Where do you see us going? (Please read before answering)

On one end of the spectrum, we have places like Detroit. It is, essentially, devastated, but not by natural causes.Home prices, in extreme cases, have fallen to four digit levels. Unemployment is unimaginably high. There is virtually no hope for the return of the regions once great automotive industry as the factories have fled to non-union states like Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina. Automotive support industries have followed. Factories are nothing more than weed ridden grounds, broken glass, blackened brick, rusted steel hulks. Hopelessness has replaced the American Dream. No more is a cool Saturday cruise in hot Detroit Iron down Woodward Avenue the province of carefree youth.

At the other end of the spectrum are cities like Washington, DC, where, while pressed, life is close to normal. Home Depot has customers and high end remodeling contractors continue to write proposals and sign contracts. The malls are still filled and the Apple store is crowded on iPad release day as people line up to not just look, but to buy a product that has yet to demonstrate a purpose. The roads are crowded around the clock with cars with single occupants - the mark of a busy rush hour as wage slaves make their way to Wageland.

As you look into our future, what do you see? More Detroits or more DCs?

Some areas will be devastated to support the existence and growth of other towns (where the owners of production live).

If history has taught us anything, it is that change is guaranteed. Any city is subject to that change. There are too many variables to take into consideration to disallow any of them that discourse. Economics, climate, the finite availability of resources, and even natural disaster are all factors that can alter our cities futures.

They prosper because it is the countries capitol, filled with families who are employed by the government, by government contractors, defense contractors, military personnel and lobbyists. They don't share the economic crush of the crisis for that reason.
They'll never feel it either.

While the recession was certainly felt less here in the D.C. area, it was still felt by many.

They have no idea what you are talking about.

Not that I don't believe you. I'm sure some have felt the repercussions. But no where near as much as they have been felt elsewhere. That was my only point.

I live in the D.C. area and was laid off at the height of the recession. So yeah, it certainly affected some of us. While it "only" took me four months to get rehired (and a small raise), there was obviously a LOT more competition for jobs than there usually is in my field (technical training).

In the past when I have interviewed for similar positions it always felt like I was either the only one they were interviewing or that there was a very small number of candidates (1 or 2 others).

This time around, it was obvious that companies had a much larger pool to choose from.

THe non-profit arena, which is also very heavily stacked in the D.C. area was hit particularly hard since they (in most cases) a member-supported and nation wide. The non-profit I worked for flat out told me they just couldn't afford my position anymore (and they laid off three others as well...approx 10% of their total staff).

It's probably a bad sign if that is the case in DC. My grandmother always believed DC would be the best place to weather an economic storm. She moved there during the depression when the only place that would hire a deaf single mother was the department of Agriculture. My mother has worked there her entire life as well. All my relatives work for the government or a defense contractor. Except my brother who is a carpenter who'd rather be fishing. When I try to tell them things are tough elsewhere they really act like it just can't be so. I don't blame them. I'm happy they feel secure. :)

Hopefully it will get better for everyone.

San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties have been staying pretty steady as well. I often go out and wonder how the hell so many people can afford to not carpool and spend money on luxuries. Restaurants are full, malls are bustling, freeways packed on the weekends with tourists... You'd never know we've hit hard economic times over here.

All report a relatively prosperous economy. Down from previous highs, to be sure, but relatively prosperous.

And yeah, things appear OK if you ignore that almost every strip mall and commercial building has for rent signs on them. If you don't know anyone who has closed up shop, or have friends out of work for almost a year LA appears OK. but it isn't.

Maybe it's different in the suburbs or valley? What areas are you seeing that are bustling?

I do think things are getting a bit better, but worry that it could get worse again as the recovery is so fragile.

1. the 405 and 101 still clogged at any given time of the day with multiples of cars with only one person in the car.

2. No parking on Rodeo Dr.

3. Restaurants still busy with waiting lists

4. Santa Monica pier bustling with people to go on the rides

5. Crazy amounts of tourists on Hollwood Blvd

6. For rent signs have always been out in abundance.

I see all of this and think, how the hell can people afford all of this with our economy the way that it is!?! The best is that Hummer driver that flies past you on the 405 when you are going 80. And to think of what his gas mileage is when doing that... idiot.

