I know styling is highly subjective, but I've always thought the '64 Studebaker two-door hardtop is a crisp car that looks more contemporary (less gimmicky) than a '64 Falcon, Chevy II, or Valiant, which Studebaker marketed it against. A lot less fussy chrome on top models, and large rear wheel openings which, save for Oldsmobile, didn't become 'de rigeur' until the '75 Seville and '77 Caprice. To these eyes, it lightens the car visually.
The South Bend plant was where Studebaker carriages had been made, and was hopelessly outdated, resulting in a high breakeven point. But, they held on a decade longer than most other independents.
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Again, I guess it's all about where you live (lived). I can say unequivocally, my hometown has been decimated by the movement of manufacturing to other countries, resulting in more poverty and fewer professional people living there
Interesting, looking at one sample and arriving at conclusions.
I decided to take a look at my old hometown in rural south GA and do the same thing....
No one eats poultry or eggs anymore. All the poultry farms are gone.
Cotton seed oil is no longer used. The plant that crushed cotton seed closed 20 years ago.
Farming uses much less equipment now. 20 years ago there were 5 tractor/implement dealers. now there is only John Deere.
Consumers eat much less red meat, pork, peaches and mellons. Production of all of those items has dwindled significantly. But, they eat much more soybeans, sunflowers and corn, as their production has increased significantly.
Everyone buys their clothing at Wal-Mart. All but one independent clothing store is gone.
No one goes out to the movies anymore. When I was a kid, there were 3 movie theaters...now, there are none.
People still play pool. The old pool hall is still open, but its all alone. All the buildings around it are gone now.
No one buys new cars anymore. There used to be the Big-3 dealerships, and a Studebaker dealer....Now, only the Ford dealership remains.
The US population is declining. Approximately 50% of the population has moved out of town due to lack of jobs.
I could go on....
So.... Are any of those assumptions really as they seem?
Doesn't BMW license it from GM? They've used GM automatic transmissions as well. Contrary to popular belief when GM comes up with desirable things other makes buy them.
2015 Mazda 6 Grand Touring, 2014 Mazda 3 Sport Hatchback, 1999 Mazda Miata 2004 Toyota Camry LE, 1999.
GM was definitely ahead of the curve with the introduction of OnStar.
The problem was that they used the Henry Ford system of options (Any color as long as its black).
The big difference is that BMW Assist also comes with Bluetooth, so you aren't locked in to using 2 different services if you already have a cellphone (which most folks do nowadays) and you want to be "handsfree". Its included for 4 years/50 K miles (the standard warranty for BMW).
IMO, if GM had come out with the same capability, they would have swept the competition at the time.
"Its our war, or the highway" very seldom works for any length of time.
Interesting, looking at one sample and arriving at conclusions.
It's called empathy.
This is something that has affected a town that I love and people that I know--even though I haven't lived there in thirty years myself.
Frankly...and this is the meanest thing I've said on a forum...denying that loss of manufacturing to other countries in hundreds, if not thousands, of small towns and cities of every size in the U.S. hasn't hurt the country, well....that's delusional. Talk about only seeing what one wishes to see.
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Doesn't BMW license it from GM? They've used GM automatic transmissions as well. Contrary to popular belief when GM comes up with desirable things other makes buy them.
Possibly. I can't say, but I do know that GM licenses several technologies from BMW and MB (and, others, I'm sure). But its not a one-way street.
Frankly...and this is the meanest thing I've said on a forum...denying that loss of manufacturing to other countries in hundreds, if not thousands, of small towns and cities of every size in the U.S. hasn't hurt the country, well....that's delusional. Talk about only seeing what one wishes to see.
No one is denying anything.
What's delusional is to think that all the things that have happened to our home towns are due to just one issue.
Of course, the loss of manufacturing/farming jobs has put extreme pressures on these areas, but just as much pressure has come from improvments in manufacturing and farming.
One man with modern farming equipment can do the work it would take 100+ men only 30 years ago. Since eggs are in the news recently, go back to 1970 and see how many people it took to run a poultry farm in 1970, and then take a look at the plants today. And, contrary to the news, food products today are the safest they have ever been in the USA.
In car production, how many were involved in the painting of a new car in 1970? With automation, how about today? And, painting isn't the only area of technological improvement. How many welding jobs are gone due to robotics?
