Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
You are correct, everything that comes around goes around. Think about it like this my friend. A HUGE portion of folks that make up the demo of SE Michigan came from the south in post WW2 seeking the Great American Dream via overpaying manufacturing jobs. It came around then didn't it? What we have going on is simple...these jobs disappearing in droves and people actually moving once again to where the economy is better. Sure, everything is tough all over right now...but we know that while the country is in a recession right now, the rust belt is in a depression. It's stunning and completely necessary.
Tables turned, it's a roller coaster ride, cyclical, etc.
Interesting to put it that way....indeed I never thought about it that way...the rust belt is indeed in a depression.....my only concern is that those families were living off union jobs that paid 25+ an hour.......where
do those aced for a lifetime out of those jobs go to make the same money? How do they raise families and pay mortgages? In the right-to-work south, they will be lucky to make half that, and with likely no benefits whatsoever........they will have to downsize their way of life measurably, even if they CAN find something for 15 or so an hour down south.......and they don't have the time to go back to school for 2-3 years, or the cash for tuition........
Another prob....much of the sunbelt is getting walloped now too....Arizona, Nevada, California, and Florida are all suffering now......can Texas absorb THAT whole population as well? Is there enough sunbelt jobs period to provide for the rust-belt displaced?
Cal went through the same thing several times in the last 30 years, and it always bounces back......I give it 2-3 years to get humming again.......I hope people aren't foolish enough to bail out of it enmasse.....
I don't know about that. California has the same problem as General Motors - very, very high fixed costs due to the number of people it tries to take care of, and an insufficient income to meet its financial obligations.
The business climate encourages companies to leave, relocating to places like Texas. (I'm working with a buyer at present who just moved her business from California to South Austin, bringing her family and 4 employees with her). The political climate is 'governance by referendum', which is very problematic. The entitlement culture is very deep set, and there are no longer enough Peters to pay Paul. There are also serious energy problems and water dependence issues. And the education system is about to crater due to the strain of immigration and trying to teach in every language under the sun instead of making every kid learn english.
I think each successive "bounce back" will become more and more difficult to achieve.
Contrast that with Texas, which has no state tax, affordable housing, and just said "no thanks" to government bailout money because of the strings attached. Yes, we have our own set of problems, but we run a fairly lean ship financially.
In my small town in Northern California the average pay is 10 dollars per hour and the average house costs 300,000 dollars. It's going to take a very long time for it to turn around here.
I certainly don't think relocating to the sunbelt is the answer to the bleeding off of industrial cities in the rust belt....not only are states in the sunbelt hurting very hard now themselves, such as Florida, Nevada, and California, but its so flippant to presume that a mass exodus of relocatees
can just run to the sunbelt in the first place........many people simply can't make that move....not only must they sell their house, but must leave their social network, friends and family, and go cold to a place where they know not a soul.........most with families simply can't make that move.....the poor and such least of all.......and I include working poor as well, which includes a large swath of folks......and few people in the middle class have nest eggs anymore that can tide them over as they relocate their entire family hoping to find work......
I think the only answer is to find jobs for folks in the regions they live in........if not, we are selling out an entire generation of people.......and
it simply is not fair to dump entire regions of dispossessed on a state like Texas, and expect their infrastructure and economy to absorb the same,
particularly as the locals are just beginning to feel the hard pinch of the recession themselves......
I'm FOR opportunity, and think we need far better solutions than sending folks to Texas and such.........thats simply not fair to anyone, Texas included.......we need a NATIONAL solution to the problem.......sending folks to Texas is like taking a room full of hungry people, throwing some food in the corner, and sending them all to the same corner, letting them fight over the scraps with the folks who were already in the corner in the first place.........
I'm looking for a realistic, permanent solution, not a simplistic, just-send-everyone-to-Texas one......
I'd like to know who you think is "sending" and "dumping" people on Texas. It is a very strange choice of words
People are coming of their own free will. We have a right in this nation to live in the city we please. The mass movement of Americans to the sun-belt may be unhealthy, but it's the sum of individual choices, each choice protected and entirely fair. If you disagree, just flip it, and see the question from the other side. Would it be fair to restrict the movement of people between states to protect locals from having to compete for jobs?
And speaking of flippant, I can think of few things more flippant than urging people to fight against macro-economic trends and to stay in an endemically depressed region and wither away, rather than come to a new town (that just happens to be yours) and compete with the locals (perhaps you) for jobs.
It's like California in the 30s, where interstate immigrants were savaged for the same reason. History remembers the would-be gatekeepers poorly.
We're a restless and transient nation; we always have been.
I don't know about that. California has the same problem as General Motors - very, very high fixed costs due to the number of people it tries to take care of, and an insufficient income to meet its financial obligations.
The business climate encourages companies to leave, relocating to places like Texas. (I'm working with a buyer at present who just moved her business from California to South Austin, bringing her family and 4 employees with her). The political climate is 'governance by referendum', which is very problematic. The entitlement culture is very deep set, and there are no longer enough Peters to pay Paul. There are also serious energy problems and water dependence issues. And the education system is about to crater due to the strain of immigration and trying to teach in every language under the sun instead of making every kid learn english.
I think each successive "bounce back" will become more and more difficult to achieve.
