Ever watched your city turned into a ghost town after the manufacturing jobs were outsourced?

[NNN0LHI]

I did. Called Chicago Height, Illinois. Used to have a downtown that was full of restaurants, theatres, all kinds of stores, large halls for weddings and such, insurance agencies, realtor's, drug stores, little bit of everything.

After the manufacturing plant jobs were outsourced during the 1980's most of the business left because there were no more customers. Just left a bunch of empty buildings. The city eventually tore down all the buildings and paved over almost the entire downtown area and turned it into one huge paring lot, that no one parks in.

About all that is left there now is the police station, the post office and a hospital. And that big ugly parking lot that no one parks in. Because there is no place to go after you park.

What a mess.

Don

[doohnibor]

1. Look for the next boomtown

When there is no way to make a living, people move on. Doesn't matter where in the world you are, if there is something going on, mining or manufacturing or resort attractions or some big construction project, people will show up and the economy will grow. All those primary workers spend their paychecks on stuff, want to party on the weekends, send their kids to schools, have a nice place they can call home. All that means more economic activity. When the gold gives out, when the factory shuts its doors, when a better resort opens somewhere else, you can't keep the kids around to live in a dying town. Sure, some old folks may have grown attached and still live there, but when they pass on, the place reverts to what it was before.

[HiPointDem]

18. there's no reason ordinary people should have to move from 'boomtown' to 'boomtown, destroying

family and community in the process.

but capital likes it that way because disconnected, unrooted people with weak families and communities are easier to use.

[agent46]

26. Fuck yes n/t

[boppers]

29. The "reason", for the last 40,000 years, has been the same.

Attaching it to "capital" is a newer idea, but 4,000 years ago, stone masons were bitching about how the "system" was treating them unfairly by no longer building pyramids.

Human power is nomadic, and so must be humans, if they want to benefit from the current locus/focus of that power.

[sabrina 1]

31. Lol, funny. You just made that up, didn't you?

Europeans, eg, do not have to move every few years to make a living. But then their system is more 'socialist' where the fortunes of the 'little people' do not depend on a giant Gambling Casino. Families live in the same towns, sometimes even the same homes, for generations rarely threatened with the notion that they will have to uproot their families in order to 'follow the money'.

Of course now that we introduced them to unregulated Capitalism, they may become victims themselves, unless, like Iceland, they decide to return to their own system which was far more conducive to a normal, stable lifestyle.

Face it, the boom and bust economy here is not conducive to the security of the family. And it's time to end it. The system has failed, like all 'isms' it has proven to benefit only a very small segment of the population and is crumbling as other such systems have before it. Too bad it has affected so many innocent people along the way.

[meaculpa2011]

33. Tell that to my grandparents.

They didn't have to move to another town. They had to travel in the cargo hold of a leaky ship and cross an ocean. Family members that stayed in the old country are mostly scattered about. A few still live in the ancestral village, but many have moved on.

Living in the same house, on the same block, in the same town for my whole life, my kids whole lives and my grandkids whole lives would give me the creeps. That's why they have so many haunted houses in Europe.

[sabrina 1]

50. What a strange thing to say. There is nothing more comforting than to go back home

and be able to find your home and the people you love, not scattered all over the globe, distant from each other.

I never saw a haunted house in Europe and don't know a single person in any of the countries where I have family and/or friends, who believes that garbage. I guess that comes from the movies here in the US, like so many other biased notions about people from other countries.

Americans badly need to travel more, the insulation of people here creates this kind of ignorance and fear of other people. Even less developed countries seem far more knowledgeable about other cultures than the average American.

That comment made me laugh, actually. 'Ghosts' and 'haunted houses' and it's 'creepy' to have a stable home environment! Kind of sad too, as it shows how unstable life here is for so many people they cannot even imagine how wonderful that kind of stability is. I envy them that.

[boppers]

34. Maybe you come from landed gentry. I do not.

I've only gone back 500 years in my own bloodline, but we never had land to speak of.

So we moved. Often.