Just placing the blame on the export of manufacturing processes is, IMO, far too simplistic. There are several SIGNIFICANT reasons for the losses of these jobs. Foreign outsourcing and technological improvements are only 2 of them.
Transportation improvements are another. Back in 1960, almost every town had a local bread bakery close by. With the ability to move goods at a much faster rate, processes such as breadmaking can now be consolidated in central locations and distributed without any loss in freshness of the product.
Frankly...and this is the meanest thing I've said on a forum...denying that loss of manufacturing to other countries in hundreds, if not thousands, of small towns and cities of every size in the U.S. hasn't hurt the country, well....that's delusional. Talk about only seeing what one wishes to see.
I don't think what you are saying is mean. There are many reasons why we've lost manufacturing jobs across the country, but the I don't believe even the most stringent protectionist policies would have save them or would be good for the country. It's a fact that manufacturing jobs have been disappearing everywhere as a whole and that's not going to change. Also, I don't feel condition of manufacturing in the US is as dire as everyone seems to believe. We still produce many types of things.
We have a problem with producing skilled workers in a variety of trades. My friend who owns a local machine shop dreads every time he loses a machinist because he has a hard time finding someone with the skills that's willing to show up to work on a reliable basis.
Frankly...and this is the meanest thing I've said on a forum...denying that loss of manufacturing to other countries in hundreds, if not thousands, of small towns and cities of every size in the U.S. hasn't hurt the country, well....that's delusional. Talk about only seeing what one wishes to see.
To echo a point that I've made before - the Industrial Revolution has been nothing but disruptive since it began 200 years ago. It ripped the heart & soul out of American agricultural life, which is why Thomas Jefferson wanted no factories here. It created new cities & then, as it moved on, it destroyed them. Human life has changed more drastically during the past 200 years than it did in the previous 10,000.
You're clearly a smart, thoughtful guy, so I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know. So what, then, makes you think that this social tsunami was going to freeze in its tracks in, say, 1965? Did you really think that history would stop at that point & that nothing would change thereafter?
"Hey Bob, look up the history of Greenville Steel Car Company and Trinity Industries Greenville plant and see what you can find out. Those jobs in my old hometown, for good, small-town Americans, were pimped out to those poor folks in Mexico."
I will have to try and find that stuff later...
But, in regards to your point about the loss of manuf jobs and old towns...it seems to me that you fail to accept that technology changes faster than the people who use it, and that failure to adapt makes places seem like ghost towns, but that is simply your observation of the failure of the people to change...
Should JFK have worn a hat in his inaugaration in 1961???...it has been said many time that the hat industry went in the tank because JFK started a trend by not wearing a hat...should he be blamed for causing unemployment in the hat industry???...should the govt step in and support all hatmakers???...no, the hatmakers are simply victims of changing times, and they either change with the times or their storefronts are vacant...
Should supermarkets close and return to the Mom & Pop (M&P) general stores of yesteryear???...I don't know about you, but I simply don't have the time to go to 6 stores to pick up my produce, fruit, hamburger, paper towels, pine-sol, tuna, and chicken, so I like going to one store that has it all...why should M&P stores survive if they can't change with the times???...maybe it was different when gas was 35 cents a gallon, but at $2.50, I want to go to one place and get it all...are you bothered when the M&P store on Main Street is vacant???...why, can't you accept that M&P simply failed to adapt and therefore should no longer be in business because THEY NO LONGER SERVE THE NEEDS OF THEIR CUSTOMERS...empty towns will evolve, but our attention span wants to see everything full, like Leave It to Beaver...well, forget it...Beaver is gone, and Dad does not sit at the dinner table in a suit anymore, like Ward Cleaver...
Believe it or not, the ultimate beneficiary is the consumer from all this Creative Destruction...we had one Kindle, and now there are 5-6 competitors, and the Kindle came down in price from $400 to $139...the cell market was mostly Motorola and Nokia, now we have cell phone makers all over the place...should the state of the art still be Pac-man???...should the govt step in and keep pac-man going, or should it die from being obsolete...
Once you accept that change is constant, the rest will be easy to understand...
Or else we all go back to farming with a plow and a mule, no tractors for you...
But, in regards to your point about the loss of manuf jobs and old towns...it seems to me that you fail to accept that technology changes faster than the people who use it, and that failure to adapt makes places seem like ghost towns, but that is simply your observation of the failure of the people to change...