Contrast that with Texas, which has no state tax, affordable housing, and just said "no thanks" to government bailout money because of the strings attached. Yes, we have our own set of problems, but we run a fairly lean ship financially.
Steve
I think that part of it is that Texas has always to a large extent maintained its own "independence" financially from the rest of the country.
While they certainly don't trade primarily within the state and amongst themselves, they do set themselves apart.....that's why they tend to have their own booms and busts, generally counter cyclical to the rest of the country......fact is that they DO have downturns, some indeed severe, and usually related to energy, with tech and manufacturing just behind.....my concern is that they will experience the same infrastructure overload as California if the internal and illegal migration continues, which
will overtax the infrastructure even more as Texas is a low tax state to begin with, and has little wiggle room to levy unexpected expenses........
am I the only one that thinks that texas could be setting themselves up for a huge recession, in their own way and time, if their economy slows
AND they are stuck with a massive amount of new arrivals from the last 5-7 years?
I'd like to know who you think is "sending" and "dumping" people on Texas. It is a very strange choice of words
People are coming of their own free will. We have a right in this nation to live in the city we please. The mass movement of Americans to the sun-belt may be unhealthy, but it's the sum of individual choices, each choice protected and entirely fair. If you disagree, just flip it, and see the question from the other side. Would it be fair to restrict the movement of people between states to protect locals from having to compete for jobs?
And speaking of flippant, I can think of few things more flippant than urging people to fight against macro-economic trends and to stay in an endemically depressed region and wither away, rather than come to a new town (that just happens to be yours) and compete with the locals (perhaps you) for jobs.
It's like California in the 30s, where interstate immigrants were savaged for the same reason. History remembers the would-be gatekeepers poorly.
We're a restless and transient nation; we always have been.
I think you missed my point....I'm looking for solutions for the vast majority who can't make that move to the sunbelt, and have to stay in place.......I feel that just encouraging people to move to a region that is beginning to suffer strongly itself(Florida, California, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona),
is not dealing with the problem at all........we need to retool those areas the people are coming from.....lastly, the sunbelt, especially now, does
NOT have the job base available to absorb the mass of unemployed....
many sunbelt states are suffering themselves now, some with close to double digit unemployment.....
Fact is, people need better solutions....just telling folks to move to a region that is becoming very hard pressed itself is not helping things out in the short OR long run..........
Lastly, Texas is currently 6.4% per state unemployment rate, and racheting up........
I think you missed my point....I'm looking for solutions for the vast majority who can't make that move to the sunbelt, and have to stay in place.......
When it come to it, eventually, people who are willing and able to work figure out a way to go to where the jobs are.
When I moved to Texas (Corpus Christi) from California in 1981, every third license plate was from Michigan. The restaurant I worked in was managed by a Michigan transplant, the Chef was from there also, as well as about half the wait staff and the bartender. Seems like they came in a herd and they all knew each other from back home.
Houston at that time (early 80s) had a huge "tent city", with thousands of people living there, most from the North and Northeast.
Americans, I like to think, are at the core a hardscrabble tough people. This land could not have been settled by anything less. Those who moved west initially (1800's) did in fact leave everything behind and start over. Nobody "has" to stay anywhere. Just look at the lengths immigrants from Mexico and S. America go to to get here and work, because there is no opportunity at home.
This type of migration to "greener grasses" is normal and healthy and has happened all throughout human history.
When it come to it, eventually, people who are willing and able to work figure out a way to go to where the jobs are.
When I moved to Texas (Corpus Christi) from California in 1981, every third license plate was from Michigan. The restaurant I worked in was managed by a Michigan transplant, the Chef was from there also, as well as about half the wait staff and the bartender. Seems like they came in a herd and they all knew each other from back home.
Houston at that time (early 80s) had a huge "tent city", with thousands of people living there, most from the North and Northeast.
Americans, I like to think, are at the core a hardscrabble tough people. This land could not have been settled by anything less. Those who moved west initially (1800's) did in fact leave everything behind and start over. Nobody "has" to stay anywhere. Just look at the lengths immigrants from Mexico and S. America go to to get here and work, because there is no opportunity at home.
This type of migration to "greener grasses" is normal and healthy and has happened all throughout human history.
Steve
Again, most people at this point are NOT able to make that move....back in '81, people saved far more money, and didn't live on credit cards and home equity loans.....they also didn't indebt themselves, for the most part, with mortgages they couldn't handle.....now, the national savings rate is slowly moving up from a base of ZERO, and the nest eggs that WERE being nurtured are being nipped at by a financial market that is somewhat imploding right now.....entire sectors of the ecomomy, such as automobile and financial firms, are begging for bailouts from DC......
In other words, this is a far different world than '81........though the dynamic of internal migration in search of a better opportunity is the same, the whole savings and debt culture has changed markedly, precluding most people from making that move.....people simply don't have that cash/asset cushion anymore, and have much debt they must still pay off which they will bring with them, and which they can't run away from..........so they have to service debt the bring with them, with little
to no cushion as well.......
Finally, even if they HAVE a cushion, the scary thing is they only have one chance to take, and if they move to the wrong place, or make wrong moves, they are down to nothing at all........so, it's certainly important to really think out a move laced with desperation, as that likely will be the only shot you have.........one nest egg = one chance......
Make that a good one....
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
