are they moving back up to Connecticut, NY, and Michigan?
Hell, no! They're moving to the Carolinas and Georgia coast and northern Florida! We call them "halfbacks." As in, they move "halfway back" up north.
And their numbers are legion.
Yanks don't get to claim credit for people leaving Broward and Dade. They leave Broward and Dade because they are becoming too much like big Northern cities, once you get away from the Intercoastal.
And Yanks are STILL moving assets down here, because New York kills them on income and estate taxes. Florida is a MUCH better place to preserve assets than NYC is, as is Texas. Hell, ANYWHERE is better for asset protection than NYC, because of their onerous taxes and pro-plaintiff tort laws.
Re: Yanks don't get to claim credit for people leaving Broward and Dade.
LOL-- most of those people are Yanks! As you yourself said, No one is from there, everyone came from somewhere else.
I lived in Ft Lauderdale for two years. I would have gladly stayed but our office in Boca closed and it was either become unemployed, or accept a VERY generous offer to transfer to Baltimore.
But something you need to consider: Peninsular Florida, as I said before, was never a Southern region, except by geography. The place drew so many northerners because in many ways it is northern (with a strong strain of Latin/Caribbean in S. Florida). The climate and the economy were always the main draw. Warm winters and plenty of (albeit not so well paying) jobs. St Petersburg might as well be a Detroit suburb (though with terrible music)-- and Boca Raton could be on Long Island if you take away the palm trees and royal poincianas.
Funny you should mention the Boca Raton/Long Island connection. The movie Boiler Room took place in Long Island. But it was Boca Raton that became famous for scuzzy finance, bucket shops, and fly-by-night boiler rooms.
As they say about Florida in general: Sunny place, shady people.
It's not true, really. But Scarface is still a great movie!