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I see this differently. I grew up in Chicago in the era of decline. Economic decline begets social decline. Much is made of the pathology of poor communities, a

I see this differently. I grew up in Chicago in the era of decline. Economic decline begets social decline. Much is made of the pathology of poor communities, and I've heard it before: for jobs to come, you need to 'fix' the people, the schools, the community. But funny thing, if the jobs are stripped away, the people sink into despair and dysfunction. You see it today, in white working class communities where it seems nearly everyone has succumbed to opiates. When I was growing up it was called the pathology of the Black family. In my area, jobs fled because the companies didn't want to pay union wages. Then gangs took over. The people were blamed for the dysfunction. What happens when the jobs disappear is the real problem.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
The problem is people don't want to admit what needs to be done before it's too late. When the gas crisis hit, it put enough money into the Japanese car makers that their next generation of cars weren't just more fuel efficient than what Detroit was producing, they were actually competitive on multiple levels. Suddenly the Big Three had to compete, but there was a problem. They had promised their workers wages and benefits they could only provide when they didn't have viable foreign competition. More competition meant lower volumes and lower margins. There are only two options in that circumstance. Either everyone tightens their belt or the companies fail. But nobody wanted to tighten their belt. The unions wouldn't give back what they negotiated during the time when the American automakers had no competition. So the companies slowly failed, and with them the region. The alternative might have been that most cars were still made in Detroit, and people there made middle class wages, just not upper middle class wages. But they chose bankruptcy and unemployment over accepting that, and that's what they got.
- nradov 7y ago
  The promises to workers were certainly a contributing factor, but incompetent and apathetic management was a far larger problem. If management had decided to make efficient, high-quality cars the workers were capable of building them as perhaps only slightly higher cost than the competition. Union assembly line workers didn't design the Ford Pinto.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    Management decisions did them no favors, but it was a fundamental shift no matter how well they would have executed. If they had made better cars they would have done better, but there was still no way to maintain their previous revenues when they had new competitors selling good cars for less money, and those revenues were what paid for those benefits.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

The problem is people don't want to admit what needs to be done before it's too late. When the gas crisis hit, it put enough money into the Japanese car makers that their next generation of cars weren't just more fuel efficient than what Detroit was producing, they were actually competitive on multiple levels. Suddenly the Big Three had to compete, but there was a problem. They had promised their workers wages and benefits they could only provide when they didn't have viable foreign competition. More competition meant lower volumes and lower margins. There are only two options in that circumstance. Either everyone tightens their belt or the companies fail. But nobody wanted to tighten their belt. The unions wouldn't give back what they negotiated during the time when the American automakers had no competition. So the companies slowly failed, and with them the region. The alternative might have been that most cars were still made in Detroit, and people there made middle class wages, just not upper middle class wages. But they chose bankruptcy and unemployment over accepting that, and that's what they got.

nradov 7y ago
The promises to workers were certainly a contributing factor, but incompetent and apathetic management was a far larger problem. If management had decided to make efficient, high-quality cars the workers were capable of building them as perhaps only slightly higher cost than the competition. Union assembly line workers didn't design the Ford Pinto.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Management decisions did them no favors, but it was a fundamental shift no matter how well they would have executed. If they had made better cars they would have done better, but there was still no way to maintain their previous revenues when they had new competitors selling good cars for less money, and those revenues were what paid for those benefits.