The Death of Detroit
 

Well, you wanted free trade, what did you expect?

I'm ready to bring back tariffs and customs duties.

Somehow this city failed to notice that manufacturing has been dead for the last 30 years. Other rust belt cities somehow managed to reinvent themselves.

Hell Yeah!
A lot better idea then taxing us to death.

Danny

Manufacturing is not dead in the US. It is dead in Michigan because it is based not on a business model, but on a model of parasites feeding off various hosts and believing they are entitled to do so.

The people who could reverse the course have been demoralized by the greedy, selfish and unimaginative politicos and local leaders. So they leave.

The governor looks to programs such as receiving subsidies for housing other states' felons. That's her new business model.

And she wonders why she won't be governor by the time the turnaround happens.....

What a ludicrous, Kafkaesque place this is.

It's just like in the Rolling Stones' song Sympathy for the Devil:
"As every cop's a criminal,
and all the sinners saints,
as heads is tails...."

It's all gone wrong, it's all backwards and will remain so.

Would you advise your kids to get into the manufactuing business in the U.S.?

I certainly wouldn't, if it's not completely dead it's on life support. The U.S. has still not learned to control labor costs.

I remember seeing an interesting state awhile back that nearly all the of the auto manufacturing jobs that were lost in MI in the past year were replaced in other states, with other auto manufacturing jobs.

Hopefully, non-union states.

The US needs a Moon-shot style program focused on robotics and alternative energy costs. We are like corks bobbing in the rapids. The only thing that can compete with Chinese labor are robots. The only way to generate the investment capital needed to re-tool the entire economy is to end the massive outflow of energy dollars. Yet no one has done anything for a decade. Obama better get his a** in gear.

IMO, the U.S. needs to give up on trying to compete with low cost labor markets; that is just a race to the bottom. I agree that we should develop energy and manufactuing technologies that can be sold to the developing world. If the U.S. intends to maintain the current standard of living they need to be looking at value added products and services, manufacturing can be done elsewhere.

I suppose that you are advocating controlling all labor costs except your own of course.

I can take care of myself without any help. The minute I think I can do better elsewhere, I'm gone. The minute my clients can get a better value from someone else, they should replace me. That's how a free market works.

Detroit,
 

What a dreadful looking place.

Maybe Grosse Pointe looks better:confused:

I cannot see how we can keep a population of 400 million people busy doing that.

I think everyone collecting unemployment in Michigan ( well, men anyway) should be sent a shovel or sledge hammer and told to join the demolition crew. Tear that wreckage down, the sooner the better. You will never get anywhere in Michigan with that mess staring you in the face. Getting paid anyway, might as well do something constructive. Getting some work from the unemployed is better for both parties than sending them a check to stay home. Youth jobs? Put them all to work in the summer.

Win for taxpayers. win for MI and Detroit and win for spirit of the unemployed. (at least that's how I feel)