Yeah, Detroit's a disaster, worse, I believe, than the 82 recession (when I was living in Ann Arbor during grad school) and the bumper sticker you saw said, Will The Last One Leaving Michigan Please Turn Out The Lights. Doug, if he feels inclined, can give us the figures.
It's worse, I believe, because in the early 80s what you had was layoffs but the plants were still there, but now the plants are gone, no possibility that they will ever come back or that there will be rehiring. The GM Main plant in Ypsilanti, the Ford River Rouge plant, the Chrysler plant in Warren, all gone. Of coursed all those plants in Flint that Michael Moore documented in Roger & Me. Also the breaking of the Detroit Free Press strike a decade ago, and be more recent bankruptcies of the big parts firms (with complete taming of the UAW there) has ended what labor militancy there was. There use to be weekly wildcats, now ha! Detroit had bounced back about in 88-98, but now it's a downward spiral with no obvious bottom. It's really scary. There are parts of Detroit that look like Baghdad. Large parts.
Youngstown, Dayton, I gather the same. Gary, let's not go there. I a mean, literally. Don't go there. And if you pass through, don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Chicago so far is doing all right, I think, except for the stupid war over our public transit and its marked deterioration and rising cost, but we got over the collapse of out industrial economy in the 60s and early 70s. We are experiencing some bubble deflation in residential real estate, not catastrophic, but the downtown commercial and residential boom seems to be continuing unabated.
Indianapolis and Columbus seem to be doing OK on most dimensions. Cinci's mixed, divided between a ugly violent ghetto and a fair amount of real gentrification.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Jan 24, 2008, at 2:57 PM, Steven L. Robinson
> wrote:
>
> > Would it be fair to say, though, that in some
> areas heavily
> > dependent on construction spending - e.g. Southern
> California -
> > that the recession might be steeper than
> nationally? For an
> > unemployed construction worker or mortgage
> consultant it would
> > certainly FEEL like a steep recession.
>
> For sure. Nor was there any boom in the midwest -
> instead, much of
> that region has been enduring the evisceration of
> the domestic auto
> industry. As the Wall Street pundits sometimes say,
> it's a market of
> stocks, not a stock market. Same for sectors and
> regions in a
> national economy.
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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