I guess we should disband the interstate highway system too. That killed numerous small towns and businesses along route 66 and other routes. The list goes on and on about how change has hurt some towns and industries and became a boom to others....
I guess we should disband the interstate highway system too. That killed numerous small towns and businesses along route 66 and other routes. The list goes on and on about how change has hurt some towns and industries and became a boom to others
I say this respectfully, but for those who feel opposite of how I do, the examples seem so extreme. There is always "degrees" of truth in an argument.
I don't see how the loss of jobs to foreign plants "has become a boom to other (American) towns".
Our town did OK even after the interstates. I would say the decline of rail in the U.S. hurt it more than that. I do feel that today, being near an interstate helps a lot and my town is fifteen or twenty miles from an interstate.
It's not like farming went away with the introduction of various advancements...not like we get the majority of 'farm items' from foreign countries now. Plus, as mentioned previously, many farmers chose to give it up to make more money in the factories during the '20's and '30's.
Streamlining is, of course, a way of life. GM"s Lordstown, OH plant employees maybe 40% of the number of workers it did in 1966, when it opened. But at least it's still here, employing people and providing jobs to suppliers in the area. If it were to leave completely...as has happened throughout the northeast and midwest...that would be a hugely negative thing for the area. No one has said things should be exactly as they were in 1965 (another extreme example given), but they have sure swung way too far the other direction...and I'm a Republican and I feel that way.
I guess if you live in the south, always have, don't visit up north or don't know people who have been affected by these things, you wouldn't care or see it as an issue. Everyone up here sees it without even discussing it...it's a given, which is why it surprises me to see people on these forums acting like they're surprised it's an issue or that it is a non-issue.
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don't see how the loss of jobs to foreign plants "has become a boom to other (American) towns".
While I'm certainly not going to dispute many areas have been hurt by the reduction in manufacturing employment. But where I differ is the cause. These jobs are not all gone because of foreign competition or from manufacturing being offshored. Productivity increases have been substantial. Our manufacturing output as a percentage of GDP has stayed relatively flat for the past 40 years. We export more today as a percentage of GDP than ever have. We just do this with a much smaller work force in manufacturing.
Our town did OK even after the interstates. I would say the decline of rail in the U.S. hurt it more than that. I do feel that today, being near an interstate helps a lot and my town is fifteen or twenty miles from an interstate.
Strangely, the mayor of Gary Indiana has partially blamed the interstates for Gary's ills as it allowed people to move out of the city and still work in the steel mills that are still in the area. I grew up in that area and Gary was a place to avoid since the mid 70's, even when steel mill employment was at it's peak.
I've lived in 5 different states and I do tend to think the interstates has allowed the population to sort of self segregate. We never chose to live in the city, but always moved to the quiet suburbs and drove into work on the interstates.
My mom grew up in Gary, my dad and my in-laws grew up in Hammond. My dad has a good job in the grocery business in that area. He certainly could have lived in Hammond, but chose to move to Valparaiso (my mom and dad didn't want to live in the cities they grew up in). Same with my in-laws. Both graduated from Hammond high, my MIL is an accountant in Chicago and my FIL was a 32 year employee of the steel mills. They chose to live out of the city and in a small town off the toll road.
A company could open a plant in Gary today employing thousands of people and I guarantee that no one will move to Gary. They'll live in the nice communities 20 miles away.
many farmers chose to give it up to make more money in the factories during the '20's and '30's.
True, but many of them were lost their farms to the bank or decided to do something else to make more money.
Streamlining is, of course, a way of life. GM"s Lordstown, OH plant employees maybe 40% of the number of workers it did in 1966, when it opened. But at least it's still here, employing people and providing jobs to suppliers in the area. If it were to leave completely...as has happened throughout the northeast and midwest...that would be a hugely negative thing for the area. No one has said things should be exactly as they were in 1965 (another extreme example given), but they have sure swung way too far the other direction...and I'm a Republican and I feel that way.
I bet production at the Lordstown plant is the same or more than it was in the 60's with a fraction of the employment. It's the same thing in the steel mills. 1/2 the employees and more tonnage of steel output per plant. That has nothing to do with foreign competition or offshoring.