The hummer driver. Indeed.

Yeah, Disneyland is perpetually packed too.

The 405 is about to get much much worse. Try to avoid it if you can. ;)

I'm not sure that it's possible to have more D.C.-like areas as the number of government and contract-to-government jobs here never stops growing. Because of that, the economy in this area has continued to grow for the most part, although to say I didn't see any signs of recession here would be untrue (especially since I got laid off last fall).

and I'm talking about governmental, banking and insurance centers. The old manufacturing towns all over the country are on the skids, it's not just Detroit.

Furniture, electronics, shoes, and textiles are gone. Other industries will likely follow unless those conservative old farts in Congress get firecrackers shoved up their asses by the rest of us.

We can't survive on paper. The first trade war is going to show us that.

will grow at a faster rate as the middle class continues to be gutted.

The DCs will do quite well and for the most part the Detroits will be out of sight, out of mind.

The media will focus on the DCs as American life, the Detroits will be swept under the rug as DCs prosper especially as more and more make money off global investments as opposed to actual work-a-day jobs. Jobs that are created IMO will be weighted at the meager end of the spectrum.

I don't have a rosy outlook for most Americans until our economic models are reinvented for the 21st century. IMO the government will be dominated by big business and greed, not congruent with the needs of the majority of the populace. Wealth will rule.

Sometimes you just need to bulldoze a city here and there and let nature take it back. Whole states if necessary.


Some areas will prosper and some won't. We will adapt...

something changes.

I am afraid it's going to be the earthquakey, french-revolution-ey kind of change.

:(

-- believe it is mainly Flint area? -- have only watched it once --

is confiscating the land which seems a very positive step.

Their future is ours so we all have to work on this.

that didn't require degrees or advanced degrees. By living wage I mean jobs that paid for a modest house, car, small family, vacations and came with health ins. and pensions.

Those jobs are gone for good and nothing is replacing them. With the skyrocketing coast of secondary education we will have a majority underclass of folks who will be forced to work at low paying jobs for their lifetime. The better of will migrate to cities where the money is.

Maybe this will be the impetus for more localized economies that don't rely totally on wall street but anything remotely successful will surely be co-opted by the disaster capitalists.

Race to the bottom.

Unemployment for those making $150K and up is about 3% while the bottom 85% bear 20%.

Our monetary system has become a wholly owned subsidiary of half a dozen boards, working solely to extract as much wealth from America-that-was, making things worse for everybody but themselves every day, and they are admired for it.

Education, health care, Civil Rights, equality, the list is long, all are disintegrating before us, and too many cling to the desperate hope that "it will all work out" because a charlatan tells them it will.

I see us becoming more and more like one of the disasters we created in South America, small heavily armed enclaves where the 1% hide from the people. Just raise the walls and put a couple of machine-gun emplacements in front of your typical "gated community", and there's the future your kids get to inherit.

It reads like a road map for what is currently happening in the US.

Passages from the book sounds as if palin and a few others are using it as a script.

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h.html

Enjoy!

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

Faved it and hope to be able to review some of it --

:)





Upton Sinclair ain't bad, either --

:kick:

Or is it Freddie Mac, I think --

Maybe Fannie Mae -- one of them!

If you want change -- overturn patriarchy and its underpinning: organized patriarchal religion

and its economic system: capitalism


That's where to begin --

Manifest Destiny and Man's Dominion Over Nature -- patriarchal concepts which are suicidal!!

environmental and economic...

Looks like Detroit

Plenty of places around/in Philadelphia look like that too.

Not dissimilar to that.

Hint: The only US city to go bankrupt. The only City that had a Socialist mayor who once said of the street-clogging, newly fallen snow: "God put it there and God will take it away."

after not having seen it for years, and this time it just seemed like we are more and more headed towards something like that.

The divide is not sustainable, and the further apart they push it, the closer we come to reaching the tipping point.

If only I had a home in the country.