Atlanta rounds up....Detroit rounds down.

[313Weather]

Originally Posted by Indentured Servant

Bingo....and that is one of the reasons that Detroit remains stagnant. I contrasted Atlanta because I went to college in Atlanta for about two years, in the late 80's, before returning to Michigan. Atlanta, then, was a metro area of about 2.5 million people. It was perennially in the top 5 for violent crime and rates of murder. I saw two strong armed robberies downtown, in the middle of the day, on separate occasions. The restaurant my friend worked at....a disgruntled employee returned to kill two workers. My friend hearing the perp tell another co worker not to come to work the next day....stayed home too.....possibly saving his life. Atlanta also suffered the horror of the Atlanta child killings. However, I kid you not, everyone in the area spoke so positive about Atlanta and even back then I noticed the propensity down there to embellish their statistics in the media. People were positive and optimistic....ABOUT ATLANTA, which helped sell Atlanta to visitors. Attitudes are often infectious and with such positive talk......that helped to market and sell Atlanta to people and businesses which in turn helped Atlanta to become how it saw itself. It was culture shock for me to move to an area like this.

It seems to me that if one has a basic understanding of human nature......that it is a no brainier that seeing oneself positively is more conducive to promoting success, and other seeing you positively, than seeing oneself negatively. What is so difficult about that to understand? Find the positives that one has to offer and go with that. Who wants to move to a gloom and doom self deprecating area? People? Businesses? The Detroit area is not going to grow by virtue of natural increase (births over deaths). It has to attract people. Would your rather move to a place were the people were upbeat about where the live, as opposed to gloom and doom?

"Detroit is never going to come back."..... "the city is too far gone"....."everything is corrupt"....."Crime is the problem (as if only Detroit has crime)"......"Detroit sucks"....."the economy not going to come back"...."its a hell hole"


There....feel better? Music to your ears...no doubt. Its like not being able to sleep without hearing gun shots.

Geeezzzzzz Louissssseee

I want to live in a place where I don't have to sacrifice the prime years of my life cleaning up the mess the last 3 generations have made and trying to rebuild all of what they destroyed.

[Retroit]

Originally Posted by Indentured Servant

Yet.....Atlanta did not lose half its population and in fact has grown and has seen tons of investment in the city proper .

Could it be because of JOBS, and not peoples perceptions? Atlanta ranks 4th among American cities in fortune 500 companies, including Delta Airlines, UPS, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, etc. People moved there for jobs (and weather). I guarantee if ten fortune 500 companies existed in Detroit, the population would not have decreased as it had.

Also Atlanta hosted the '96 Olympics which spurred a lot of development (and negative publicity resulting from the Olympic Park bombing and the city's use of eminent domain to kick out poor people The dark side of the Olympic Games - Iowa State Daily: Home )

I think this may be a case of you being in Atlanta at a time in your life when individuals see the bright side of everything.

[Indentured Servant]

Originally Posted by Retroit

Could it be because of JOBS, and not peoples perceptions? Atlanta ranks 4th among American cities in fortune 500 companies, including Delta Airlines, UPS, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, etc. People moved there for jobs (and weather). I guarantee if ten fortune 500 companies existed in Detroit, the population would not have decreased as it had.

Also Atlanta hosted the '96 Olympics which spurred a lot of development (and negative publicity resulting from the Olympic Park bombing and the city's use of eminent domain to kick out poor people The dark side of the Olympic Games - Iowa State Daily: Home )

I think this may be a case of you being in Atlanta at a time in your life when individuals see the bright side of everything.

Yes....that could be true......and it could also be part of Southern Hospitality or the desire to be seen as a big time city. I just thought about the fact hundreds of thousands of Northerners have moved to Atlanta since the years that I was there....bringing a different attitude to the area. However, when I watched the news report and the Atlanta reporter mentioning that Atlanta was "a city of 6 million", it just took me back to the embellishments that I witnessed regularly in the Media when I lived there.

That having been said, first off, most jobs, the vast majority, are not produced by fortune 500 companies. Those companies are not responsible for Atlanta job growth. A large part of Atlanta's job growth came as a result of facilitating population growth....expanded infrastructure, new housing, new roads, expanded retail, school building, health services, bars, expansion of government services, restaurants and the like. People follow jobs and jobs follow people. Atlanta created thousands of jobs in the present born from speculation of future population growth and future. Now that the population growth has slowed....their economy has become weaker.

Secondly, you ignored the salient point concerning the supposed plague of crime, corruption and incompetence that is said to be at the root of the demise of Detroit, yet, Atlanta has had all those things and the economy and population grew.