It is manufacturing with a mouse click instead of hammers, nails and, well, workers. Advocates of the technology say that by doing away with manual labor, 3-D printing could revamp the economics of manufacturing and revive American industry as creativity and ingenuity replace labor costs as the main concern around a variety of goods.
I guess if you live in the south, always have, don't visit up north or don't know people who have been affected by these things, you wouldn't care or see it as an issue. Everyone up here sees it without even discussing it...it's a given, which is why it surprises me to see people on these forums acting like they're surprised it's an issue or that it is a non-issue
Now you're beginning to sound like an entitled "1 trick pony". As I (and others repeatedly have stated) no one has suggested job loss due to exported manufacturing isn't real or isn't significant. However, you will never solve a problem by fixating on one of the many problems that are causing it. Continuing to do so shows you don't fully "appreciate" the issues at play here.
If your driveway is full of nails because your neighbor keeps throwing nails on it, you will never fix your flat tire problem simply by patching the tires.
I live in the South and have traveleled the US extensively, and I also spend, on average, 3-4 weeks a year in Germany and Western Europe.
You continue to appear to see only the effects of change on the North and Mid-West. Another news-flash for you... SC has some of the highest unemployment rates in the US, so your hometown isn't alone in job loss. You lost automotive style manufacturing work, and we lost textile work. Unemployed is unemployed. I can't help but notice how you only seem concerned about YOUR area, and ignore the rest of the US.
Why is that?
You state that the examples others (as well as I) have used are extreme, yet you continue to hammer on job exportation as the main (possibly sole) factor in job loss in the US.
That's your right, of course, and I don't see it as a republican or democratic outlook. Its simply what you have exposed yourself to seeing and allowed yourself to believe.
Believe it or not, Europe is experiencing the same situation with technological advances causing job losses, but their socialistic nature tends to protect jobs more there than the US does. And, if you're suggesting the government do more to prevent job loss (continue unncecessary jobs, such as railroad firemen after diesel locomotives were introduced, for example), then I would say you are promoting a socialist idea (no, I'm not suggesting you are a socialist, so please don't be offended).
So, as John Lennon sang in Revolution...
You say you got a real solution Well, you know We'd all love to see the plan...
Strangely, the mayor of Gary Indiana has partially blamed the interstates for Gary's ills as it allowed people to move out of the city and still work in the steel mills that are still in the area. I grew up in that area and Gary was a place to avoid since the mid 70's, even when steel mill employment was at it's peak.
Just a personal observation...
A good friend of mine married a girl from Gary, and according to him (he is from Cincinnati) she grew up in a fairly decent area of the city. If you asked her where she was from, she would tell you "the greater Chicago area". She couldn't get away from Gary fast enough... from the high-crime and "stinking odor", as she once put it to me. Her father worked for Sears, and she has told me their house was broken into on numerous occasions.
When did she grow up there? In the 50's through 60's, Gary was a nice city. With a thriving downtown and upscale shopping etc. My dad used to tell me it was big deal for his mom to drive him to downtown Gary to go shopping when they lived in Hammond in the early 60's.
My grandpa who worked 43 years at a steel mill in Gary finally moved 20 miles south of Gary in '78, two years before he retired. The last straw was when a good friend of his was murdered at a gas station he owned over $20 just a mile away from my grandpa's house.
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Maybe the future of George Jetson really is coming to fruition, the technology just isn't yet there. Notice that George, a receptionist, a security guard, and Mr. Spacely are the only people working at his place of employment. UniBlab and all the robots and computers are doing the jobs that weren't outsourced to China by Mr. Spacely's greedy great-grandfather. Why does everybody live way up in the sky? Why does George's town seem dangerously underpopulated? My guess is that the teeming majority of the poor and chronically unemployed population are living in a nightmarish ghetto on the ground. George must take the threat of being fired very seriously as he would be sentenced to a hellish and dangerous existence on the surface after he's evicted from the Skypad Apartments.
Kirstie, good luck finding anybody on this particular forum who would be what you're looking for
Well, it's funny. I'm visiting friends in Michigan and have been driving their Chrysler Concorde some. They got it used - think it's around an '02. Pretty plush, power seats.sunroof, etc. and it drives nice. I don't spend much time in sedans but I don't know why a typical driver wouldn't enjoy cruising around in it. Our friends like it a lot.
