Beautiful Detroit! City of Vision! A Model for America's Future!
Posted on 03/24/2011 7:08:09 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Cities: Poor Detroit. It hasn't had any good news for decades, and now, despite a $77 billion bailout of the auto industry, its population continues to implode. The No. 1 reason: the United Auto Workers union.
Census data released Tuesday show Detroit's population has plunged 25% since 2000 to just 713,777 souls - the same as 100 years ago, before the auto industry's heyday. As recently as the 1970s, Detroit had 1.8 million people.
What's happening is no secret: Detroiters are fleeing an economic disaster, the irreversible decline of the Big Three automakers.
In his now-famous Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler, rapper Eminem drives up to a theater in a sleek new 200 model and says, "This is the Motor City. And this is what we do." But, sadly, that's no longer the case. Detroit's decline has been shocking.
Sure, a lot of the blame goes to a generation of bad management. But the main reason for Detroit's decline is the greed of the industry's main union, the UAW, which priced the Big Three out of the market.
As recently as 2008, GM, Ford and Chrysler paid their employees on average more than $73 an hour in total compensation. The 12 foreign transplants, operating in nonunion states mostly in the South and Midwest, averaged about $42 an hour.
Guess which manufacturers are healthiest and expanding their market today? In 2008, the Big Three still made 59% of all cars in the U.S. But, according to recent estimates, their market share is now 46% - with foreign companies selling the bulk of all U.S. cars. So Detroit's loss has been the South's and Midwest's gain.
Behind this is the gold-plated benefits package once guaranteed to UAW workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
Let’s Consider the dollars and cents folks and it really adds up:
* Total pay and benefits for a full-time worker for the Big Three until recently averaged about $140,000 a year.
* The Foreign transplants? Just $80,000.
* Add in an estimated $2,000-plus per car for retiree health care and pensions for the Big Three, and the cost gap is huge.
* Two years ago, the Center for Automotive Research estimated that for every job created by a foreign transplant, 6.1 jobs were lost by the Big Three - many of them in Detroit.
And, based on their successes in the Motor City, the UAW plans to spend millions on organizing Honda, BMW and Nissan plants in the US.
Good luck with that, boys...
Beautiful Detroit! City of Vision! A Model for America's Future!
Seen on a recent Detroit Parade of Homes tour...
Business thrives in bustling Detroit!
“Let’s Consider the dollars and cents folks and it really adds up:”
Yep, I read somewhere recently, that upon graduation over 50% of Michigan and Michigan State grad’s leave the state for greener pastures. Receiving states should thank Michigan tax payers for these highly educated free assets. Poor, poor, pitiful Michigan....
If Obama gets reelected you probably aren't too far off.
That’s a scene from Robocop, right?
Pictures of before (if available) and after ... of noted buildings, i.e. ; hotels, large office buildings, mansions and etc.
I grew up in Boston, so I have a taste of older archetecture and it was easy to imagine myself in those Detroit heydays.
I now live in the Pittsburgh area, and though I was not conditioned to the steel industry, I have worked in older factory types ... and to see the decay of steel mills along the river ... the broken and crumbling parking lots designed to hold .. I don't know .. a thousand or so ?, cars ....
America has been under attack by 'modernity' ever since the glass and steel archetects came of age.
I don't know ... maybe I'm just old.
For both management and labor, it was the love of money.
Google “the fabulous ruins of Detroit” to revisit that site. It will make you cry all over again.
Liberals killed Detroit along with the UAW.
Liberals have controlled Detroit since 1961.
Not Robocop, I think it’s more like “Escape from New York”
Burroughs was located in Detroit, it's factory workers were union and after the martin king riots in Detroit, the company started down hill and never recovered.
As a point of reference as to how the industry has changed over time, in '68 Burroughs sold the first 4 function {add, subtract, multiply, divide} electronic calculator, manufactured by Sharp, and it sold for $1,400.
Today that calculator is considered a give away and those functions are free on cell phones.
Regardless of products or markets, union greed can kill individual companies and even drive entire industries out of the country.
Capital will flow to the most friendly environment.
Obligations of contract no longer mean anything, and judges are free to interpret and enforce (or not) contracts as they see fit. Scalia's famed opinion in the Lujan decision on standing to bring suit, adopted almost immediately by most states in the US, no longer applies in Michigan. Anyone can sue anyone for anything. Feel bad because your neighbor's kid got treated badly at school. You can sue for damages in a "representational" capacity.
the present term is supposed to fix that, with a new Republican majority, but we have learned that Republicans are just as often RINOs as conservatives. CJ Young is very good, but one newly elected member, Mary Beth Kelly, is not turning out to be a reliable conservitive. Newly appointed Brian Zahra has a fabulous reputation as a "rule of law" judge, but he went very wobbly trying to figure out which way the political winds were blowing.
Michigan is not a state anyone wants to be doing business right now.
I dont know how many of you have been there? But, it is the most shocking and amazing experience you’d ever have.
Some streets way out are actually fields and woodlands. You cant even tell that it was house to house neighborhoods anymore. I know, because I know people who lived there and took me to where they used to live when they were kids.
And it continues to creep out into the urban areas.
Not Robocop, I think it’s more like “Escape from New York”
Not only did they price the big three out of the market, they priced American industry out of America. Now, everything is not only made overseas, but we’ve lost touch with the technologies.
Not only do we not make our light bulbs but our citizens don’t have the intelligence to screw them in. Otherwise, we would have never permitted the unions to take over this country and would have never elected this idiot to the presidency.
One of my predictions for the future is that the State University is going to go the way of the Dodo Bird, because it will get harder to justify spending the money on students who most likely won't stay in the state after graduation.
Democrats.
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