Making de-industrialized American cities rise again

[Wedonland]

Do you think de-industrialized American cities in the Great Lakes or North East can ever re-build the thriving success and increasing population it still had before those well-paid jobs began leaving in the 60s even if large manufacturing never returns to the US? I want to know what everybody here thinks.

I grew up and currently live in Western Pennsylvania (not Pittsburgh, really) which was one of the regions affected by this shift. When I started becoming aware of community and political issues, I started feeling frustrated about how my own county stagnated (and the city itself lost 40% of it'd population) and now ranks way down below in the city population count. I'm also concerned about all the other contributing issues like not retaining young talent, etc.

I just think it's too late to do anything or fix it.

[Avernian Republic]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

[Wedonland]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

Trump would disagree with you only about that last part.

[36 Camera Perspective]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

No amount of deregulation is going to change the fact that other countries have a comparative advantage over the U.S. in the production of automobiles. Free trade is going to kill the auto industry, not rebuild it. That's a very good thing though.

[UniversalCommons]

This argument is fantasy because of automation. It has nothing to do with regulation. It is like farming. Less people are needed to produce more food. People can't go back to the land to farm with industrialized farming. Even farming is becoming automated. There are automated lettuce pickers which can replace field hands. Once a certain wage level is reached, it becomes cheaper to get a person to ride the automated lettuce picker than pick the vegetables by hand. https://www.wired.com/2017/05/robots-agriculture/

First they send the jobs abroad. Now, with automation, the jobs are coming back, but a lot less of them at a lower wage. Look at Amazon for example. One of the largest employers right now. Amazon is heavily invested in robotics. They own Kiva Systems a robotics company. Their warehouses have very few people in them because of robotics. They need people to buy their goods but not as many people to distribute goods. Many billionaires see a Universal Basic Income as unavoidable.

Capital is replacing labor. Both jobs and wages fall when automation is introduced. This is the current process regulation or no regulation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017 ... ewer-jobs/

Because of automation there will be 47% fewer jobs in the near future. Almost half of all jobs today can be replaced by automation.

Whether there is regulation or no regulation on business does little to change the automation process. It is very much like farmers being forced off their land at the turn of the century. It has more to do with technology than political policies.

The jobs of the future probably will not be mass industrialization. There are other options like mass customization-- Local Motors is a good example of this.
https://localmotors.com/company/ Other companies like Tesla are american made. We cannot rely on an old model to build manufacturing for the future. With newer technology like electric cars, we could lead the process. Americans need a little creative destruction and to try new models.

Business is in the process of eliminating the more expensive jobs with automation. The people who design and hold the intellectual property will make the money as well as the people who own the machinery, not the people who work on them.

[MERIZoC]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

lol what a load of nonsense

[36 Camera Perspective]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

lol what a load of nonsense

I dunno about the first part, but free trade is a good idea, and tariffs and quotas are bad economics. Somebody needs to tell Trump that.

[36 Camera Perspective]

This argument is fantasy because of automation. It has nothing to do with regulation. It is like farming. Less people are needed to produce more food. People can't go back to the land to farm with industrialized farming. Even farming is becoming automated. There are automated lettuce pickers which can replace field hands. Once a certain wage level is reached, it becomes cheaper to get a person to ride the automated lettuce picker than pick the vegetables by hand. https://www.wired.com/2017/05/robots-agriculture/

First they send the jobs abroad. Now, with automation, the jobs are coming back, but a lot less of them at a lower wage. Look at Amazon for example. One of the largest employers right now. Amazon is heavily invested in robotics. They own Kiva Systems a robotics company. Their warehouses have very few people in them because of robotics. They need people to buy their goods but not as many people to distribute goods. Many billionaires see a Universal Basic Income as unavoidable.

Capital is replacing labor. Both jobs and wages fall when automation is introduced. This is the current process regulation or no regulation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017 ... ewer-jobs/

Because of automation there will be 47% fewer jobs in the near future. Almost half of all jobs today can be replaced by automation.

Whether there is regulation or no regulation on business does little to change the automation process. It is very much like farmers being forced off their land at the turn of the century. It has more to do with technology than political policies.

The jobs of the future probably will not be mass industrialization. There are other options like mass customization-- Local Motors is a good example of this.
https://localmotors.com/company/ Other companies like Tesla are american made. We cannot rely on an old model to build manufacturing for the future. With newer technology like electric cars, we could lead the process. Americans need a little creative destruction and to try new models.