Maybe the future of George Jetson really is coming to fruition, the technology just isn't yet there. Notice that George, a receptionist, a security guard, and Mr. Spacely are the only people working at his place of employment. UniBlab and all the robots and computers are doing the jobs that weren't outsourced to China by Mr. Spacely's greedy great-grandfather. Why does everybody live way up in the sky? Why does George's town seem dangerously underpopulated? My guess is that the teeming majority of the poor and chronically unemployed population are living in a nightmarish ghetto on the ground. George must take the threat of being fired very seriously as he would be sentenced to a hellish and dangerous existence on the surface after he's evicted from the Skypad Apartments.
Nice observation. I can't remember the last time I saw an episode of the Jetsons.
Nice observation. I can't remember the last time I saw an episode of the Jetsons
Wasn't the sole function of his job to depress the single button to put the machinery in motion in the morning and then once again to stop it at quitting time?
She left in the mid-70's, and was about 25 at the time, so I suspect she got the "full frontal view" of the area's decline.
Yeah, she wasn't alone, that was when the time when all of of the middle and upper middle class people moved out to neighboring communities.
I still drive through Gary on occasion and it's unbelievable bad. Stop lights have been replaced with temporary stop signs and what isn't boarded up has security gates. Definitely a sad situation.
This discussion of the Jetsons is a humorous and welcome diversion from the heavy discussion usually here! I remember Henry the Janitor's grandfather's old car on blocks in the basement of the Jetsons' apartment building...it was like a '60's car!
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The Avanti was built in South Bend into 1987, then was moved to Youngstown, OH, where it was built through 1991. It was later built in Villa Rica, GA, and lastly (sigh), Mexico.
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Gary is the poster-child for urban blight, I'm afraid. I can't compare it to my hometown, which was never more than 10K in population and not a suburb of a city, but still had railcar manufacturing, ladder and extrusion factory, Bessemer Railroad repair shops, and Chicago Bridge and Iron works in town. It was halfway between Chicago and NYC on the Erie railroad which is why I think there was so much industry amongst farmland. All but the repair shops are gone, and the shops are a shadow of their former self, sadly. People who would have worked in the factories seem to only have WalMart now. Their hospital is a big employer in the area, and Thiel College in town looks better than ever, I will say that.
I pass through Gary at least once a year, when we are in South Bend on Studebakering and take the excellent South Shore Line railroad from South Bend into downtown Chicago. There are two Gary stops. I know what you're talking about.
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Not a Ford, Mopar, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes, BMW, VW, etc. in sight either. Molecular Motors 100% recycled from scrap nuclear powered space cars owns 100% of the market. You'll be happy to know they're a non-union / non-human shop.
Styling is courtesy of Virgil Exner VI. Note the generous use of glass and huge tailfin.
changes, cities either must change or die...not because I say so, but because that is what it is...plus, just because something IS, does not mean it should continue...the steel mills at Gary are a prime example, as are the UAW assembly plants...would you want workers to spray paint themselves and inhale the fumes, or should robots do the painting???...well, you have just eliminated hundreds of jobs done by painters, yet it is the right thing to do...
Honda makes 250K cars in a plant with 2000 workers, GM needed 6000 workers...any intelligent businessperson would realize that 4000 people have jobs at GM they should not have...they should be eliminated, period...the company does not exist to provide jobs, the company exists for profit, and out of profit come jobs...no profit, no jobs...conservatives understand that, liberals don't, because they think companies exist so that employees can suck it dry...
It all comes down to change and adaptation...life changes and they either adapt or die, just like the dinosaur...Gary, Detroit, etc. chose not to adapt, so the final result was the only one...
Also remember, when gas was cheap in the 80s, Detroit was humming, but Texas and Louisiana were in the dumps...when oil went up, oil states thrived while auto states suffered...let the free market do its thing, and just realize there will be fallout, and that fallout must adapt...or die...
If you want to see something really disturbing, look up Youngstown Ohio on Googlemaps or bing.com sometime.
From the 1930's-1960's timeframe, Youngstown's population peaked at around 160-170,000 residents, but as the steel industry declined, people moved away. Latest estimate I saw for population is around 72,000.
The city tends to bulldoze homes that have become abandoned, to keep blight from setting in, and once a block gets down to one or two homes, often they'll pay the owner to move to a more populated area, so they can take that block "off the grid", shutting down electric and other utilities, and stopping maintenance to the streets. In some cases, I think they even block off the streets.