I am Polish-Ukrainian-English-Irish-Scottish-German, and if one of us got so fucking rich they could own land, in perpetuity, I don't know about it. I do know one chunk of my family stole/conquested a shit-ton of land in Scotland, and than deeded it to an Englishman, but I have no interest in "owning" blood lands.

Perhaps your Europe is different than mine.

[sabrina 1]

48. I have family in Europe in more than one country. They were not 'landed gentry' ever

but they were able to make a living and stay in the same neighborhoods for generations, where most of them still live. There was no boom and bust economy there over the past fifty years or so, of course some people were more wealthy and some poorer than others, but your contention that it's normal to have to move every years simply is not true. That is the sign of a failed economy. Now, since they got involved in 'Global Capitalism', this has been the worst period for them over the past fifty years or so. They want nothing to do with Wall Street, Capitalism or anything else that promises the world and delivers nothing except to the wealthy. Too bad their politicians didn't realize that ten years ago.

[dkf]

40. Good grief have you taken a look at the European banking system?

It's a mess. They haven't begun to clean up their banks. They don't even mark to market!

And that is where the loose regulations started, more specifically, look at how even our banks catastrophies all started in the UK. That isn't an accident.

[brentspeak]

42. "Our bank catastrophies all started in the UK"

Glass-Steagall repeal, credit ratings agencies collusion to highly grade junk mortgages, securitization of junk mortgages, over-leveraging -- all thanks to US banks.

[dkf]

43. They overleverage in the UK.

Look at the LIBOR scandal, that is out of London. Look at where the MF Global money was missing...in the UK. Look at AIG, the credit default swaps came out of the UK. Look where JP Morgan's trading scandal started...the London whale.

Follow the money. There always seems to be a trail back to the UK.

[brentspeak]

45. Most of those things occurred after the 2008 financial crisis

And AIG is a US-based insurance firm (American International Group). Its London office's role in dishing out capital-less CDS to European banks was instigated by Joseph Cassano, an American. That was independent of AIG's dealing with Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns, etc.

[sabrina 1]

47. Yes, I've been watching it since the collapse of Lehmann Bros.

Wall St destroyed the economies of the world. Had the European Governments refused to go along with them, Ireland eg, they would not be in the position they are now in. Nor would we.

'Clean up their banks', of course they are not doing that, their governments are still run by Wall St until they are thrown out, as France has done, they will keep doing what we have done and never should have, bailing out the banks and making the people pay for their corruption.

[HiPointDem]

32. bs

[TBF]

54. Not to mention the environment that is destroyed along the way -

move to ND quick and get on those oil rigs. Join those frackers. Yay! Go USA!!!!!

[TBF]

53. Typical right wing nonsense - profit above all else. nt

[monmouth]

2. I'm from the same town in NJ as Springsteen (Freehold) and when the rug mill shut down and moved

to one of the Carolinas, it was terrible. Many of those workers found employment at Nescafe and 3M, but many either retired or moved south. Bruce is very accurate in "My Home Town." There was sadness and shock as the mill had been the main place of employment for so many years. The mill is now an apartment building with many problems.

[notadmblnd]

3. Flint, Pontiac, Detroit

[knitter4democracy]

6. Albion.

Our high school used to be a Class B school in enrollment, and now we're Class D and have moved the 5th and 6th graders to an unused wing of the high school so we can close yet another elementary. When you lose over 6000 jobs in less than ten years, that's what happens.

[exboyfil]

37. How is Champion Labs doing?

I almost took a job with them about 11 years ago.

[knitter4democracy]

61. Albion, MI

In looking up the company (wasn't familiar to me), it says it's in Albion, IL, not Michigan.

[Douglas Carpenter]

4. I grew up in PA. It's kind of hard not to notice it there. It's been more than 25 years since Billy

Joel sang about "the Pennsylvania I never found." It was a whole different world when I was a kid.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. This is a story written all over the northeast and midwest.

