Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving • Hacker News Board

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#91

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

danans wrote: post #73

dizzystar wrote: post #22

Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, and so on got absolutely destroyed after all the mills were shut down. The bar for reviving is incredibly low. Those that could leave, left. The very people that could quicken the recovery of the fallen Midwestern towns are the same people who left. Detroit has UM, Cleveland has Case Western, Pittsburgh has Carnegie Mellon which are all top-flight schools. In a strange way, the…

> Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. Not only is this a non-sequitir from the previous paragraph, but drinking beer (cheap is relative) and screaming at a television is a tradition shared by people of every econo…

[deleted]

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#92

Post by stanfordkid » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #36

dizzystar wrote: post #22

Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, and so on got absolutely destroyed after all the mills were shut down. The bar for reviving is incredibly low. Those that could leave, left. The very people that could quicken the recovery of the fallen Midwestern towns are the same people who left. Detroit has UM, Cleveland has Case Western, Pittsburgh has Carnegie Mellon which are all top-flight schools. In a strange way, the…

>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while holding each other's calloused hands at the alter. Sure, but the money for that has to come from somewhere. Nowada…

I think the "everyone can be a millionaire via college" mentality has created a focus on higher education (engineering, medical school, law school etc.) ... and dissuaded people from professions which may be very worthwhile (welder, autoshop-owner) ... but will cap out at wages of $200k-$300k.

We've made these jobs seem "dirty" and low class when they're not.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#93

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #17

When my country faced crippling recession, I remember someone mentioning that even bankrupt countries don't go anywhere - it's not as if someone will take the country and annex it. A failed country just lingers around until things eventually get better. For that same reason, I've always regretted not having money to buy real state in Detroit. No matter how bad things are, a city this big is bound to rebound sooner or…

Not necessarily on a timescale that can benefit you. Population decline, crappy weather, pollution, water supply, politics, war, so many things can influence the value of land.

There's a reason no one is clamoring to buy land in Somalia.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#94

Post by kwoff » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #41

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while holding each other's calloused hands at the alter. Sure, but the money for that has to come from somewhere. Nowada…

To clarify, the people working by staring at computers are also seen as a cost to be repressed and not a service to be rewarded. Supply and demand has made the cost resistant to repression up til now, but the economic system is hard at work finding out how to change that. One might even go so far as to postulate if the IT industries push to get more people into IT is so that labor supply goes up leading to labor cost…

I also wonder if, in some ways, devops (I mean the "idea", not the engineers themselves) could be commoditizing IT people (not implying there's some conspiracy), blurring the distinction between devs and sysadmins in particular.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#95

Post by omegaworks » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

trop wrote: post #81

magduf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. You can scream at a TV all you want, but that's never going to turn you into a horse. On a more serious note, the industries that made these cities what they are are mostly gone now, and they're not coming back. The thing that made these cities attractive for these industries is no longer all that relevant: their location on the water. These days,…

> their location on the water Which I misread as "the location of their water". Which is actually quite serious. See https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/in-dayton-ohio-an-econo... > As states like California face major water shortages, city officials in Dayton sense a business opportunity. ... the self-filtering, self-recharging freshwater supply, along with the rivers, once made Dayton attractive to water-intensive…

This is exactly why Nestle set up shop in Michigan. They can afford to maintain their own infrastructure to pump and bottle the cheap, abundant water and the government could give a damn about the marginalized, majority black and latino population that remains in the area.

Big corporate players are noticing the trend and playing the long game. There's a reason why Michigan and Wisconsin have crippled collective bargaining and imposed restrictive voter-ID measures.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/29/nestle-pays-...

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#96

Post by karpodiem » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #64

jrochkind1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are moving from Ann Arbor to Detroit, really?

Yeah, downtown is really on the upswing.. There are a number of places listing (and renting) $2,000/month apartments and a ton of $500k condos moving through the market.

Correct. They are largely overpriced though.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#97

Post by Eire_Banshee » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #36

dizzystar wrote: post #22

Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, and so on got absolutely destroyed after all the mills were shut down. The bar for reviving is incredibly low. Those that could leave, left. The very people that could quicken the recovery of the fallen Midwestern towns are the same people who left. Detroit has UM, Cleveland has Case Western, Pittsburgh has Carnegie Mellon which are all top-flight schools. In a strange way, the…

>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while holding each other's calloused hands at the alter. Sure, but the money for that has to come from somewhere. Nowada…

Trades pay very well with just a high school education.

> "Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money`" is just flat out wrong. That line of thinking is a major contributing factor to the shortage of labor in blue collar fields, along with mass amounts of young adults with crippling college debt.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#98

Post by sangnoir » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

SquirrelOnFire wrote: post #82

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while holding each other's calloused hands at the alter. Sure, but the money for that has to come from somewhere. Nowada…

>Nowadays, "working-class, blue-collar" stuff does not make money, and if "working-class, blue-collar" people identify with the economic system which designates their labor as a cost to be repressed rather than a service to be rewarded, I'm not sure how much I can do about that. Maybe by pointing to blue collar work that still pays well. A buddy of mine is an auto mechanic and is the sole income earner for his family…

> Pay attention to how much you spend next time you call a plumber.

How many tradesmen are self-employed? I think business-owning plumbers would be equivalent to consultants in the software world, and their billed income (per hour) is way above average for the field.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#99

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

jamesrcole wrote: post #78

dizzystar wrote: post #22

Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, and so on got absolutely destroyed after all the mills were shut down. The bar for reviving is incredibly low. Those that could leave, left. The very people that could quicken the recovery of the fallen Midwestern towns are the same people who left. Detroit has UM, Cleveland has Case Western, Pittsburgh has Carnegie Mellon which are all top-flight schools. In a strange way, the…

> Everyone in America doesn't want to stare at a computer, drink $5 latte's, and eat farm to table food. There is nothing wrong with a town that has $3 beers in a plastic cup and a crowd of people screaming until at the TV until they are horse. There is nothing shameful about marrying a man or woman while holding each other's calloused hands at the alter. I find that pretty pretentious. And the problem with it is tha…

[deleted]

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#100

Post by trhway » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 7:26 PM UTC

dizzystar wrote: post #22

Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Toledo, and so on got absolutely destroyed after all the mills were shut down. The bar for reviving is incredibly low. Those that could leave, left. The very people that could quicken the recovery of the fallen Midwestern towns are the same people who left. Detroit has UM, Cleveland has Case Western, Pittsburgh has Carnegie Mellon which are all top-flight schools. In a strange way, the…

Life isn't about wants, it is about what you have to do. Somebody has to stare at screen and drink the lattes in order for the country to have a fighting chance in that global economy [war].