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I question your assessment that the heartland was barely touched by the recent boom/bust cycles. All you have to do is take a look at Cleveland or Wichita to se

I question your assessment that the heartland was barely touched by the recent boom/bust cycles. All you have to do is take a look at Cleveland or Wichita to see how bad the economy as ran those cities into the ground. Anyone who thinks you can live reasonably in those cities w/o some sort of specialized/white-collar skill set hasn't lived in either in the last decade. Seriously, the whole nation is hurting except the people with cash in Wall Street.

duderific 11y ago
I think "api" meant that they didn't see any of the upside in the bubbles.
api 11y ago
They were only touched by the busts, while the booms went unheard. It's a ratchet down for all but maybe a dozen alpha cities and a few college towns. Most of the country has been in a depression of varying intensity since 2000. I don't care what Pravda says.
xshift 11y ago
You misinterpreted their post.
fapjacks 11y ago
I come from Kansas and this couldn't be more accurate. I have since left, but I can sense from my friends how depressed the area is and has been since I was a teenager in the late 90s. Life is scary as shit for everyone I know and love that still lives back home.
- api 11y ago
  Look at Flint, Michigan. The water system is failing. In some areas of the American interior we're at the level of a full blown collapse of civilization. It's the sort of future the peak oil doomers talked about, but it doesn't have much to do with oil and obviously isn't distributed evenly. Go to New York and you can find people spending more than your average Flint resident's income on their dogs. It's industrial collapse but not for ecological reasons. This long-term depression (since around 2000-2001) is hidden in the data because the data we look at is aggregate. The collapse in the interior is outweighed on aggregate statistics by the booms that have occurred in places like SF, NYC, LA, Seattle, etc. These are places with closer links to finance and higher tech industries. The interior of the country was always the center of bedrock industry, but all that's been replaced by China. IMHO anyone who argues otherwise is deluded, wrong, or a liar. Just visit a place like Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, etc. and look around a bit. The collapse is viscerally real and physically tangible. Everywhere you will see failing infrastructure, desperate cities installing casinos and other vapid quick-fix ways to stimulate commerce, and people with raging heroin and meth habits and loads of alcoholism. Hard drug addiction is a clear historical indicator of deep depression and social collapse. Then talk to young people and university graduates. You will find that all the best are leaving as soon as they can and that the dream of every young person is to get out. The Midwest is where I'm from. Last time I was there it was a little bit scary. All the gun talk, fear and hatred talk, meth mouth at gas stations and grocery stores, and the general smell of collapse and pessimism. I grew up there and I've watched this happen. It was not like this in the 1990s. There's always been a bit of a gap between places like NYC and the "flyover country" but it was never, ever this extreme. Now it feels like third vs. first world. I actually almost felt unsafe there. I could feel this edge of alarming despair that triggered some kind of hindbrain "watch your back" emotion in me. My wife said the same thing. Automation's role has been minimal so far when compared to the massive effect of wage arbitrage, but if self-driving trucks hit the mainstream we're going to see the bottom really fall out and it's going to be ugly... like rural USSR in the late 80s and early 90s ugly. Trucking and related industries are a major employer in the interior and it's been one of the few jobs that can't be outsourced. Of course this new technology will add new jobs: on the coasts to write the software and overseas to manufacture everything. If this trend continues we're looking at a future not terribly unlike The Hunger Games (there's a reason these books are popular): mega-rich enclaves surrounded by "districts" that have reverted to something resembling a 19th century standard of living but with smart phones (and ubiquitous surveillance, drone attacks, etc.). Either that or there will be a backlash, possibly an