I've never been through Youngstown, but looking at the streets from overhead maps, it's pretty depressing looking, how the town just seems to be disappearing.
My hometown of Greenville, PA is 25 miles NE of Youngstown, but even as a kid we never claimed Youngstown as the nearest big city! It's pretty desolate between Greenville and Youngstown...meaning, it's country.
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long ago, I would bet that some towns that built up over gold mining also shriveled up and died when the mining boom was over...
My consistent point...it is only human sentimentality that has a problem with this...cities and towns come and go as the nation changes, whether from mining to farming, farming to manufacturing, manufacturing to services, or whatever...it is just what happened over 100 years ago doesn't matter to us because we don't SEE the deterioration, whereas here we SEE the rundown areas, the people moving, the empty houses, etc.
How many people in the stagecoach industry, buggy whip industry, horse stable industry lost their jobs when Henry Ford started making cars???...yet, we see Ford's cars as PROGRESS, as society moved forward...
Plus, it is no coincidence that the deteriorating regions now are where UNIONS grew too powerful and drove their own companies out of business, but I don't see anyone complaining about the destructive force of the unions, all they compalin about is the rundown areas...Philly, Detroit, Cleveland, Gary, etc all died because the unions who controlled everything killed their own golden goose by demanding more than their labor was ever worth...but nobody in those dying areas can see the truth, they just lament how bad things are, yet they made them that way...
Yet, people refuse to give these cities and towns a second chance by building new plants there. At least too, when buggy whip manufacturers went away, there were still other manufacturing jobs for them to get into. Now, virtually nothing is manufactured here anymore--it's mostly foreign-built.
'Taking care of our own', first, and not only thinking 'hey, what's best for me this very minute' is not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
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Why should those cities and towns get a second chance instead of so many other cities and towns that haven't had a first chance yet? That's the "entitlement mentality" people talk about.
Yet, people refuse to give these cities and towns a second chance by building new plants there.
With manufacturing becoming more technical, why would anyone want to invest in a plant where the local work force may not have a HS diploma or any type of work ethic. I know that's not universal, but we certainly have an education issue in many areas. Expecting to drop out of HS or graduating w/o any type of skill and expecting a $20hr job just isn't going to work. I've seen how thats worked around the mills.
I was talking to my friend about his small machine shop. The skills needed today to work in his shop require more than what is provided in HS. Instead of manual lathes and presses etc and lots of labor, he has million dollar CNCs and less employees that are more skilled. That's just the way it is. He's just a small shop and he spends money anywhere he can to keep from having to add employees.
Why should those cities and towns get a second chance instead of so many other cities and towns that haven't had a first chance yet? That's the "entitlement mentality" people talk about.
Talk about 'entitlement mentality'--you're probably a proponent of affirmative action too.
As with everything, it's all about balance and not lopsided-ness.
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> why would anyone want to invest in a plant where the local work force may not have a HS diploma or any type of work ethic.
Then why have foreign companies located plants in "backwards" areas where they are given huge amounts of subsidies at state taxpayer and other's expense?
So you are saying people in Detroit don't have a HS diploma? Or Youngstown? Or Dayton? That's bordering on ignorant.
Comments
The South Bend plant was where Studebaker carriages had been made, and was hopelessly outdated, resulting in a high breakeven point. But, they held on a decade longer than most other independents.
Wow, BMW cribbed something from GM? Say it ain't so!
Too bad they don't build anything as inexpensive as a Cobalt where you can get it.
Interesting, looking at one sample and arriving at conclusions.
I decided to take a look at my old hometown in rural south GA and do the same thing....
No one eats poultry or eggs anymore. All the poultry farms are gone.
Cotton seed oil is no longer used. The plant that crushed cotton seed closed 20 years ago.
Farming uses much less equipment now. 20 years ago there were 5 tractor/implement dealers. now there is only John Deere.
Consumers eat much less red meat, pork, peaches and mellons. Production of all of those items has dwindled significantly. But, they eat much more soybeans, sunflowers and corn, as their production has increased significantly.
Everyone buys their clothing at Wal-Mart. All but one independent clothing store is gone.
No one goes out to the movies anymore. When I was a kid, there were 3 movie theaters...now, there are none.
People still play pool. The old pool hall is still open, but its all alone. All the buildings around it are gone now.
