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

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#131

Post by bilbo0s » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

8bitsrule wrote: post #123

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…

"ripping out the soul along the way" Sad. Equally sad is: that's also happening in cities that are enjoying The Best of Times. A lot of the people doing the actual work can't afford to live in them ... even if their neighborhoods weren't being gentrified into sterility. Property investors want a high return on their rentals. But no spreadsheets can calculate the hidden cost of that return. When there's nothing left f…

In all fairness, the people leaving these cities are typically not the same people who give the cities their "soul". Anyone who has been to Detroit would be hard pressed to say that the city does not have "soul". It has "soul" and "character" in abundance. None of that ever left.

But you know what? Cool kids with "soul" typically don't bring in a whole lot of money. Add to that the fact that a lot of their "soul" is coming from a place of some very real pain, and you can see the potential for issues. So, yes, cities want to keep their "soul", and that's fine. (That's actually a GOOD thing.)

But let's look at it face on, and not romanticize what that "soul" is too much. "Soul" makes cities what they are. No question. But it can have a dark side too. Just as the gleaming tech economy startups have a dark side that we shouldn't be romanticizing too much.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#132

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:28 PM UTC

AFNobody wrote: post #106

Eire_Banshee wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trades pay well with a customer base to support them. The core problem is, ultimately, the customer base is led by the white collar jobs who lack the skills to perform those tasks. The blue collar tradesmen, frankly, has the skills to avoid buying services from each other. I know a mechanic that does her own plumbing, electrical, etc. She'd never try to make money at it but to the best of my knowledge the only time s…

[deleted]

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#133

Post by bilbo0s » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

alexhutcheson wrote: post #115

rmason wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually U of M is in Ann Arbor which is 40 miles West. Though there is a satellite campus in Dearborn which is in the suburbs. Detroit has Wayne State University which is growing with the addition of a new business school courtesy of the late Mike Ilitch the founder of Little Caesars. https://ilitchbusiness.wayne.edu/ There are also two smaller colleges, Marygrove and University of Detroit Mercy.

Ann Arbor, not incidentally, appears to be doing really well relative to comparable cities and towns in the Midwest.

Not really.

I don't really see AA doing that much better than, say, Madison Wi. Which, I'm sure most would agree, is a comparable town. If anything, places like Madison and Champaign in Illinois are doing a bit better. (Well, more population growth anyway.)

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#134

Post by maxerickson » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:29 PM UTC

omegaworks wrote: post #95

trop wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 barga…

Nestle set up shop 185 miles from Detroit because there is a nice aquifer there and the permit was cheap. Detroit actually has a good water supply and good treatment (their distribution system is aging).

I'd be fine with Nestle paying a whole lot more for the permit (because bottled water is dumb), but the value of the water they are extracting isn't even that high, so if you made them pay high prices and used all the money improving municipal water systems, it wouldn't make much difference.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#135

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #129

TomMckenny wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did that $2k come from? While it's nice there is some way to redistribute wealth in this way, unfortunately service sector jobs don't create wealth: you can not have a city solely of repairmen and realtors. Less skilled factory work would generate wealth, but unfortunately those are the exact jobs that left.

What is "wealth"? If car built in a factory is useful for 10 years without repairs, but useful for 30 years with repairs, the mechanics add 20 years of useful life to the car. Does that not increase wealth?

I'd argue it increases utility, not wealth. It'd increase wealth if that vehicle was used in a business to generate income.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#136

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:32 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #130

breischl wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the examples you provided (specifically dish washing, fruit picking, house cleaning) are not traditionally considered "blue collar" or "the trades." Rather they are considered unskilled labor. So your comment doesn't really respond to the GP's comments about the trades. I suspect that relatively few would argue that unskilled labor is a great way to support a family. I also suspect that conflating unskilled l…

> I suspect that relatively few would argue that unskilled labor is a great way to support a family. So... how do workers in these jobs-that-apparently-don't-qualify-as-trades support their families? We have the economy we have. Someone has to do these jobs. You can't wave a magic wand and insist that everything would be fine as long as everyone is a plumber. Someone has to pick the fruit and teach the kids. People w…

The solution is both (but not limited to) trades and efforts to raise the minimum wage for unskilled labor. There is no silver bullet to fixing the US economy.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#137

Post by ghshephard » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:43 PM UTC

TomMckenny wrote: post #117

mbesto wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pay attention to how much you spend next time you call a plumber. Anecdotal, but the average quote I got for electricians in the bay area was $200/hour. This is also consistent for electricians in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago (just had a friend recently get work done at that price). I recently paid $2k to get a transmission done, of which $1700 was labor alone (took 3 days). Point is - these trades are no joke wh…

Where did that $2k come from? While it's nice there is some way to redistribute wealth in this way, unfortunately service sector jobs don't create wealth: you can not have a city solely of repairmen and realtors. Less skilled factory work would generate wealth, but unfortunately those are the exact jobs that left.

If you have a $35,0000 truck with a blown transmission, then your repair-person just created $35,000 - $2,000 - whatever_that_truck_would_have_worth_as_scrap_parts.

Electricians, Plumbers, Roofers, Drywallers, auto-motive repair to some degree, are the one who actually create/repair/restore the only physical infrastructure that actually matters. My Twitter, Facebook, Instagram could all disappear, and it would probably have no (real) impact on me. But take away electricity, water, roof, walls, transportation - I'll notice within a few minutes.

In my mind, those are the people who create real wealth.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#138

Post by throwawayjava » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:50 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…

When the factory closes, whose car do you repair? When the factory closes, whose plumbing do you fix? When the factory closes, whose house to you build?

As all of these cities aptly demonstrate, plumbing and auto mechanic jobs aren't a panacea for disappearing factory jobs.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#139

Post by Mc_Big_G » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:53 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…

>Those that could leave, left. The very people that could quicken the recovery of the fallen Midwestern towns are the same people who left.

I'm from Toledo and left for SF without looking back. I begged people in the SBA and business community to discuss tech with me and they didn't get it and I'd be shocked if they get it now. It was literally like "How can you make money with a website?" and this was just 8 years ago. Forget about using open source as they're all about MS and Oracle and corporate BS. Friends and family from that area are still totally shocked by things like pets and alcohol in the office, working from home, wearing t-shirts/jeans/tennis shoes, standing desks etc... It's really a shit mentality and it will persist for some time.

It would take an obscene amount of money for me to move back to Toledo and almost everyone I love is there.

Re: Detroit Was Crumbling, Now It's Reviving

#140

Post by toomanybeersies » Mon, Apr 30, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #114

SquirrelOnFire wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> A buddy of mine [...] is an auto mechanic [...another...] is a pipe fitter for gas pipelines [...] next time you call a plumber. Noted without comment that these are all predominantly white, male occupations. Would you say the same thing about dish washing, fruit picking, house cleaning or school teaching? Does that alter your thinking about whether or not "trades" make money? Does it make you want to argue about w…

I'm not American, and maybe that skews my opinion on the matter, but I've never seen construction trades as being predominantly white.

Predominantly male, yes, but ethnically a very diverse field.

Also: Dish washing, fruit picking, and house cleaning are not trades. They are not skilled occupations. Being a chef is, so is being an orchardist or a farmer.