My town hasn't torn down all the buildings yet...they are just vacant and deteriorating, and I don't know if that isn't worse.

We had so many mills here. Steel mills, pipe and tubing, Westinghouse, General American and Trinity rail cars. Empty vacant buildings go for blocks with windows broken out, rusting out. Eyesores. And since they are Superfund sites that have never been cleaned up, nothing can be done with them.

And all the locals just keep waiting for the factories to come back.

[Walk away]

7. I don't believe in ghosts and spirits don't frighten me but....

I know the feeling of walking through the ghost of a thriving town. All around the Bear Mountain area are towns like that built in the thirties, forties and fifties. They came into being because of the auto industry and other manufacturing that abandoned New York State in the seventies.
The first one I ever drove through was like a Twilight Zone episode. Small shops and a Rialto movie theater with a marquee, a small white church on the corner, a park with a band shell all empty and in perfect condition. It looked as if the population just vanished in the middle of the day. There were no cars or people but everything else was in place. Even the local dress shop still had mannequins with dresses in the window.
At first I thought it was some kind of movie set but my brother explained it was a casualty of the Ford plant closing. After that I started to find other towns in the same condition. Some were older and really charming. One adorable and empty town, that was originally supported by a glove factory, made me wish I could buy it and start my own Mayberry. But they all haunt your dreams. When you think that all those people lost everything. Their homes, friends, jobs and lives all gone. Nothing lives on except these eerie snapshots of their home towns. Like life size dioramas.

I visit my home town often. It's five minutes from mid town Manhattan and it will never be a ghost town unless NYC goes first. Things have changed but in some ways for the better. I can't imagine it dead and frozen.

[NNN0LHI]

8. Was that the Green Island, New York Ford Plant that closed?

[Walk away]

36. I honestly don't know. I never saw the plant.

We just drive around on fall foliage trips and rarely end up in the same place twice.

[NNN0LHI]

38. Green Island is the only plant in NY that Ford closed that I am aware of

And it didn't close in the 1970's as your post suggested.

It closed in 1989.

Don

[Walk away]

46. No, it turns out it was the Ford plant in Mahwah. It was literally on the border....

of New York State and New Jersey and only a few miles from the entrance of Harriman's fall foliage route on the way to Bear Mountain. The towns that were affected were in both states. It was closed in the late seventies. My brother says he remembers the abandoned plant was across the road from the Red Apple Rest on route 17.

Sorry I didn't do a complete study of the area before I posted. It was just a memory from thirty years ago. I hope you are satisfied now.

[NNN0LHI]

49. The Mahwah New Jersey plant closed in 1982

Not the 1970's as you suggested in your post.

Should have done a more complete "study" I guess?

Don

[Walk away]

60. According to the Mahwah Museseum the plant finally shut down in 1980 (split hairs much?)

http://www.mahwahmuseum.org/lecture.cfm?page=99

In reality the plant began to shut down years before and the area began losing jobs in the seventies. During that decade the area lost thousands of manufacturing jobs as many area factories closed. I am not sure about what was going on there between 80 and 82 but, according to every source I can find, the assembly lines were already shut down.

It's apparent from your problems with my post that you really don't get that I was recalling a thirty year old memory of an experience. It probably occurred sometime in the mid nineteen eighties and I was recounting it with the best of my knowledge at the time.

Now I know a lot about the boring facts of a dead company. Thanks to you I am losing interest in the sad fate of the towns around it. I think I'll kick that romantic memory to the curb. It seems there's a good chance that the towns were filled with annoying people anyway.

[smirkymonkey]

10. Wow, that just sent chills up my spine.

How sad. What a mess we are in.

[dixiegrrrrl]

24. My "Mayberry" is slowly becoming a ghost town.

This month, our favorite local gas station pulled up the pumps and shut down.
For 60 years "Mr. Pete" had a full service gas station, did some minor repairs, kept a crew of 5-6 on.
He put 4 boys and one girl thru college on that gas station, and has a nice home, a block away from mine.
Today, he told me " The economy finally did me in, I'm 84 and can't afford to stay open".
yup..he is 84 and had dreams of working till he died.
They do that in this town.

