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Here is the population of some of the countries Greater Detroit and Greater Minneapolis-Saint Paul have larger, more productive, more lucrative, more valuable, more advanced, more innovative, more global economies than:
- Pakistan: 189,790,000 people
- Vietnam: 91,583,000 people
- Ethiopia: 90,076,012 people
- Egypt: 88,516,700 people
- Democratic Republic of Congo: 71,246,000 people
- Burma: 51,419,420 people
- Tanzania: 47,421,786 people
- Kenya: 46,749,000 people
- Ukraine: 42,895,704 people
- Algeria: 40,400,000 people
- Sudan: 38,435,252 people
- Iraq: 36,004,552 people
- Greece: 10,816,286 people
- Portugal: 10,477,800 people
There is literally like 110-140 more countries we can list here, but you get the point.
Basically what each place is able to do with 3-5 million people it surpasses what it takes 10-200 million people elsewhere in the world.
Estimates of changes from 2010 I saw are a few hundred people up for MSA, several thousand people down for CSA, and a couple tens of thousands down for the city itself. I'm not sure I'd agree with the assessment this isn't still a downwards trajectory overall, though of course, these are estimates. I think the region as a whole is at least bottoming out population-wise and about to rebound though hasn't quite hit there yet. The city still has a bit more to go. Compare that to the fairly steady growth the Twin Cities have. At what point does it seem like the two intersect given current trends (this is on the, of course, unsteady assumption that these trends continue)? The core of the Twin Cities (the Twin Cities themselves) is certainly healthier than Detroit proper is at this point and the Twin Cities have the ability to heavily invest in infrastructure so the outlook for the Twin Cities looks to be great for the foreseeable future. One interesting note is that the Twin Cities combined (solely Minneapolis and Saint Paul which are adjacent to each other and share a long border) have just recently passed the city of Detroit in population while covering a smaller area? I think that's a pretty visible sign of the trajectory of things.
The CSA includes Flint, which no one considers apart of the Greater Detroit area or even Southeast Michigan, and a bunch of rural areas that have been losing population since the industrial revolution.
Here is the population of some of the countries Greater Detroit and Greater Minneapolis-Saint Paul have larger, more productive, more lucrative, more valuable, more advanced, more innovative, more global economies than:
- Pakistan: 189,790,000 people
- Vietnam: 91,583,000 people
- Ethiopia: 90,076,012 people
- Egypt: 88,516,700 people
- Democratic Republic of Congo: 71,246,000 people
- Burma: 51,419,420 people
- Tanzania: 47,421,786 people
- Kenya: 46,749,000 people
- Ukraine: 42,895,704 people
- Algeria: 40,400,000 people
- Sudan: 38,435,252 people
- Iraq: 36,004,552 people
- Greece: 10,816,286 people
- Portugal: 10,477,800 people
There is literally like 110-140 more countries we can list here, but you get the point.
Basically what each place is able to do with 3-5 million people it surpasses what it takes 10-200 million people elsewhere in the world.
Thanks for the post. What you said at the end is very interesting. I never thought about that.
Thanks for the post. What you said at the end is very interesting. I never thought about that.
If you live in a place that is more productive/wealthier/more lucrative, you live in a better place than everywhere beneath you - since the goal of every place on the planet is to increase wages, increase productivity, and remain economically relevant in every facet. Everywhere else beneath you can have people who cry, b****, and whine until they are blue in the face, it wont ever change the fact that if it came down to purchasing power, they would get owned by somewhere else.
For example, if everyone in Los Angeles wanted to get around the idea of putting all their production value together and potentially purchasing the entire country and/or economy of Turkey or Indonesia (if that were ever allowed), they can do that and no one can do anything about it because Los Angeles has the potential purchasing power to do so.
The United Nations actually designates "first world, second world, or third world" statuses to countries (or the newer high-income/middle-income/low-income status) based off GDP and GDP per capita. So essentially the measurement serves to designate how advanced/lucrative/productive people in given geographies are. That is how they should be used for cities too.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 05-16-2015 at 04:16 PM..
If you live in a place that is more productive/wealthier/more lucrative, you live in a better place than everywhere beneath you - since the goal of every place on the planet is to increase wages, increase productivity, and remain economically relevant in every facet. Everywhere else beneath you can have people who cry, b****, and whine until they are blue in the face, it wont ever change the fact that if it came down to purchasing power, they would get owned by somewhere else.
For example, if everyone in Los Angeles wanted to get around the idea of putting all their production value together and potentially purchasing the entire country and/or economy of Turkey or Indonesia (if that were ever allowed), they can do that and no one can do anything about it because Los Angeles has the potential purchasing power to do so.
The United Nations actually designates "first world, second world, or third world" statuses to countries (or the newer high-income/middle-income/low-income status) based off GDP and GDP per capita. So essentially the measurement serves to designate how advanced/lucrative/productive people in given geographies are. That is how they should be used for cities too.