Business is in the process of eliminating the more expensive jobs with automation. The people who design and hold the intellectual property will make the money as well as the people who own the machinery, not the people who work on them.

Sorry, but machinery doesn't create long-term unemployment.

[Kingdom of Karsland]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

This a thousand times this
Here in CT they cry about GE and the like leaving hmmmm it's not like these horrible taxes and regulations got us into this economic disaster to begin with but hey blue states gotta do whatever blue states gotta do

[Kingdom of Karsland]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

No amount of deregulation is going to change the fact that other countries have a comparative advantage over the U.S. in the production of automobiles. Free trade is going to kill the auto industry, not rebuild it. That's a very good thing though.

Better education to get more people into white collar jobs the manufacturing thing is mostly dead

[MERIZoC]

lol what a load of nonsense

I dunno about the first part, but free trade is a good idea, and tariffs and quotas are bad economics. Somebody needs to tell Trump that.

The first part is tired old platitudes that are probably copied word for word form some nutty Libertarian Party convention speaker. What are these "left wing policies?" Is he aware that Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana are all run entirely by republican governments, who have gutted unions and generally just turned the states to shit? Is he aware Ohio doesn't even have a corporate tax rate? Probably not, because he doesn't seem like the most informed person on the matter. But hey, it's "extraordinarily easy" to make the Rust Belt great again---just say meaningless ideological catchphrases and hope some rube believes you!

The second part is quite literally a huge part of the reason why these areas have become deindustrialized. "Free trade good, tariffs bad" is a stupidly simplistic way of looking at the issue, as if the only options were to allow corporations to exploit the cheapest labour they could find, or to go full on protectionist, instead of, you know, trying to think about how the system can be changed so it's not centered around a drive for profits for shareholders, and rather is concerned about the livelihoods of workers in all countries.

[36 Camera Perspective]

I dunno about the first part, but free trade is a good idea, and tariffs and quotas are bad economics. Somebody needs to tell Trump that.

The first part is tired old platitudes that are probably copied word for word form some nutty Libertarian Party convention speaker. What are these "left wing policies?" Is he aware that Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana are all run entirely by republican governments, who have gutted unions and generally just turned the states to shit? Is he aware Ohio doesn't even have a corporate tax rate? Probably not, because he doesn't seem like the most informed person on the matter. But hey, it's "extraordinarily easy" to make the Rust Belt great again---just say meaningless ideological catchphrases and hope some rube believes you!

The second part is quite literally a huge part of the reason why these areas have become deindustrialized. "Free trade good, tariffs bad" is a stupidly simplistic way of looking at the issue, as if the only options were to allow corporations to exploit the cheapest labour they could find, or to go full on protectionist, instead of, you know, trying to think about how the system can be changed so it's not centered around a drive for profits for shareholders, and rather is concerned about the livelihoods of workers in all countries.

Free trade does not exploit anybody's labor. Free trade improves the general well-being of all parties involved.

[Lowell Leber]

Education is always touted as the answer but more and more graduates are underemployed. Maybe, just maybe, tariffs would make the domestic manufacture of automobiles and other such things more competitive?

[36 Camera Perspective]

Education is always touted as the answer but more and more graduates are underemployed. Maybe, just maybe, tariffs would make the domestic manufacture of automobiles and other such things more competitive?

That's a big "No".

[Ashkera]

Regarding the de-industrialized cities - supposing nothing is done to mitigate water usage concerns in the sunbelt, the rustbelt will have some later regrowth in population (in the US) due to having a large supply of fresh water, which will be important in the second half of this century. It also has a lower cost of living due to not having insane competition for rents for partially-artificially supply-limited housing stock.

Regarding "those darn job-killing regulations," notice the massive amount of economic growth in large, coastal cities held by Democrats in states held by Democrats. Silicon Valley is in California. It's more complicated than "those darn job-killing regulations."

I dunno about the first part, but free trade is a good idea, and tariffs and quotas are bad economics. Somebody needs to tell Trump that.

When you run a trade deficit, where does the money to pay for it come from?

And what about externalities like pollution that manufacturers can get away with in other countries, but not in the USA?
People could boycott over that right now. They mostly don't. Voluntary means won't work.