In the 1930's Vanity Fair mills saved this town, for all the wrong reasons.
The mill was orginally "up north"but the owners decided, during the depression, to move to a lower cost state.
People here were happy to have the jobs it provided, and that mill, and the associated business with it, kept 3 generations of families working. Even today funeral notices state " she worked at vanity Fair for 30 years".
the mill pulled out, piece by piece, 2 years ago, went overseas.
This month all the buildings were torn down and nothing is left but the brick and cement foundation walls.
It was next to Mr. Pete's gas station, which is just 2 blocks from our famous courthouse.
( most people have seen the movie and will recognize the courthouse).

There are more and more empty shops along our 4 sided square.
The KFC and the Taco Bell and 2 long time local Dairy queen type places closed, there is no longer a dry cleaners,
2 local town pharmacies have closed ( but Wal-Mart and Wal greens both came in and got the customers)
and a big grocery store has left.
But Wal-Mart has a super store, the parking lot is full most of the time.

Koch Brothers' Georgia Pacific bought out 2 of the 3 struggling pulp mills outside of town and laid everybody off,
gave a few older workers "early retirement" then 6 months later announced they were re-opening, but at much reduced wages, no benefits, no insurance.
Now people who could support their family on one paycheck have to work 2 jobs.
The county school system has closed 2 schools and consolidated the others, because of lack of students, esp. after Alabama passed the anti-Latino law.
Unemployment rate in the county is 24%.

[SoCalDem]

9. Malls & Walmarts did the same to many downtowns

Once vital downtowns withered up & died.

http://www.salina.com/progress/Story/Central-Mall-25th

[Retrograde]

11. Buffalo, NY

In the 1960s a fairly prosperous city with decent paying work at the steel mills, chemical plants and auto assembly plants. The population today is half of what it was then, the East Side is practically a ghost town, the mills are gone (OK, the air quality's better) and people continue to leave in droves.

[Dragonfli]

14. And don't forget the "American Standard" plant on Rano st.

Our town is nearly dead, the East side is crumbling yes, but also the west side by the peace bridge and now even the north side is more desperate than prosperous.

The one time "blue collar workers" are now poor working in the service industry.

Thank gawd we were able two sign a few more off-shoring treaties the last couple years and we are working on NAFTA the steroid version as I type.


The most depressing fact is that both parties think that the off-shoring to cheaper labor markets is great and desirable. At the third way sight they compare the newest deal being brokered to "boatloads of growth" (their words).

Too bad their idea of growth has everything to do with corporate profits and nothing to do with protecting decent paying factory work.
The service Industry can only take in so many 20 -70 year olds and it is hard to live on 200 a week take home that those "jobs" represent.

[Igel]

12. Yes.

Both my parents grew up in Sparrows Point, MD. It was a company town. Their parents weathered the worst of the Great Depression there when the steel mill didn't kick out those it had laid off (employment was a prerequisite for living there). It didn't kick them out when they couldn't pay their rent or house payments. In the mid-70s SP was torn down, everything (including the post office and police station) was on company land. The company was in serious financial trouble because of competition.

Boutique steels were cheaper to make oversease and import. Other plants were cheaper to keep going.

They built the L blast furnace where Sparrows Point had been. It would produce huge quantities of lower-quality steel.

It didn't help. The L required fewer people, but the problem was spreading: Suddenly the market was flooded with cheap low quality steel, as well. By '83 it was shut. It opened under new ownership every once in a while, but the town I grew up in was gone.

The loss of the steel mill wiped out Edgemere and altered Dundalk a lot. The buildings were still there, but if people were the place, then the place was gone. Close enough to Baltimore and with the new Key Bridge and Beltway to make access a breeze, it became a bedroom community.

Years later the company was split up and sold off. Finally the pension became a federal responsibility, and my mother still gets that pension from the government.