No one buys new cars anymore. There used to be the Big-3 dealerships, and a Studebaker dealer....Now, only the Ford dealership remains.
The US population is declining. Approximately 50% of the population has moved out of town due to lack of jobs.
I could go on....
So.... Are any of those assumptions really as they seem?
Nope.
The problem was that they used the Henry Ford system of options (Any color as long as its black).
The big difference is that BMW Assist also comes with Bluetooth, so you aren't locked in to using 2 different services if you already have a cellphone (which most folks do nowadays) and you want to be "handsfree". Its included for 4 years/50 K miles (the standard warranty for BMW).
IMO, if GM had come out with the same capability, they would have swept the competition at the time.
"Its our war, or the highway" very seldom works for any length of time.
It's called empathy.
This is something that has affected a town that I love and people that I know--even though I haven't lived there in thirty years myself.
Frankly...and this is the meanest thing I've said on a forum...denying that loss of manufacturing to other countries in hundreds, if not thousands, of small towns and cities of every size in the U.S. hasn't hurt the country, well....that's delusional. Talk about only seeing what one wishes to see.
Possibly. I can't say, but I do know that GM licenses several technologies from BMW and MB (and, others, I'm sure). But its not a one-way street.
All manufacturers do it.
No one is denying anything.
What's delusional is to think that all the things that have happened to our home towns are due to just one issue.
Of course, the loss of manufacturing/farming jobs has put extreme pressures on these areas, but just as much pressure has come from improvments in manufacturing and farming.
One man with modern farming equipment can do the work it would take 100+ men only 30 years ago. Since eggs are in the news recently, go back to 1970 and see how many people it took to run a poultry farm in 1970, and then take a look at the plants today. And, contrary to the news, food products today are the safest they have ever been in the USA.
In car production, how many were involved in the painting of a new car in 1970? With automation, how about today? And, painting isn't the only area of technological improvement. How many welding jobs are gone due to robotics?
Just placing the blame on the export of manufacturing processes is, IMO, far too simplistic. There are several SIGNIFICANT reasons for the losses of these jobs. Foreign outsourcing and technological improvements are only 2 of them.
Transportation improvements are another. Back in 1960, almost every town had a local bread bakery close by. With the ability to move goods at a much faster rate, processes such as breadmaking can now be consolidated in central locations and distributed without any loss in freshness of the product.
So, lets at least address the problem accurately.
I don't think what you are saying is mean. There are many reasons why we've lost manufacturing jobs across the country, but the I don't believe even the most stringent protectionist policies would have save them or would be good for the country. It's a fact that manufacturing jobs have been disappearing everywhere as a whole and that's not going to change. Also, I don't feel condition of manufacturing in the US is as dire as everyone seems to believe. We still produce many types of things.
We have a problem with producing skilled workers in a variety of trades. My friend who owns a local machine shop dreads every time he loses a machinist because he has a hard time finding someone with the skills that's willing to show up to work on a reliable basis.
To echo a point that I've made before - the Industrial Revolution has been nothing but disruptive since it began 200 years ago. It ripped the heart & soul out of American agricultural life, which is why Thomas Jefferson wanted no factories here. It created new cities & then, as it moved on, it destroyed them. Human life has changed more drastically during the past 200 years than it did in the previous 10,000.
You're clearly a smart, thoughtful guy, so I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know. So what, then, makes you think that this social tsunami was going to freeze in its tracks in, say, 1965? Did you really think that history would stop at that point & that nothing would change thereafter?
I will have to try and find that stuff later...
But, in regards to your point about the loss of manuf jobs and old towns...it seems to me that you fail to accept that technology changes faster than the people who use it, and that failure to adapt makes places seem like ghost towns, but that is simply your observation of the failure of the people to change...
Should JFK have worn a hat in his inaugaration in 1961???...it has been said many time that the hat industry went in the tank because JFK started a trend by not wearing a hat...should he be blamed for causing unemployment in the hat industry???...should the govt step in and support all hatmakers???...no, the hatmakers are simply victims of changing times, and they either change with the times or their storefronts are vacant...