over-reaction that tips completely into socialism or fascism. That's the other thing I heard the last few times I was there: depending on whether they leaned right or left people were almost ready to vote for that Hitler guy or that Lenin guy. Trump and Sanders are much, much milder cousins of these... expect far more radical and dangerous versions of both if nothing changes. Think Trump without the restraint and integrity or Sanders without any lingering belief in the American way... and both without any belief in the rule of law. You could even see a... well... "national socialist" hybrid: a warmonger Sanders or a socialist Trump. Of course the globalists will retort that eventually wages will rise in places like China and the tide will start to balance if not actually reverse. That's the theory and indeed it would work if places like China were actually being run for the benefit of their citizens and if those citizens were allowed to participate in the global economy. But China's currency devaluation and continued clamp-downs on both free speech and free international movement of capital tell me that the few dozen party elite families that basically own China have other ideas. China is a cheap labor farm where its people are exploited as a resource, effectively a form of "light" slave labor, and all the benefits are to be captured by the Chinese Communist Party (China, Inc.) and its officials and state-linked industry leaders. If this view is indeed correct then the great outsourcing wave will never reverse and Western workers will forever have to compete with a 1.2 billion head work force held at perpetually deflated wages through currency manipulation and uneven trade agreements. The invalid assumption of globalism is that the leaders of other countries actually share liberal democratic values. They clearly do not. The slaves exist to serve, thank you very much, and this silly notion of universal human prosperity is for woo-woo Western liberals. I do not blame the Chinese one bit. While we're de-industrializing they are getting screwed out of the first world status they've worked for all their lives. They were promised a gleaming future and they're huffing heavy metals instead while the buying power of their money is cut by edict. I blame their "owners" and the folks getting rich off this situation while deluding themselves about the realities. I do think there's a fair amount of self-delusion in places like Washington where lots of people want to believe the lets-all-sing-kumbaya globalist narrative. It would indeed be wonderful if it were true but I see absolutely no sign of any of the upside happening. At least that's my pessimistic view. I hope I'm wrong. In any case I think this explains both Trump and Sanders, both of whom in their own way are running on an anti-globalist platform of reversing the above. I can't say I disagree all that much. The time may be near to call bullshit on China (and the whole globalist model) and erect import tariffs in proportion to the relative cost of foreign wages (and environmental protections, etc.). In other words: tax slave labor. Maybe the US can use the money to invade its interior and build roads and schools. I just hope we can do it without sacrificing liberal democracy and without starting WWIII. As for Silicon Valley and the much ballyhooed collapse: don't fret much. There will likely be a pullback but the worst that will happen is the collapse of a few overvalued startups, a retrenchment, and a restart of the next cycle of growth. History is on our side, economically speaking. The thing to worry about is the naked fascism or punitive socialism about to bubble up from the massive inland region of America you've forgotten exists. While you are forced to endure a lack of catered sushi the interior will be experiencing yet another ratchet-step down. It didn't see the boom but it will see the bust.
  - tomcam 11y ago
    Write a book! I'd buy it, anyway. I'm probably your political opposite but you're speaking the truth, brother.
    - api 11y ago
      A book about politics? I think I just threw up a little. I do feel a potential blog post in this, but I'm waiting to see how it shakes out in the near term. Even blogging about politics makes me sick but there are things that might need to be said. Hopefully somebody else will say it first and let me off the hook.
  - mwcampbell 11y ago
