HIROSHIMA vs.. DETROIT -- 64 years later
 

Saw a vanity license plate on a Toyota in Calif. about 25 years ago.
 

If you want to see how really, really, really bad Detroit is, go to google maps satellite view and do the street view. Click almost any street in the city N,S,E or W and you can see abandoned houses or empty lots. The Packard plant still stands as a sad symbol of the decay, about sixty years after Packard went out of business.

Someone here suggested a while back that there ought to be a national contest of city planners to come up with ideas for rebuilding Detroit from the ground up. Not a bad idea. Put all Michigan's unemployed to work with dozers and shovels and level the city. Start with a clean slate. Wouldn't that be better than just sending checks to stay home and go down to the unemployment office once a month.

The future in Detroit must begin with massive demolition.

Youtube has a few tour videos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6WKMNmFsxM

Sure you're not talking about New Orleans? Where is the money gonna come from to pay people to destruct things?

Sad,,, real sad. Looks like a war zone.:(

From the same place the "extended unemployment benefits" come from. Washington. AKA: deficit spending!:rolleyes:
You know, borrowing from China.:o

Well we certainly could borrow a couple of hundred billion dollars and do that but once you've rebuilt Detroit what happens next?

Without some sort of underlying economic structure its going to be right back where it started in, oh I'd guess 8-10 years. What supports Detroit after the rebuilding is competed? Government welfare checks? Or maybe some Casinos?

Our leaders today seem to constantly address the symptom of the problems without ever addressing the root causes of the decay. From my perspective the root cause of the problem is the de-industrilization of America - and the loss of hundreds of thousands of high paying value added jobs that built and sustained the middle class in Detroit.

Agreed, U.S. manufacturing is long gone and not coming back. The rust belt cities are going to have to figure out how to reinvent themselves for this century. This has be obvious for the last 30 years, a little planning would have been nice. It can be done, Pittsburgh did it in the 80s/90s and is now doing pretty well.

The "hundreds of thousands of high paying value added jobs that built and sustained the middle class" were a large part of the problem. Domestic manufacturing companies never learned to control their labor cost, so they're gone. The real "value added" isn't in the manufacturing, that can be done anyplace.

Those pics of Detroit are really disheartening. They were the hustle and bustle of midwestern industry 30 years ago. On a side note, those pics of modern day Hiroshima are almost surreal. Such a colorful environment. Makes for a REAL view if you can afford a penthouse in that rainbow environment.

Then why can't it be done in Detroit again? I think it could if we established an environment that permitted it to happen.

Everyone seems to think that the de-industrilization of America is just a "change" in the way our economy operates. Their view is that a service based economy is just as good and can build long-term wealth and prosperity equally effectively as an economy based upon manufacturing value added products.

I'm not sure I agree with this view, can you name a modern country that has ever survived as a world power that didn't have a vibrant manufacturing base?

If our view about service based economies is correct, and that those economies are better and more stable than one based on manufacturing, why isn't China and the other emerging economies pursuing the "service based" model of economic development?

They're using stupid photography to make Hiroshima look like a carnival or something. I've been to both cities, Hiroshima is the dirtiest city in Japan, but cleaner than any in the United States. The atomic memorial is sweet too.

All of Detroit looks like Hiroshima's atomic bomb building. It sort of happens when your population is half of what it once was. Detroit should just make half of the city unincorporated so the hundreds of people who still live there don't have to pay to attempt to maintain a half empty city.

urban decay....someone just punched the air out of my lungs.

Sure, we can still do manufacturing in Detroit if we can do it better/cheaper than the rest of the world. At the moment that means significantly reduced labor costs. Do we really want to participate in this "race to the bottom"?

If/when the economies and wages of the rest of the world catch up with the U.S./EU it might make sense. In the mean time, if you want a higher wage job than someone in china, you need to be able to do something that they are not able to do (yet). If you want to keep you wages higher than you counterpart in china, you need to innovate faster than they do. Look at the computer industry, they outsource all their manufacturing while keeping all the value added work at home (U.S. or Japan). This only works because they are innovating very quickly.

I don't think the historical argument works in this case, it's not applicable to the smaller/flatter world. I'm sure someone said "no one has every won a war without a strong calvary" at the beginning of WW1. Also, I don't even know what "world power" will mean in 50 years, but I doubt it will have anything to do with having steel mills and making the most jeeps.

I think the emerging economies will transfer to a "service based" model much more quickly than the west did. As soon as their labor costs are not competitive, they will start outsourcing. I read someplace that some industries in china are now outsourcing labor to african countries. Eventually, world economies will become more level and the rate of outsourcing will be reduced; but as long as they are inequities in the labor market, they will be exploited.

The job base is gone, Detroit needs to figure out how to get companies to move their. From the videos I have seen online of the city meetings thats not going to happen.

Unless something changes in 100 years Detroit is going to be mostly farms.

this reminds me of a comment a software developer made to me some time back: "face it, Bill Gates has won the war".

same with Jap cars: Face it: Toyota, Mazda, Honda, Subaru, Nissan and Isuzu have won the war.

our glorious leaders allowed them to sell their wares here. every dime they made was funneled straight back to Japan. they then took that money and came over here and bought up all our classic muscle cars and had them shipped back to Japan.

....funding our own demise one rice rocket at a time. smart......real smart.

Reduced labor costs are only the tip of the iceberg, you would have to change many other things are well. Would I like to change places with China today from a economic standpoint? You bet I would.

Your cavalry argument is interesting... you do realize it is an example of how the ability of one country to MANUFACTURE a new product on a large scale resulted in a paradigm change?

I certainly hope you are right but if you are it will be the first time in modern history where an ability to manufacture arms wasn't a significant factor in deciding who wins. I do agree that if things go nuclear its a whole new ball game but if this country ever again gets in a full-scale shooting war we are going to be in huge trouble. Do you remember how Detroit participated in WW2? As things currently stand that capability is gone.

The solution is either to get competitive (innovate and control operating costs), or to try to close your markets (which is a very bad plan for the long term). The domestic car manufactures made an inferior product for the price, they deserve to be gone. If the Japanese companies can't compete with the Korean manufactures, they will be gone too (of they will just outsource).

Bill Gates did win the war, he understood how to dominate a market; his replacement, not so much. BTW, I only use macs.

There's a project in Detroit, taking abandoned urban space in the residential parts of town and converting it to neighborhood based, small scale agriculture. In some areas the concept is working enough to expand the project to other areas of town.

I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying that's how it is today. As things stand the U.S. is not competitive in manufacturing and I don't see any practical way to change that in the near term. If we want to continue to have 7% of the world's population and 20% of the world's money, we had better be able to provide sufficient "value added" goods and services to support the inequality. If we try to compete "toe to toe" in manufacturing, we will lose.

I do think (hope) that the era of "world wars" is over. The world is to interconnected for large scale aggression to make sense for anyone. The current threats are different, and do not require a huge manufacturing base.