I do not agree with that at all. Ultimately the goal is happiness....and not productivity, wealth and all that. Money and wealth are related, to a degree, with happiness, but once you have enough money to have food security, housing security, health security.....then adding more wealth does not necessarily add more happiness. If spend 60 hours a week working, you might be accumulating income and wealth, but I can guarantee you that the price you are paying is in your relationships...and maybe even your health from all the stress of trying to win the game of who has the most stuff. Our consumer based economy tricks us into thinking that "Things" buy happiness and hence the more things you have and produce the happier you are. True happiness comes from health and relationships....not material things, however, people use material things to buy relationships.
I bet you I that I know plenty of people who make about 30,000 a year who are a lot happier than someone making a million dollars a year.
Last edited by Indentured Servant; 05-16-2015 at 05:57 PM..
Well if anything in this debate is clear, to the degree that public perception dictates the second city status, it looks like there is a clear (though not lop-sided) winner according to the poll: Minneapolis.
Who you talkin to....me? To me, the term excuse does not exist to my vocabulary. Either something is fact or fiction, reason or a lie.
If you polled 100 African Americans, I can guarantee you that the vast majority of them would vote Detroit, Behind Chicago, then probably Cleveland or St Louis, then maybe Minneapolis. Why, because they find things of greater importance to them in those cities than they do in Minneapolis. Thus, really, it depends on what is important to YOU, which is subjective.
That having been said, I have more "excuses" for Detroit. If Detroit's Major Industry completely Collapsed (the corporations based in Detroit area).....it would have a much more rippling and damaging impact on the US economy than if the major corporations of the Twin Cities collapsed. Another thing is trade. Detroit represents an international trade border with our largest trading partner, Canada. It is much more important than Minneapolis in regards to international trade. There are also 46 Million people within a 300 mile radius of Detroit, which means that it is more important as a distribution hub to get products to a larger market than Minneapolis could ever do because of its remote location.
Detroit is simply a region that people like to pick on and diminish because of the hard times it has gone through. People like to undervalue, underestimate and marginalize Detroit, and the region, mainly because of the city proper. Minneapolis is a "neat" city and region (cold as heck though in January)....but it is not what Detroit is in terms of population and importance to the overall US economy. I mean....there is no industry referred to in the US economy as "Minneapolis".....but a major US industry is still known as "Detroit".
Minneapolis blows Detroit away in the following:
-Rapid Transit and public transit in general
-the number of vibrant, hip, artsy neighborhoods within the city limits
-the public park system (although I don't think the Twin Cities have one large signature park like Belle Isle)
-biking/cycling infrastructure and culture
-diversity within the city limits (the Twin Cities are 60% white with sizeable Somalian, Hmong, and African-American populations, while Detroit is 82% black with small white, Mexican, and Middle-Eastern population)
-The Twin Cities have far, far less blight, decaying buildings, burnt out buildings
-I am guessing that the economy of the Twin Cities is growing faster than Detroit's, thus more job growth
These kind of things are important to all races of people
Detroit proper gets picked on (rightfully so) because it has a huge amount of violent crime, blight, decay, abandonment, and arson - much, much, much more than any other city.
I do not agree with that at all. Ultimately the goal is happiness....and not productivity, wealth and all that. Money and wealth are related, to a degree, with happiness, but once you have enough money to have food security, housing security, health security.....then adding more wealth does not necessarily add more happiness. If spend 60 hours a week working, you might be accumulating income and wealth, but I can guarantee you that the price you are paying is in your relationships...and maybe even your health from all the stress of trying to win the game of who has the most stuff. Our consumer based economy tricks us into thinking that "Things" buy happiness and hence the more things you have and produce the happier you are. True happiness comes from health and relationships....not material things, however, people use material things to buy relationships.
I bet you I that I know plenty of people who make about 30,000 a year who are a lot happier than someone making a million dollars a year.
Materialism? Happiness? People?
The what is going on?
I am talking about economical purchasing power of a region, not individual people and their lust for buying things. I am talking about economic vitality not the standard for which modestly goal oriented types can find happiness.
The San Francisco Bay Area has an economic output of $650 Billion and a per capita figure that is like $98,000 per person annually or higher, you think those people are going to be satisfied reaching this threshold only to later decline from that peak and hit hard times?
The Bay Area region's purchasing power is too great, it has more purchasing power than the majority of the world's countries, which means it is well poised to extract, purchase, and innovate resources. The contributions of each individual person (per capita) have made it the most productive major city on the face of the planet. Now you'll see them take over, invest, buy, innovate, repeat cycle.
-I am guessing that the economy of the Twin Cities is growing faster than Detroit's, thus more job growth
Economically, both cities are actually pretty much the same. Both areas are growing at about the same rate year-over-year; roughly 2.5%. Both have relatively same size labor force and total employed (Detroit is larger by about 250,000) and produce roughly the same number of jobs y-o-y. However, Detroit has a higher unemployment rate and thus under-performs relative to its size.
The only difference between the two is that Detroit's economy is mainly supported by manufacturing and has twice the number of manufacturing jobs than MSP. Meanwhile, MSP has many more government jobs which should be a given when one of the core cities is the state capital.
In one sense, it is technically easier to find a job in Minneapolis than it is in Detroit if you were a new arrival to either city. But it's not because either city outproduces jobs more than the other (they kind of don't), it's because there is less competition in Minneapolis and companies there are more likely to be desperate for workers while it's the opposite situation in Detroit.
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