    > Of course this new technology will add new jobs: on the coasts to write the software It's completely ridiculous that software development is concentrated in any one geographic area. Software development can be done just as effectively from anywhere. So why isn't it spread as uniformly as the world's population? Maybe part of the solution to the problems you describe is a call for programmers (and other professionals that can work from anywhere) in the US's interior to not leave for the coasts, but start companies and hire people locally.
    - api 11y ago
      Preaching to the choir. I think it points to deep/immersive telepresence as a major unsolved problem. It's telling that the people who build the Internet can't use it to escape some of the highest rents in the developed world. Solving that problem would help the interior for the reasons you explain.
      - mwcampbell 11y ago
        I expected you to disagree with me on this, considering that you grew up in the midwest, but ZeroTier is located in California. Is there some reason you have to be there?
- madengr 11y ago
  Been living in Overland Park, KS for 20 years and can say that the bust did not affect this area, but there was never a boom either; just steady growth. I can see how Wichita was screwed from aviation downturn.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    Absolutely, Overland Park is quite well off by comparison. I was surprised when I drove through for an interview in Des Moines how it built up since I last been that way in the 90s.
- patrick_99 11y ago
  I visited the US Midwest for the first time in my life a year ago on a road trip. Saw places like Kansas City and St. Louis. They were actually a bit more vibrant than I thought. There were some cool pockets with creative businesses. Good food and nice craft beer. The cost of living is so cheap there, I imagine it would be a lot easier to start a little craft businesses there compared to Brooklyn. If you could expand your customer base beyond locals you'd be doing well.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    KCMO and KCKS are their in their own little bubble since they have firms that want to actually hire people to work there unlike Wichita where Beechcraft (under Goldman-Sachs prior to Textron's acquisition of the company) was outsourcing as much as they could to Mexico. Spirit Aerosystems seems to be doing okay, but they're not comparable to what Boeing was before their formation/acquisition. Other than light industrial and aerospace there's much not else in terms of job prospects. Everyone just sets up in KC or Overland Park or in Denver. A few will go to OKC, but not many.
- nikdaheratik 11y ago
  From Kansas as well. Some parts are worse than the others. Topeka is like ground zero and I wish my family there would move. But it should be expected because the political situation has basically frozen the state employees paychecks for 10+ years and all the blue collar manufacturing jobs there have slowly dried up. KC area is better than the rest of the state. Wichita area not great but not as bad as other parts from what I can tell. I don't think you can pin all of this on interest rate hikes and it is not all tech, or at least all Silicon Valley startups. It's a combination of globalization, a much more service oriented economy than before, and some political decisions that ate away at the middle class (especially lower middle) in favor of wealthy interests.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    Yea, Wichita is a complete mess right now. I believe the current mayor of Wichita had an ad done regarding the failed sales tax hike (1%) which he described the average growth rate of Wichita from 1990 to 2000 and then 2001 to 2011. In the 90s we were growing at about 10% per year on average but the scary thing was the 1% growth per year in the 2000s. I know this is the truth too because I believe right now between Cessna and Beechcraft there's about 4k workers when in the past those two employers could easily field that much individually. Things aren't improving either since Brownback seems to be happy enough with companies leaving the state despite the low taxes because he and his ilk refused to acknowledge that the major corps wanted well educated workers and have on many occasions worked with Wichita State University to improve their programs. It's why I left more than anything. The anti-LGBT sentiment is bad, but having no jobs in my field is worse. Edit: I believe it wasn't an ad, but actually an Op-Ed pinned by Carl Brewer that gave the numbers I described on the growth rates.