The jobs were offshored. The US continued to use steel and make things with steel, it just imported it or products made with steel. Beth Steel missed the offshoring boom: Had it lasted a while longer in decent fiscal health, it might have built plants overseas and stayed in business. The US jobs were toast. They were already gone or on the way out and saving them wasn't in the cards. But the management jobs, perhaps some specialty steel jobs, dividend payments and value of the stock, as well as the pension/health benefits would have been preserved if Beth Steel had offshored and stayed afloat. Maybe we'd have lost 95% of the benefits; but as it is, we lost 100%.

[Brigid]

13. Terre Haute, IN.

Bruce Springsteen could have written "My Hometown" about it. My family moved there in the late '70's. By then, it had been bleeding jobs for over a decade.The downtown area was once thriving -- you should see pictures the Historical Society has of it in the '30's and '40's. By the late '60's, the blue-collar jobs began to disappear. By the time we moved there, the downtown area looked like London during the Blitz -- there were buildings half torn down, rubble all over the place, great big craters where foundations of buildings used to be -- it was awful. It looks better now, but the job opportunities are still not there; so the smarter and more ambitious young people leave. Oddly, there are plenty of college opportunities in the area; but once you've graduated there is nothing for you to do. So the town is full of old people and rednecks. I don't know what can be done about it.

[progressivebydesign]

15. Has everyone watched "When Mitt Romney Came to Town?" on youtube, and shared it online?

You should. It's heartbreaking, and it visits a few of the towns like the town you mention. Every voter should be forced to see that film, which was created by a right wing filmmaker (and only 28 minutes long.)

how anyone could know this about him and his business, and still elect him for anything. is beyond me.

[Zalatix]

16. And what did we replace those manufacturing jobs with?

[NNN0LHI]

22. Manufacturing Big Macs

[HiPointDem]

17. yes. and watching it a second time today.

[former9thward]

19. Is the big Ford stamping plant still there?

[NNN0LHI]

21. Yes, the plant population went from about 4800 to about 500

[HiPointDem]

20. I recommend this video to people who want to understand the process better. It's a bit wonky

but full of insights.

[nichomachus]

23. Yup

My hometown was a great place in the '50s? Then the coporatists started looking for places with no unions, no labor laws, and no environmental protections. Most of them were in the south. So, they went there and my hometown died. Then, the coporatists discovered China, and the towns in the south died.

[Douglas Carpenter]

25. now that reminds me of a song

[Pithlet]

27. I'm from Flint, Michigan

So, yeah. I grew up there in the 80's. It's very depressing to go back there now.

[Heather MC]

28. My Hometown Lynchburg VA

they lost several foundries. My father worked for a company that made American auto parts. It was a very dangerous job. he almost died once when hot melted lava exploded back into his face and rolled down his skin. It had gotten past his safety apron. It was not a glamours job but for Lynchburg it was a well paying and I know most people wouldn't be able to do it.

He was actually returned to work after that accident and not long after that was forced into early retirement. but he was lucky he got out in time to get a pension. his co-workers were not so lucky. the factory got shipped to Mexico or somewhere I was teenager when tis happened so I don't have all the details. now 20 years later all that remains is a grassy field. And downtown Lynchburg is starting to look like a third world country. Now I am sure if you drive through the Major Downtown streets of Lynchburg you will see beautiful new buildings, and freshly planted trees, new benches well maintained bike paths. but if you vere off 5th street err I mean Martin Luther King Blvd. You will see block after block of boarded up homes, empty lots where houses use to stand, and homes so run down rats wouldn't live in them. In my Father's block there use to be 10 homes now there are only 8 homes and 4 of them are unlivable just sitting empty.

Jerry Falwell's son purchased the once thriving Lynchburg Plaza it use to have at least 30-50 stores, and Movie theater. Now it has a dollar store, a liquor store, Mc'D and a nail shop. All the necessary things for a ghetto. Meanwhile the plaza he owns near Liberty University Candlers Station is a booming thriving business. It's really sad how the town has allowed the inner city to go to shit.

