Posted on 09/01/2010 9:31:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A city does not die when its last resident moves away. Death happens when municipalities lose the industries and vital populations that made them important cities.
The economy has evolved so much since the middle of the 20th Century that many cities that were among the largest and most vibrant in America have collapsed. Some have lost more than half of their residents. Others have lost the businesses that made them important centers of finance, manufacturing, and commerce.
Most of America’s Ten Dead Cities were once major manufacturing hubs and others were important ports or financial services centers. The downfall of one city, New Orleans, began in the 1970s, but was accelerated by Hurricane Katrina.
Notably, the rise of inexpensive manufacturing in Japan destroyed the ability of the industrial cities on this list to effectively compete in the global marketplace. Foreign business activity and US government policy were two of the three major blows that caused the downfall of these cities. The third was the labor movement and its demands for higher compensation which ballooned the costs of manufacturing in many of these cities as well.
24/7 Wall St. looked at a number of sources in order to select the list. One was the US Census Bureau’s list of largest cities by population by decade from 1950 to 2000 with estimates for 2007. Detroit, for example, had 1.9 million people in 1950 and was the fifth largest city in the nation. By 2000, the figure was 951,000. The city was not even on the top ten list in 2007.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Asbury Park, much like Atlantic City, could make the list. It is a shell of what it used to be.
“...a surprise: a shortage of certain job skills ...”
With schools guiding students to maintain high GPAs, via basket weaving courses, where’s the basis for “surprise”?
Other than the usual featherbedding, unionism, non competition government run bureaucracies, I don’t see why as a matter of mortgage insurance, insurance in general, general prudence if you own out right, or if not, in case of fire, a legal requirement to have to pay the costs if a private company suppressed your fire.
Like anything else, there should be competition, driving prices lower and increasing quality in service, speed.
A lot of people here on FR have zero notion of the ability of free markets and competition to, over time, deliver lower cost, higher quality. Something no one associates with any government activity that I know of. We also have a lot of social conservitive(ish) police and fire employees that want free market benefits from the things and services they buy, but not in the taxpayer extracted field they work in, which I understand, but still...
I have a deep, quiet worry that we have a civilization, of such bureaucracy, such complexity, with ever dumber citizens, that we can not maintain it. Like grand kids inheriting the old man’s company.
Things drift apart, the center doesn’t hold...
Oh they’re going to use every excuse in the book. Frankly, it has to be a better excuse than that before I start thinking it’s okay to displace millions of U. S. Citizens.
I’m not defending the high taxation, but these folks don’t mind selling their goods in our nation. It’s just employing people in our nation that rubs them the wrong way.
Yes, R&D does follow manufacturing. Wait until it dawns on the brain trusts that China is the new developer of cutting edge technology, and we’re eating their dust.
We are playing a fools game IMO.
“well, let’s see, Charles Meeker is the Democratic Mayor of Raleigh, NC (since 2001). Raleigh has been consistently ranked by MONEY magazine among the best cities to live in in America.”
Very good.
Thanks, and you are remarkably retarded, but in an ignorant sort of way. Explain this concept of "nullification." Did it just pop into your head? I've never come across it in my studies of capital flows and formation.
I pinged some people, because your explanation will amuse them also.
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Pro-business policies, tax incentives for productive residents, removal of government subsidized housing, and a general move away from forced diversity and political correctness toward a meritocracy.
ALL of these things, which USED to be “Republican” values would go a long way to salvaging ANY American cesspool, anywhere.
Additionally, the four examples you gave of liberal-run cities that are doing well, all benefit from tourism and other large net INFLOWS of cash from other areas of, not just the US, but the world at large. Boston, also has a huge and expensive higher education monolith, supported largely on enormous inputs of money from across the globe.
That is a LOT of spare cash for even wasteful, ignorant Leftist bureaucrats to play with.
My opinion is that this is the kind of thing that happens when people look to the government and labor unions to provide them with a living as opposed to taking initiative on their own.
Well wait just one minute there buster! Entepreneurs built our industrial base because of forward thinking and intellegently applied taxes and tariffs! So there!!
Galveston has been dying for decades, long before hurricane Ike. Economic diversity is something that city and county "leaders" don't seem to comprehend the value of - until it is long gone.
Mebbe so, but an economically strong Japan with a democratically elected parliamentary government as our ally, vis-a-vis a resurgent and increasingly assertive China, is better for us and all the world than any of a variety of alternatives that could have been imposed by a vindictive victor.
BTW, we also financed restoration of Germany’s steel industry, which with its new facilities became a serious competitor with U. S. iron and steel producers.
But this talk of protecting jobs that pay well? It's just a Ponzi scheme for the well-connected.
I have shared your concerns about public schools spending to much time putting condoms on cucumbers. Declining technical and craft skills is something I had suspected was part of the problem, but nobody ever talked abut it.
I guess the surprise was that I finally heard someone on TV talk about it.
You addressed the benefit of dollars that return to our nation. What you didn’t address is that dollars wouldn’t need to return if they had remained her initially.
The claimed benefit was nullified.
You called in others. You’re a real tiger aren’t you. This is the second time you’ve done so in our short exchange here, that I know of, that is.
“W. Edwards Deming built the Japanese up after WWII. Deming had a manufacturing philosophy of statistical monitoring and incremental improvements that the big American companies shunned, but the Japanese embraced wholeheartedly. Looks like he was right.”
Deming brings back good memories for me. I studied Deming back in school/grad school [the “stat” comes from a nick-name because I studied applied math, including statistics]. He took scientific principles and made them easy to apply in a corporate environment. Much of statistical process control was developed by AT&T scientists. AT&T would even publish advanced math textbooks, which are still useful today. That company used to be an amazing collection scientific minds back in the 40s and 50s.
Intelligent companies measure and experiment as part of due course. As one professor once said, “If you are not measuring it, you have not accomplished anything.” (or something like that, he got the quote from someone else)
Oh, you shouldn’t be quiet about it - your 100% right!
“Like grand kids inheriting the old man’s company.” Yeah, the winners of the ‘Lucky Sperm Club’. Many of them bomb out, as you know.
You know I have a trade imbalance with the supermarket - their goods keep comming to my house and noting I ever make goes back to the supoermarket. Hmmm...
I got it!!! Maybe if we put higher taxes on supermarket food, my trade imbalance will improve!!
“Mebbe so, but an economically strong Japan with a democratically elected parliamentary government as our ally, vis-a-vis a resurgent and increasingly assertive China, is better for us and all the world than any of a variety of alternatives that could have been imposed by a vindictive victor.
BTW, we also financed restoration of Germany’s steel industry, which with its new facilities became a serious competitor with U. S. iron and steel producers.”
The Democrats worked hard spending this country’s wealth.
I don’t have to ask permission to ping anyone to threads I find of interest, you big baby. If you can’t deal with it, try Hello Kitty Online.
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