duderific 11y ago

I think "api" meant that they didn't see any of the upside in the bubbles.

api 11y ago

They were only touched by the busts, while the booms went unheard. It's a ratchet down for all but maybe a dozen alpha cities and a few college towns. Most of the country has been in a depression of varying intensity since 2000. I don't care what Pravda says.

xshift 11y ago

You misinterpreted their post.

fapjacks 11y ago

I come from Kansas and this couldn't be more accurate. I have since left, but I can sense from my friends how depressed the area is and has been since I was a teenager in the late 90s. Life is scary as shit for everyone I know and love that still lives back home.

api 11y ago
Look at Flint, Michigan. The water system is failing. In some areas of the American interior we're at the level of a full blown collapse of civilization. It's the sort of future the peak oil doomers talked about, but it doesn't have much to do with oil and obviously isn't distributed evenly. Go to New York and you can find people spending more than your average Flint resident's income on their dogs. It's industrial collapse but not for ecological reasons. This long-term depression (since around 2000-2001) is hidden in the data because the data we look at is aggregate. The collapse in the interior is outweighed on aggregate statistics by the booms that have occurred in places like SF, NYC, LA, Seattle, etc. These are places with closer links to finance and higher tech industries. The interior of the country was always the center of bedrock industry, but all that's been replaced by China. IMHO anyone who argues otherwise is deluded, wrong, or a liar. Just visit a place like Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, etc. and look around a bit. The collapse is viscerally real and physically tangible. Everywhere you will see failing infrastructure, desperate cities installing casinos and other vapid quick-fix ways to stimulate commerce, and people with raging heroin and meth habits and loads of alcoholism. Hard drug addiction is a clear historical indicator of deep depression and social collapse. Then talk to young people and university graduates. You will find that all the best are leaving as soon as they can and that the dream of every young person is to get out. The Midwest is where I'm from. Last time I was there it was a little bit scary. All the gun talk, fear and hatred talk, meth mouth at gas stations and grocery stores, and the general smell of collapse and pessimism. I grew up there and I've watched this happen. It was not like this in the 1990s. There's always been a bit of a gap between places like NYC and the "flyover country" but it was never, ever this extreme. Now it feels like third vs. first world. I actually almost felt unsafe there. I could feel this edge of alarming despair that triggered some kind of hindbrain "watch your back" emotion in me. My wife said the same thing. Automation's role has been minimal so far when compared to the massive effect of wage arbitrage, but if self-driving trucks hit the mainstream we're going to see the bottom really fall out and it's going to be ugly... like rural USSR in the late 80s and early 90s ugly. Trucking and related industries are a major employer in the interior and it's been one of the few jobs that can't be outsourced. Of course this new technology will add new jobs: on the coasts to write the software and overseas to manufacture everything. If this trend continues we're looking at a future not terribly unlike The Hunger Games (there's a reason these books are popular): mega-rich enclaves surrounded by "districts" that have reverted to something resembling a 19th century standard of living but with smart phones (and ubiquitous surveillance, drone attacks, etc.). Either that or there will be a backlash, possibly an over-reaction that tips completely into socialism or fascism. That's the other thing I heard the last few times I was there: depending on whether they leaned right or left people were almost ready to vote for that Hitler guy or that Lenin guy. Trump and Sanders are much, much milder cousins of these... expect far more radical and dangerous versions of both if nothing changes. Think Trump without the restraint and integrity or Sanders without any lingering belief in the American way... and both without any belief in the rule of law. You could even see a... well... "national socialist" hybrid: a warmonger Sanders or a socialist Trump. Of course the globalists will retort that eventually wages will rise in places like China and the tide will start to balance if not actually reverse. That's the theory and indeed it would work if places like China were actually being run for the benefit of their citizens and if those citizens were allowed to participate in the global economy. But China's currency devaluation and continued clamp-downs on both free speech and free international movement of capital tell me that the few dozen party elite families that basically own China have other ideas. China is a cheap labor farm where its people are exploited as a resource, effectively a form of "light" slave labor, and all the benefits are to be captured by the Chinese Communist Party (China, Inc.) and its officials and state-linked industry leaders. If this view is indeed correct then the great outsourcing wave will never reverse and Western workers will forever have to compete with a 1.2 billion head work force held at perpetually deflated wages through currency manipulation and uneven trade agreements. The invalid assumption of globalism is that the leaders of other countries actually share liberal democratic values. They clearly do not. The slaves exist to serve, thank you very much, and this silly notion of universal human prosperity is for woo-woo Western liberals. I do not blame the Chinese one bit. While we're de-industrializing they are getting screwed out of the first world status they've worked for all their lives. They were promised a gleaming future and they're huffing heavy metals instead while the buying power of their money is cut by edict. I blame their "owners" and the folks getting rich off this situation while deluding themselves about the realities. I do think there's a fair amount of self-delusion in places like Washington where lots of people want to believe the lets-all-sing-kumbaya globalist narrative. It would indeed be wonderful