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Old 12-09-2010, 10:47 AM
 
Location: Greenville, SC
11,696 posts, read 24,711,929 times
Reputation: 3441

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Great news: Ford to invest $600 million in Louisville plant - MarketWatch
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Old 12-09-2010, 08:00 PM
 
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
11,974 posts, read 25,406,804 times
Reputation: 12187
The fact that Louisville's two plants will now have some MPG balance is a good thing. If higher gas prices hurt F series sales then the smaller Escape should see more sales. The plant is also capable of being quickly retooled, so it gas prices really spike they could probably move some small car production there.

The Escape is a high volume seller in the US (btw 150,000 and 190,000 per year) so that means lots of workers needed.
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Old 12-10-2010, 12:12 PM
 
Location: Louisville, Kentucky
1,448 posts, read 4,782,936 times
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We really needed some good economic news and this certainly qualifies.
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Old 12-10-2010, 02:51 PM
 
Location: "Daytonnati"
4,243 posts, read 7,156,821 times
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...sort of "old economy" stuff, though?
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Old 12-10-2010, 09:17 PM
 
39 posts, read 113,145 times
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It's great economic news for the city regardless of where your personal divide between "new" economy and "old" economy lies. I wish that manufacturing were a more well respected industry in the US these days, there's still a ton of potential for it. But the "best and brightest" now go to finance and other "new economy" service industries that don't really produce anything worthwhile in the long term.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dayton Sux View Post
...sort of "old economy" stuff, though?
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Old 12-14-2010, 03:58 AM
 
Location: "Daytonnati"
4,243 posts, read 7,156,821 times
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The CJ did a good set of articles on the economic situation in Louisville, noting how employment has been dropping, particularly manufacturing employment. This is happening everywhere in the US, a combination of the effects of automation and globalization. A caution to y'all is that this Ford announcment masks this long-term trend. One of the people interviewed in the article, who is going back to school, characterized the relatively high-paying factory jobs as "fools gold", opting instead to improve is chances on the job market by getting more skills (dont recall what he was studying).

This was pretty much the case in Dayton, which relied on the fools gold of mass employment unionized auto industry work, until all that work went to Mexico and elsewhere, or the market changed, and the last big assembly operation shut down in 2008.

If you can imagine Louisville losing both Ford Plants AND GE Appliance Park, that is what happened to manufacturing in Dayton. I don't think there are any factories in Dayton now employing more that 900 people (at tops).

So, yes, "Dayton Sux", if you are an unskilled or semi-skilled factory worker.

What survived was highly skilled precsion machine-shop work and specialized machine making (like industrial robotics) as well as other smaller niche manufacturing, and new small scale manufacturing based off of technology developed locally for the military.

There is no illusion that mass-employment factory work is coming back. I figure if GM and Delphi had remained in Dayton there would have been less pressure to find another way, to get serious about workforce development, and find subsitute economic sectors to make up for the collapse of manufacturing. The focus in Dayton now is engineering and scientific R&D, with some computer stuff like ZirMed in Louisville. This is a plausible focus since the Dayton area has three engineering schools in the metro area, so is able to produce a workforce to staff these lines of business (or recruit from OSU, University of Cincinnati, etc).

This is a big difference with Louisville, which seems superficially healthy, but might have a weak foundation for future growth. What sounds like "good news" might mask some underlying structural weaknesses.
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Old 12-16-2010, 03:38 PM
 
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
11,974 posts, read 25,406,804 times
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Auto manufacturing is about the only stable industrial jobs left in America. Cars are something that First World consumer will only buy if they are quality built, that means they are assembled in North America, Europe, or East Asia.
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