[MERIZoC]

The first part is tired old platitudes that are probably copied word for word form some nutty Libertarian Party convention speaker. What are these "left wing policies?" Is he aware that Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana are all run entirely by republican governments, who have gutted unions and generally just turned the states to shit? Is he aware Ohio doesn't even have a corporate tax rate? Probably not, because he doesn't seem like the most informed person on the matter. But hey, it's "extraordinarily easy" to make the Rust Belt great again---just say meaningless ideological catchphrases and hope some rube believes you!

The second part is quite literally a huge part of the reason why these areas have become deindustrialized. "Free trade good, tariffs bad" is a stupidly simplistic way of looking at the issue, as if the only options were to allow corporations to exploit the cheapest labour they could find, or to go full on protectionist, instead of, you know, trying to think about how the system can be changed so it's not centered around a drive for profits for shareholders, and rather is concerned about the livelihoods of workers in all countries.

Free trade does not exploit anybody's labor. Free trade improves the general well-being of all parties involved.

Those statements are completely unrelated. "Free trade" per say does not exploit labour—I suppose you could have free trade between socialist nations—but rather it operates within an economic sphere where labour is exploited.

The second statement is, well, again a meaningless platitude, and a false one at that. Many Mexican farmers have certainly not had their lives improved by NAFTA, nor have American factory workers.

[36 Camera Perspective]

When you run a trade deficit, where does the money to pay for it come from?

That's not how trade deficits work. Running a trade deficit is not like running a fiscal deficit. The trade deficit is just the total value of a country's exports subtracted by the total value of its imports. Nobody "pays" for the trade deficit. It's a calculation derived from millions of transactions between exporters and importers. Trade deficits are not a bad thing. The balance of payments and exchanges will eventually even out.

In any case, it's not even really about monetary value. It's about productivity.

And what about externalities like pollution that manufacturers can get away with in other countries, but not in the USA?
People could boycott over that right now. They mostly don't. Voluntary means won't work.

I'm just talking about free trade, not regulations. But many free marketers would actually be fine with environmental regulations, as long as they apply to all producers equally and don't apply to externalities that could be otherwise handled by competition alone. Look at Hayak, for instance.

[36 Camera Perspective]

Those statements are completely unrelated. "Free trade" per say does not exploit labour—I suppose you could have free trade between socialist nations—but rather it operates within an economic sphere where labour is exploited.

Ok, so you meant that capitalism exploits labor, not free trade. I'm going to bracket the question of whether or not wage labor is exploitative.

The second statement is, well, again a meaningless platitude, and a false one at that. Many Mexican farmers have certainly not had their lives improved by NAFTA, nor have American factory workers.

It's not a meaningless platitude. It's actually what you would find in any introductory microeconomics textbook. Even if you lose your job because of free trade, you are still better off, as well as everybody else, in the long term. You will get a job producing goods in an area where your country has a comparative advantage. You will enjoy buying goods at a cheaper price because your country imported those goods from another country that has a comparative advantage in producing that good.

[Dagnia]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

Having lived in Buffalo until a couple years ago, there are a couple things I strongly agree with here and a couple I strongly disagree with. We do have one of the highest tax burdens in the country as well as some of the toughest regulations. However, trade is one of the things that killed the steel industry in Buffalo, since trade allowed the import of cheaper steel from India. What is needed on that front is fair and smart trade where anything we import is taxed at the same rate our trade partners tax a similar product to level the playing field. Though loosening regulations is good, a total free market would simply create a race to the bottom where American workers would end up being forced to accept Indian or Chinese working conditions and pay.

[Constitutional Technocracy of Minecraft]

This argument is fantasy because of automation. It has nothing to do with regulation. It is like farming. Less people are needed to produce more food. People can't go back to the land to farm with industrialized farming. Even farming is becoming automated. There are automated lettuce pickers which can replace field hands. Once a certain wage level is reached, it becomes cheaper to get a person to ride the automated lettuce picker than pick the vegetables by hand. https://www.wired.com/2017/05/robots-agriculture/

First they send the jobs abroad. Now, with automation, the jobs are coming back, but a lot less of them at a lower wage. Look at Amazon for example. One of the largest employers right now. Amazon is heavily invested in robotics. They own Kiva Systems a robotics company. Their warehouses have very few people in them because of robotics. They need people to buy their goods but not as many people to distribute goods. Many billionaires see a Universal Basic Income as unavoidable.

Capital is replacing labor. Both jobs and wages fall when automation is introduced. This is the current process regulation or no regulation.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017 ... ewer-jobs/

Because of automation there will be 47% fewer jobs in the near future. Almost half of all jobs today can be replaced by automation.