if it were true but I see absolutely no sign of any of the upside happening. At least that's my pessimistic view. I hope I'm wrong. In any case I think this explains both Trump and Sanders, both of whom in their own way are running on an anti-globalist platform of reversing the above. I can't say I disagree all that much. The time may be near to call bullshit on China (and the whole globalist model) and erect import tariffs in proportion to the relative cost of foreign wages (and environmental protections, etc.). In other words: tax slave labor. Maybe the US can use the money to invade its interior and build roads and schools. I just hope we can do it without sacrificing liberal democracy and without starting WWIII. As for Silicon Valley and the much ballyhooed collapse: don't fret much. There will likely be a pullback but the worst that will happen is the collapse of a few overvalued startups, a retrenchment, and a restart of the next cycle of growth. History is on our side, economically speaking. The thing to worry about is the naked fascism or punitive socialism about to bubble up from the massive inland region of America you've forgotten exists. While you are forced to endure a lack of catered sushi the interior will be experiencing yet another ratchet-step down. It didn't see the boom but it will see the bust.
- tomcam 11y ago
  Write a book! I'd buy it, anyway. I'm probably your political opposite but you're speaking the truth, brother.
  - api 11y ago
    A book about politics? I think I just threw up a little. I do feel a potential blog post in this, but I'm waiting to see how it shakes out in the near term. Even blogging about politics makes me sick but there are things that might need to be said. Hopefully somebody else will say it first and let me off the hook.
- mwcampbell 11y ago
  > Of course this new technology will add new jobs: on the coasts to write the software It's completely ridiculous that software development is concentrated in any one geographic area. Software development can be done just as effectively from anywhere. So why isn't it spread as uniformly as the world's population? Maybe part of the solution to the problems you describe is a call for programmers (and other professionals that can work from anywhere) in the US's interior to not leave for the coasts, but start companies and hire people locally.
  - api 11y ago
    Preaching to the choir. I think it points to deep/immersive telepresence as a major unsolved problem. It's telling that the people who build the Internet can't use it to escape some of the highest rents in the developed world. Solving that problem would help the interior for the reasons you explain.
    - mwcampbell 11y ago
      I expected you to disagree with me on this, considering that you grew up in the midwest, but ZeroTier is located in California. Is there some reason you have to be there?
madengr 11y ago
Been living in Overland Park, KS for 20 years and can say that the bust did not affect this area, but there was never a boom either; just steady growth. I can see how Wichita was screwed from aviation downturn.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  Absolutely, Overland Park is quite well off by comparison. I was surprised when I drove through for an interview in Des Moines how it built up since I last been that way in the 90s.
patrick_99 11y ago
I visited the US Midwest for the first time in my life a year ago on a road trip. Saw places like Kansas City and St. Louis. They were actually a bit more vibrant than I thought. There were some cool pockets with creative businesses. Good food and nice craft beer. The cost of living is so cheap there, I imagine it would be a lot easier to start a little craft businesses there compared to Brooklyn. If you could expand your customer base beyond locals you'd be doing well.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  KCMO and KCKS are their in their own little bubble since they have firms that want to actually hire people to work there unlike Wichita where Beechcraft (under Goldman-Sachs prior to Textron's acquisition of the company) was outsourcing as much as they could to Mexico. Spirit Aerosystems seems to be doing okay, but they're not comparable to what Boeing was before their formation/acquisition. Other than light industrial and aerospace there's much not else in terms of job prospects. Everyone just sets up in KC or Overland Park or in Denver. A few will go to OKC, but not many.
nikdaheratik 11y ago
From Kansas as well. Some parts are worse than the others. Topeka is like ground zero and I wish my family there would move. But it should be expected because the political situation has basically frozen the state employees paychecks for 10+ years and all the blue collar manufacturing jobs there have slowly dried up. KC area is better than the rest of the state. Wichita area not great but not as bad as other parts from what I can tell. I don't think you can pin all of this on interest rate hikes and it is not all tech, or at least all Silicon Valley startups. It's a combination of globalization, a much more service oriented economy than before, and some political decisions that ate away at the middle class (especially lower middle) in favor of wealthy interests.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  Yea, Wichita is a complete mess right now. I believe the current mayor of Wichita had an ad done regarding the failed sales tax hike (1%) which he described the average growth rate of Wichita from 1990 to 2000 and then 2001 to 2011. In the 90s we were growing at about 10% per year on average but the scary thing was the 1% growth per year in the 2000s. I know this is the truth too because I believe right now between Cessna and Beechcraft there's about 4k workers when in the past those two employers could easily field that much individually. Things aren't improving either since Brownback seems to be happy enough with companies leaving the state despite the low taxes because he and his ilk refused to acknowledge that the major corps wanted well educated workers and have on many occasions worked with Wichita State University to improve their programs. It's why I left more than anything. The anti-LGBT sentiment is bad, but having no jobs in my field is worse. Edit: I believe it wasn't an ad, but actually an Op-Ed pinned by Carl Brewer that gave the numbers I described on the growth rates.