I don't even like to visit anymore they have down a good job of making the main areas of the town look pretty while neglecting large residential areas of the inner city.

But it all started to go down when the large manufactering companies left the country.

here's what I think, if you want Americans to buy your products you should pay Americans to Make them. I think it's wrong that companies are allowed to leave this country basically looking for slave labor in other countries.

[susanna]

30. Yes. Detroit, MI.

I really can't articulate all that's happened. Still working on the words that might bring it home to those who haven't been there. Sadly, I wonder if that will ever happen.

[Brigid]

39. What about "Gran Torino?"

Does that movie give a non-Detroiter a pretty good idea?

[susanna]

59. You know, I have not seen Gran Torino yet.

Perhaps for that very reason - it seemed too depressing. I'll have to watch it and let you know.

[Festivito]

64. Not too far off.

That looked like pockets of Detroit, larger homes for the era, built close to each other, two stories plus another attic level.

We're big enough that a few industries still exist. But, if one works for the auto companies, there is no need to buy a house in Detroit, the suburbs offer(ed) better living and better investment.

So, Detroit languishes with old unkept homes. Good expressways though. Good water supply. And, GM didn't die.

I have watched it slowly empty.

[onethatcares]

35. Reading Pennsylvania

Last edited Sun Jul 29, 2012, 01:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Good bye to Dana Corporation, Carpenter Steel, Textile Machine Works, Vanity Fair, Berrylco,Ludens and so many other large and small plants that kept people in jobs and their kids in schools. For a while there were Outlet shops there, they don't exist anymore. All that irregular clothing gets sold somewhere in the world as first class.

Now the place is like a war zone and last time I was back, I was told to not go where I used to live because I'd get arrested on suspicion of buying drugs.

But it seems the store parking lots are full, the restaraunts are busy evenings. I can't figure that one out.

[dkf]

41. We went to visit my mother's hometown and it was just one street...the town had died off.

Of course it used to be a plantation town where my grandparents and great grandparents came to do hard labor.

But all her brothers and sisters got their educations and learned their trades, turning into business owners and professionals.

So yes the original jobs went away, but my mom's generation did infinitely better than my grandparents.

[brentspeak]

44. And how would your mom's generation do today

(whatever generation that was), now that the entire economy has cratered due to manufacturing offshoring and financial industry malfeasance?

[Liberal_in_LA]

51. no, but this should be an interesting thread. thanks for starting it.

[Liberal_in_LA]

52. In Los Angeles, former manufacturing plants are turned into large outdoor malls themed

after the plant. two examples - Former Camaro plant site is mall with pics of cars nearby. Former aerospace plant is mall with jet statue in front. crappy malls with slight touches of what they use to be.

[newspeak]

58. some here have criticized michael moore

but I have never forgotten what he said about big business. That some corporations have caused more damage to the people in this country, our communities, our country than any drug dealer. Someone who loves this country, who loves the history of our oldest cities, including NOLA; to see some parts turned into a ghost town, is a tragedy. Tell me about some of these politicians decrying themselves patriotic and american. Some are only interested in their portfolios and selling us all piece by piece to the highest bidders.

Sometimes, I think it's going to be up to the american people to create their own co-ops and not depend on global corporations for the health and welfare of the american people. What little that some of us have left (since the 1% have increased their assets at our expense) might be used to start up our own economy when things get even worse.

[Brigid]

62. Have you seen "Roger and Me?"

If not, you should.

[liberal N proud]

55. I live in a suburb of Cleveland ...

A drive from here to downtown goes past miles of empty factories. Our company stores surplus equipment in a former factory turned warehouse. The street it is located on is deserted.

[datasuspect]

56. seen it all over the country

[hedgehog]

57. Drive the New York State Thruway (I-90) from Syracuse to Albany

You'll pass dozens of small factory towns set in gorgeous mountain locations along the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, full of Victorian style houses, good schools, good hospitals, libraries and empty factory buildings!

[Brigid]

63. And empty of people too, right?