Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

Flint sounds like it out-Youngstowns Youngstown...and that's saying something.

[Prime2]

I think as long as your economy is diversified there are two main things that really and truly determine economic fortunes -- a young labour force in which there isn't a bulge of older people, and fresh infrastructure. Forget policy and entrepreneurial spirit and all that. If you have those two things you'll have growth.

China thankfully is having a hard time of it now, its worn-out model based on investment and trade is a far cry from self-sustaining growth driven by domestic consumption and services of a mature, diversified economy.

There must be 200+ cities in the rustbelt facing a pending, similar crisis as Flint.

[hack]

China never got to that next step, in part because of the one-child policy. They aged themselves out of it too fast. That said, not too many countries are going to be moving in the right direction here. At some point in the next decade the only places with surplus labour will be India and Africa. In most other places there'll be big masses of retirees and not a lot of workers to support them.

I don't know about Flint, but it's easy to imagine the place is probably worse off than most given how incredibly single-faceted it was?

[Ghengis Jon]

...a young labour force in which there isn't a bulge of older people...

Could you elaborate on that? I see a bulge of older workers as a positive - wide experience, honed skill sets, mentoring opportunities, etc.

[Prime2]

How do you know Moore doesn't give a crap about Flint?

"Roger & Me"+Hack.

[lineygoblue]

"Roger & Me" did no favors for Flint.

[hack]

Roger and Me and Hack was the working title.

[Wild Hoss]

Jon... The US's infrastructure in general is a looming problem. I'd much rather see $ spent on infrastructure and cut items like funding football stadiums or other nice to have projects cities seem to focus their time and energy. The infrastructure is the basic foundation of a city. Not sexy and sadly, doesn't get you elected. One of the issues with a true democracy, imo.

Not that I disagree in general, but the Wichita example is more frightening. During the time I lived there the public twice shot down arena proposals in referendum. Shortly before I moved, another vote came up...but this time it was ?Yea? or ?Nay? it was ?Option A? or ?Option B?. A legislative end-run had been made around the voters, so that even voting against the notion could not prevent it from being built. There was a lot of "WTF?" going around, but in the end...well Wichita has an arena.

[hack]

Could you elaborate on that? I see a bulge of older workers as a positive - wide experience, honed skill sets, mentoring opportunities, etc.

But at some point either they retire, and you have a bulge of pensioners. You need enough workers support the pensioners, but the ratio's off when the bulge is older.

[UMStan White]

"Could you elaborate on that? I see a bulge of older workers as a positive - wide experience, honed skill sets, mentoring opportunities, etc. "

Lower wages and less retirement costs (you beat me to it Hack)

[Ghengis Jon]

So its an equation that boils down to cost vs quality?

We're seeing that at my company. Although I'm 'safe', replacing (laying off/'right sizing'/personnel cost reductions) older workers with cheap college grads is having an adverse effect on my company. It seems my company is taking a Brandon approach - screw the product quality cuz we're making more money!

[hack]

A whole host of other things there, yeah. Older people have to be able to afford to retire so that there is room for younger people to advance. If everybody hangs on, younger people don't have a carrot in front of them. Skills-gap a whole other issue. The trend for a while was forget the broad liberal-arts education in favor of giving people the hard skills they need. Now however managers are complaining that young people can't think for themselves, and what's the point of acquiring skills if innovation renders them useful for only a few years before there's some new way to do it? So maybe the pendulum is swinging back in favor of a liberal-arts degree.

Interesting things afoot. Millenials are more than half the workforce already, if I remember the stat right. If you're management you can either sit around and complain about them, or walk a mile in their shoes.

[hack]

My main client is doing the same, GJ. British company. Been claiming a revenue crisis for three years now as justification for all manner of incremental cuts to pay and quality, and some quality people that made my job as a contractor much easier have walked away. Then it comes out recently a 10-million pound mansion has been purchased in London. At the current exchange rate that's $14.2m. The company is 20 years old, and is being milked as opposed to invested in. Past its brief peak, perhaps.

I hope the real-estate purchase was heavily leveraged.

[entropy]

The rust belt cities are also a good lesson in diversification. You single threat your economy you create future risk.

Pensions are killing cities that boomed between 1900-1950. Modern growth cities will be able to avoid those budget burdens.


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[hack]

There are so many things that could come up, IMO. I forget which bridge over which river inland, but somebody put one up and the Baltimore port never recovered from the lack of the ability to get larger barges inland. That was a diverse economy once upon a time. Sometimes stuff just changes. But agreed that the generous pensions are a thing of the past.