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corporate greed, offshoring, high rate of immigration since 1965, oil crisis of 70s, high interest rate in the 70s and 80s, the gutting of labor unions, increasing ceos pay, and rising cost of living (made it more expensive to operate a company). Hopefully one day things will be like the fifties again.
corporate greed, offshoring, high rate of immigration since 1965, oil crisis of 70s, high interest rate in the 70s and 80s, the gutting of labor unions, increasing ceos pay, and rising cost of living (made it more expensive to operate a company). Hopefully one day things will be like the fifties again.
Interesting -- because during all those events, other communities, cities have thrived.
You imply those factors have negatively impacted all of the USA and that's just not true.
Some communities are better today then they were in the 70's.
I live in a Rust Belt city. I also don't see a valid option for your poll.
IMO most of the issues with Rust Belt is that the weather is bad and so as the economy improved people moved to nicer climate areas (I did for that reason).
I'm black and FWIW there have always been black people in the Rust Belt since the 1700s. My family has been here since the 1820s (in Ohio or MI or IN).
In regards to economic conditions today, the city I live in is doing well economically and we have a healthy job market. They also have better wages, which is a reason I moved back here versus staying in the south. I also realized I'd rather be cold during winter than sweating to death in the summer. Summers here are great and winters aren't as long as people think (and I feel that snow is very pretty).
Corporate greed. I have no trouble with a person earning wealth. I have a problem with a CEO who makes 200 times the amount of the median salary of their company. That's greed, pure & simple. We can blame unions all we want for forcing jobs overseas, but the truth is, it's greed that's doing that.
Interesting -- because during all those events, other communities, cities have thrived.
You imply those factors have negatively impacted all of the USA and that's just not true.
Some communities are better today then they were in the 70's.
Indeed case in point NYC. NYC was almost left for dead in the 70s and 80s - talk was can this be another Detroit? NYC today? It's the strongest it has ever been in its history.
The sad economic situation goes further back than 30 to the 1970s when huge steel plants were closing, due to cheap Japanese steel being dumped on the market.
Keep spewing the automation BS....
There is so much more to manufacturing than just assembly lines.
People seem to forget about the design, engineering, and machining aspects of it.
The jobs went away because we can't compete with slave labor, period. The corporations wanted to increase profits and our government allowed them to offshore.
Having spent my entire career in design and engineering, I can assure you that automation is actively taking away jobs in every aspect of product development - not just manufacturing. It takes a fraction of the personnel to design a product because engineering software innovation and computer simulation do a lot of the work now.
If I had to put a number on it, a 10X reduction in staff now compared to the pre-computer days of the 1960's, when parts were made from drawings that were laid out manually by an army of "draftsmen".
This is not only happening in the US. It is happening all over the world, and the pace is accelerating.
Another factor is that here in the USA we decided to chase short-term profits in new technologies and decided not to invest in the R&D needed to modernize primary metals and manufacturing. While we were off chasing those pretty dreams, and appeasing Wall Street, our competitors in the Far East cleaned our clock.
Yes all of this. I grew up in an area that made steel and there were coal mines. Both industries were dying 40+ yrs ago, coal mining went first. This is not some new issue that started. Just like the Industrial Revolution was usurped by new technological advancements in the past half century, you have a changing world with a cross-section of people who for whatever reason cannot or will not get educated and trained to take advantage of new technologies and cannot or will not move closer to areas that can offer them more opportunity.
Not sure what area you grew up in where you think the simple solution is to magically give people degrees for these jobs or just give them money to completely uproot their lives and move elsewhere. A very large chunk of my my family live in West Virginia, they have worked in the coal mines for generations. How exactly do you propose, we take a 68 year old man who has worked the mines for years and send him to college to get an engineering degree so he can get one of these magical jobs that suddenly appears out of nowhere in the Appalachians of WV?? Once these magical jobs start to pop up how are company's supposed to attract these college graduates to these areas?? How are these "uneducated" people supposed to pack up and move and if they do where, exactly should they be moving to since you've eliminated their jobs?? It seems many people, not just you, think it's simple to just say "eliminate these obsolete jobs and just force people to get degrees" that's easier said then done
The decline of traditional industries and industries becoming less labour intensive, has been part of the problem.
The Unions merely helped spped up the decline, as Far Eastern countries had non-union labour, and much lowser production costs.
It should however be noted that the US is not alone in having Rust Belts there are parts of Europe and other parts of the world that have exactly the same kind of areas.
The real issue is how you transform these areas and make them more conducive to investment, and more modern business and hi-tech manufacturing.
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