My perspective on this study certainly does not represent scientific methodology in which many variable are controlled for. However, the contrast and difference I noted going from Detroit to Atlanta was palpable. People in the Atlanta area seem to desire to be in the big league of cities.....and that is how they sold and saw themselves. Even when I was there natives would argue that Atlanta was bigger than Detroit back in the late 80's. That was hardly true then....but you could not tell them that.

[Retroit]

Originally Posted by Indentured Servant

most jobs, the vast majority, are not produced by fortune 500 companies. Those companies are not responsible for Atlanta job growth.

But those large corporations spin off a lot of business to other companies that do create jobs: accounting firms, law firms, construction firms, marketing firms, etc. True, all those jobs in turn spin off the housing and infrastructure jobs. In other words, Category A jobs create Category B jobs which create Category C jobs. You could hire a bunch of people to build houses, restaurants, stores, roads, etc. out in the middle of nowhere, but people aren't going to move there for that reason. That is why all the sprawl outward from Detroit hasn't managed to increase the metro Detroit population. As long as the Category A jobs (auto factory workers) are not increasing, the Category B & C jobs won't increase.

[Indentured Servant]

Originally Posted by Retroit

But those large corporations spin off a lot of business to other companies that do create jobs: accounting firms, law firms, construction firms, marketing firms, etc. True, all those jobs in turn spin off the housing and infrastructure jobs. In other words, Category A jobs create Category B jobs which create Category C jobs. You could hire a bunch of people to build houses, restaurants, stores, roads, etc. out in the middle of nowhere, but people aren't going to move there for that reason. That is why all the sprawl outward from Detroit hasn't managed to increase the metro Detroit population. As long as the Category A jobs (auto factory workers) are not increasing, the Category B & C jobs won't increase.

The companies that you have talked about, the fortune 500 of Atlanta, have not expanded their workforce significantly in the last 20 years to create the tertiary employment demand of which you speak. The Atlanta area gained about 2 million people in about a 25 year period. Of course, many of that number are young people not in the labor force, but certainly you should agree that major companies in Atlanta have not expanded their local workforce to such a degree to create that many secondary and tertiary spin off opportunites, especially during an era of downsizing and efficiency gains through technology which requires less workers to produce the same amount of output.

The dirty little secrete about many boom areas is that a large part of their economy and job growth is based upon speculation of strong future population growth. Those economies really are not producing exportable goods, but rather, simply offering services, creating infrastructure, housing, retail and the like. This is all facilitated by the expansion of credit and debt. A large part of the US economy is born from population shifting. It's kind of related to China's booming economy, a large part of which is building ghost cities and infrastructure base upon supposed future demand. In other words, they are creating jobs today and boosting GDP today by creating SUPPLY today, for FUTURE DEMAND. The problem is that if the future does not grow as predicted in the present, things collapse. They, and we, are simply subtracting from the future to add to our present.

[Retroit]

Originally Posted by Indentured Servant

The companies that you have talked about, the fortune 500 of Atlanta, have not expanded their workforce significantly in the last 20 years to create the tertiary employment demand of which you speak. The Atlanta area gained about 2 million people in about a 25 year period. Of course, many of that number are young people not in the labor force, but certainly you should agree that major companies in Atlanta have not expanded their local workforce to such a degree to create that many secondary and tertiary spin off opportunites, especially during an era of downsizing and efficiency gains through technology which requires less workers to produce the same amount of output.

That is correct and I admit in an effort to make my point clearly, I simplified things a bit too much. I should have said that a lot of the Category A jobs have been subcontracted to Category B jobs. But there is no debating that these major corporations have grown in 20 years. That primary growth is what is funding much of the secondary growth.

The dirty little secrete about many boom areas is that a large part of their economy and job growth is based upon speculation of strong future population growth. Those economies really are not producing exportable goods, but rather, simply offering services, creating infrastructure, housing, retail and the like. This is all facilitated by the expansion of credit and debt. A large part of the US economy is born from population shifting. It's kind of related to China's booming economy, a large part of which is building ghost cities and infrastructure base upon supposed future demand. In other words, they are creating jobs today and boosting GDP today by creating SUPPLY today, for FUTURE DEMAND. The problem is that if the future does not grow as predicted in the present, things collapse. They, and we, are simply subtracting from the future to add to our present.

That's true and it also applies to Detroit as well. We were part of the unsustainable housing boom. We had such speculative mega-developments as Bloomfield Park.