Whether there is regulation or no regulation on business does little to change the automation process. It is very much like farmers being forced off their land at the turn of the century. It has more to do with technology than political policies.

The jobs of the future probably will not be mass industrialization. There are other options like mass customization-- Local Motors is a good example of this.
https://localmotors.com/company/ Other companies like Tesla are american made. We cannot rely on an old model to build manufacturing for the future. With newer technology like electric cars, we could lead the process. Americans need a little creative destruction and to try new models.

Business is in the process of eliminating the more expensive jobs with automation. The people who design and hold the intellectual property will make the money as well as the people who own the machinery, not the people who work on them.

You're right about automation. The best solution to that would be universal basic income.

[Ashkera]

When you run a trade deficit, where does the money to pay for it come from?

That's not how trade deficits work. Running a trade deficit is not like running a fiscal deficit. The trade deficit is just the total value of a country's exports subtracted by the total value of its imports. Nobody "pays" for the trade deficit. It's a calculation derived from millions of transactions between exporters and importers. Trade deficits are not a bad thing. The balance of payments and exchanges will eventually even out.

In any case, it's not even really about monetary value. It's about productivity.

In theory.

You might want to check out what happened with Greece and Germany.

Eventually someone has to take on debt at a national scale (not necessarily the government), or otherwise wealth will have to flow out of the country.

However, even if control of assets shifts to outside owners, that doesn't guarantee they can overcome the productivity slump in the country that allowed that to happen in the first place.

[Petrolheadia]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

Having lived in Buffalo until a couple years ago, there are a couple things I strongly agree with here and a couple I strongly disagree with. We do have one of the highest tax burdens in the country as well as some of the toughest regulations. However, trade is one of the things that killed the steel industry in Buffalo, since trade allowed the import of cheaper steel from India. What is needed on that front is fair and smart trade where anything we import is taxed at the same rate our trade partners tax a similar product to level the playing field. Though loosening regulations is good, a total free market would simply create a race to the bottom where American workers would end up being forced to accept Indian or Chinese working conditions and pay.

Yes, I agree.

Also, those who say "American manufacturing will make prices skyrocket" don't realize that 4 out of 10 cars on the US' 10 bestselling cars list are solely American-made (Ford F-Series, Nissan Rogue, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord), and only one (Toyota RAV-4) isn't made in the US at all.

[Aillyria]

It's extraordinarily easy to make the Rust Belt great again----Get rid of all the left-wing economic policies that have ruled all those cities for the last half-century. If they worked, those cities wouldnt be utter trash-holes. Deregulate, lower taxes, and just let business have a little bit of room. Forcing high labor costs with minimum wages, having high corporate taxes, regulating the hell out of them, and making their products cost a butt-load due to other dumb rules have choked them out.

Also, Free trade. Tariffs and quotas dont work. They just stop the free flow of money. Free Markets are the way to go.

That would be one of those "leftwing" policies that killed the Rustbelt to begin with. Free trade is a disaster for domestic production.

[Neu Leonstein]

Sorry, but machinery doesn't create long-term unemployment.

It can in particular in industries. And if the location of those industries is fixed, via by particular distributions of resource endowments or historical accident, then it creates long-term unemployment in particular locations too. Or, rather, it creates unemployment for as long as there is an excess supply of labour located there.

And that's the key point: if we were talking pure economics, the solution would be to wait until people leave the rust belt cities and go elsewhere. And many have done this already. But the politics of that are awful, as we are witnessing now.

I think if you were intent on keeping these cities going, then you have to encourage people to try stuff out. You need entrepreneurship on a wide enough scale that there are small businesses that keep people going and some growing into larger businesses that really build wealth. You can't get that from a bunch of people who learned how to bolt cars together and now can't take any risks because they'll literally end up with their family on the street.

So, without having done any further research on this, I would suggest a combination of a local UBI (Universal Basic Income) and business credit subsidisation for relatively small-scale loans, with local city authorities standing ready to be helpful on zoning and regulation. See what happens. Can't be any more expensive than never-ending subsidies and tax benefits to dying corporates who'd love to be elsewhere anyway.

[Neu Leonstein]

Having lived in Buffalo until a couple years ago, there are a couple things I strongly agree with here and a couple I strongly disagree with. We do have one of the highest tax burdens in the country as well as some of the toughest regulations. [...]

Can I just ask for some specific examples of what these "toughest regulations" are? It's not that I don't believe you, I just think that the word regulation is misused almost every time.