I read an interesting take on this situation a while back. Essentially it said that the collapse (in relative terms) of US heavy industry was inevitable. During World War II we expanded to meet the demands of the was. After the war we expanded because of the needs for reconstruction and the fact that we were the only large economy whose infrastructure had not been severely damaged.
For about two decades we were the undisputed giant if industry, but others were getting back on their feet. By the late 1960s Germany, Japan, Great Britain, etc. were beginning to reclaim a share of the market, and the trend continued.
Detroit got hit the hardest because it, like Gary, Indiana, was largely a creation of big industry with a virtual monopoly. Eliminate that monopoly, add corruption and management based on the good old days and you have a recipe for disaster.
John
I agree with this in part, but not entirely.
CAT and DEERE are still going strong, though CAT’s stock is likely to drop before long because of lower commodity prices leading to less purchase of mining equipment. Both manufacture in the U.S. and abroad as well.
Foreign car companies appear to be doing well in the Southern U.S.
But when you add all of the ingredients you mentioned and add others:
- A government that is in many ways incompetent and in many ways oppressive; one that, for example, refuses to allow manufacturers to take advantage of the natural advantages the U.S. has (like abundant, cheap energy, shorter transportation lines)
-Utter social failure evidenced by failing education, intentional block busting, encouragement of welfare generations, widespread crime, discouragement of small-scale employment, encouragement of societal animosities.
When you add all of that together, it sort of reminds a person of “catastrophic organ failure” in a dying person. It’s not so much that one organ is failing, but that there is a cascade of failures in multiple organs, each worsening the condition of the others.
It’s possible, certainly, for physicians to bring back a person in multiple organ failure, but the odds aren’t at all good, precisely because there are just too many things to correct and failure to correct even one is a failure to correct all.
One is tempted to think of Detroit in the same way. It isn’t just one thing, it’s a cascade failure, and correcting one thing won’t save the whole. One is sometimes tempted to think all it has now is a very good location for a city.
I live a long way from Detroit and have only been there a few times, but nearer and more familiar to me is the City of St. Louis. It has many of the same multi-organic failures. But it’s not without hope. Weirdly, it is obvious the city decided long ago (probably back in the 1940s) to depopulate itself, raze huge segments of populated areas and turn them into commercial areas and gentrified segments. St. Louis never stops that process, it seems. But it has, to a large extent, simply driven the blight and hopelessness north into older suburbs. It also has the advantage of a very big river between it and the very worst of it. (East St. Louis). On the other hand, the metro area outside the City is larger and far more prosperous and populous than the City itself. I understand the Detroit metro area is not simply one huge disaster. There are prosperous suburbs to which most of the population has fled.
Truly, some of the older cities really do seem to be not much more than a very good geographical location upon which to someday build a city.
