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The off-shored economy: the ruins of detroit
In the 20th century, Detroit, Michigan, symbolized American industrial might. Today it symbolizes the offshored economy.
Detroit’s population has declined by half. A quarter of the city--35 square miles--is desolate with only a few houses still standing on largely abandoned streets. If the local government can get the money from Washington, urban planners are going to shrink the city and establish rural areas or green zones where neighborhoods used to be.
President Obama and economists provide platitudes about recovery. But how does an economy recover when its economic leaders have spent more than a decade moving high productivity, high value-added middle class jobs offshore along with the Gross Domestic Product associated with them?
Some very discouraging reports have been issued this month from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There have been record declines in both jobs and hours worked. At the end of last year, the U.S. economy had fewer jobs than at the end of 1997, 12 years ago. Hours worked at the end of last year were less than at the end of 1995, 14 years ago.
The average work week is falling and currently stands at 33.1 hours for non-supervisory workers.
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What a disaster! Can't believe this is the new America the politicians promised us. You have to wonder whats wrong with Americans; don't they see whats coming to the rest of the country. Just wait till California, New york, Illinois and the others go bankrupt. Nafta? Look what Obama had to say about Nafta.
Perot on NAFTA. His views on what outsourcing would do to this country were right on the mark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgw7I96pQzQ
Obama appointment to oversee jobs. Watch at least the first few minutes. Campaign propaganda and reality are two different things.
Funny how Bush didn't look even concerned and Clinton listened to Perot, but obviously sold out the American worker anyway. I feel for all those who graduate in mediocre schools and try to compete with countries outside of America. My guess, it's just like one analyst said, workers will be leaving America in droves. In order to find a job that pays more then minimum wage. Or any job at all. Security jobs should be a growing industry, right along with more government jobs.
Wasn't it Truman who warned us against the military-industrial complex?? Detroit was a one horse town before the war and the government was cornered into supporting it immediately after the war. Support of the auto industry was the root cause of the interstate highway system. People blame the UAW and the 70s they don't see that the rot in detroit started in the 50s. Just because things looked good on the outside didn't mean the rot wasn't already there. The auto industry and the government were already too entangled....... Neither could foresee that it was bound to end badly.
Investorzzo,
I caught an excellent BBC documentary called Requiem For Detroit about a week ago. I've searched everywhere online to put a copy of it up at CM.com, but unfortunately BBCi only keep it live on the net for one week and only for UK resident's. I think it should be possible to find it using a Torent download however, if you have the patience and the will ...
I found an article in the Guardian: -
Detroit The Last Days
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/10/detroit-motor-city-urban-decline
[Snippet]
When the film- maker Roger Graef approached me last year to make a film about the rise and fall of Detroit I had very few preconceptions about the place. Like everyone else, I knew it as the Motor City, one of the great epicentres of 20th-century music, and home of the American automobile. Only when I arrived in the city itself did the full-frontal cultural car crash that is 21st-century Detroit became blindingly apparent.
Leaving behind the gift shops of the "Big Three" car manufacturers, the Motown merchandise and the bizarre ejaculating fountains of the now-notorious international airport, things become stranger and stranger. The drive along eerily empty ghost freeways into the ruins of inner-city Detroit is an Alice-like journey into a severely dystopian future. Passing the giant rubber tyre that dwarfs the nonexistent traffic in ironic testament to the busted hubris of Motown's auto-makers, the city's ripped backside begins to glide past outside the windows.
Like The Passenger, it's hard to believe what we're seeing. The vast, rusting hulks of abandoned car plants, (some of the largest structures ever built and far too expensive to pull down), beached amid a shining sea of grass. The blackened corpses of hundreds of burned-out houses, pulled back to earth by the green tentacles of nature. Only the drunken rows of telegraph poles marching away across acres of wildflowers and prairie give any clue as to where teeming city streets might once have been.
Approaching the derelict shell of downtown Detroit, we see full-grown trees sprouting from the tops of deserted skyscrapers. In their shadows, the glazed eyes of the street zombies slide into view, stumbling in front of the car. Our excitement at driving into what feels like a man-made hurricane Katrina is matched only by sheer disbelief that what was once the fourth-largest city in the US could actually be in the process of disappearing from the face of the earth. The statistics are staggering – 40sq miles of the 139sq mile inner city have already been reclaimed by nature.
I found a few minutes of the documentary ...
... and extra footage and a write-up of the film can be found here: -
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/03/clips_from_bbcs_requiem_for_de.html
Very Compelling ...
~ VF ~
Helen Caldicott ~ If You Love This Planet ~ A must see lecture that is perfect for our time ... http://www.nfb.ca/film/if_you_love_this_... - Rise like Lions after slumber - In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew - Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many - they are few - Shelley
Prophetic musical interlude... from 1973
He looked a lot like Che Guevara, drove a diesel van
Kept his gun in quiet seclusion, such a humble man
The only survivor of the National People's Gang
Panic in Detroit, I asked for an autograph
He wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone
Panic in Detroit (oh oh oh aahh, oh oh oh aahh)
He laughed at accidental sirens that broke the evening gloom - (power cuts?)
The police had warned of repercussions - (civil unrest / police state?)
They followed none too soon
A trickle of strangers were all that were left alive
Panic in Detroit, I asked for an autograph
He wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone
Panic in Detroit (oh oh oh aahh, ah ah ah aahh)
Putting on some clothes I made my way to school
(oh oh oh)
And I found my teacher crouching in his overalls
I screamed and ran to smash my favourite slot machine (oh oh oh)
And jumped the silent cars that slept at traffic lights - (oil scarcity)
Having scored a trillion dollars, made a run back home - (hyperinflation ?)
Found him slumped across the table. A gun and me alone
I ran to the window. Looked for a plane or two
Panic in Detroit. He'd left me an autograph
"Let me collect dust." I wish someone would phone
Panic in Detroit
Panic in Detroit
Panic in Detroit
Beat that Celente... ! :o)
Plato,
Priceless ... 
... !!!
Take Care,
~ VF ~
Helen Caldicott ~ If You Love This Planet ~ A must see lecture that is perfect for our time ... http://www.nfb.ca/film/if_you_love_this_... - Rise like Lions after slumber - In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew - Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many - they are few - Shelley
No Land it was Eisenhower. Truman was instrumental in creating it as well as exploding the first and only Atomic bombs.
There is a certain importance to knowing and understanding history something about not repeating it.
V
Some generous soul at You Tube has uploaded the whole of Requiem For Detroit.
This is a wonderful documentary, with generous detail and compassion for a dying city ...
You'd better be quick and watch it before You Tube pulls it!
~ VF ~
Helen Caldicott ~ If You Love This Planet ~ A must see lecture that is perfect for our time ... http://www.nfb.ca/film/if_you_love_this_... - Rise like Lions after slumber - In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew - Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many - they are few - Shelley
There are some amazing videos on youtube about Detroit. Use this link and then look to the right, where it says "related videos".
So many of these videos and pictures of Detroit are coming out that they now get referred to as "ruin porn".