Should supermarkets close and return to the Mom & Pop (M&P) general stores of yesteryear???...I don't know about you, but I simply don't have the time to go to 6 stores to pick up my produce, fruit, hamburger, paper towels, pine-sol, tuna, and chicken, so I like going to one store that has it all...why should M&P stores survive if they can't change with the times???...maybe it was different when gas was 35 cents a gallon, but at $2.50, I want to go to one place and get it all...are you bothered when the M&P store on Main Street is vacant???...why, can't you accept that M&P simply failed to adapt and therefore should no longer be in business because THEY NO LONGER SERVE THE NEEDS OF THEIR CUSTOMERS...empty towns will evolve, but our attention span wants to see everything full, like Leave It to Beaver...well, forget it...Beaver is gone, and Dad does not sit at the dinner table in a suit anymore, like Ward Cleaver...
Believe it or not, the ultimate beneficiary is the consumer from all this Creative Destruction...we had one Kindle, and now there are 5-6 competitors, and the Kindle came down in price from $400 to $139...the cell market was mostly Motorola and Nokia, now we have cell phone makers all over the place...should the state of the art still be Pac-man???...should the govt step in and keep pac-man going, or should it die from being obsolete...
Once you accept that change is constant, the rest will be easy to understand...
Or else we all go back to farming with a plow and a mule, no tractors for you...
I guess we should disband the interstate highway system too. That killed numerous small towns and businesses along route 66 and other routes. The list goes on and on about how change has hurt some towns and industries and became a boom to others....
I say this respectfully, but for those who feel opposite of how I do, the examples seem so extreme. There is always "degrees" of truth in an argument.
I don't see how the loss of jobs to foreign plants "has become a boom to other (American) towns".
Our town did OK even after the interstates. I would say the decline of rail in the U.S. hurt it more than that. I do feel that today, being near an interstate helps a lot and my town is fifteen or twenty miles from an interstate.
It's not like farming went away with the introduction of various advancements...not like we get the majority of 'farm items' from foreign countries now. Plus, as mentioned previously, many farmers chose to give it up to make more money in the factories during the '20's and '30's.
Streamlining is, of course, a way of life. GM"s Lordstown, OH plant employees maybe 40% of the number of workers it did in 1966, when it opened. But at least it's still here, employing people and providing jobs to suppliers in the area. If it were to leave completely...as has happened throughout the northeast and midwest...that would be a hugely negative thing for the area. No one has said things should be exactly as they were in 1965 (another extreme example given), but they have sure swung way too far the other direction...and I'm a Republican and I feel that way.
I guess if you live in the south, always have, don't visit up north or don't know people who have been affected by these things, you wouldn't care or see it as an issue. Everyone up here sees it without even discussing it...it's a given, which is why it surprises me to see people on these forums acting like they're surprised it's an issue or that it is a non-issue.
While I'm certainly not going to dispute many areas have been hurt by the reduction in manufacturing employment. But where I differ is the cause. These jobs are not all gone because of foreign competition or from manufacturing being offshored. Productivity increases have been substantial. Our manufacturing output as a percentage of GDP has stayed relatively flat for the past 40 years. We export more today as a percentage of GDP than ever have. We just do this with a much smaller work force in manufacturing.
Our town did OK even after the interstates. I would say the decline of rail in the U.S. hurt it more than that. I do feel that today, being near an interstate helps a lot and my town is fifteen or twenty miles from an interstate.
Strangely, the mayor of Gary Indiana has partially blamed the interstates for Gary's ills as it allowed people to move out of the city and still work in the steel mills that are still in the area. I grew up in that area and Gary was a place to avoid since the mid 70's, even when steel mill employment was at it's peak.
I've lived in 5 different states and I do tend to think the interstates has allowed the population to sort of self segregate. We never chose to live in the city, but always moved to the quiet suburbs and drove into work on the interstates.
My mom grew up in Gary, my dad and my in-laws grew up in Hammond. My dad has a good job in the grocery business in that area. He certainly could have lived in Hammond, but chose to move to Valparaiso (my mom and dad didn't want to live in the cities they grew up in). Same with my in-laws. Both graduated from Hammond high, my MIL is an accountant in Chicago and my FIL was a 32 year employee of the steel mills. They chose to live out of the city and in a small town off the toll road.
A company could open a plant in Gary today employing thousands of people and I guarantee that no one will move to Gary. They'll live in the nice communities 20 miles away.
many farmers chose to give it up to make more money in the factories during the '20's and '30's.
True, but many of them were lost their farms to the bank or decided to do something else to make more money.
Streamlining is, of course, a way of life. GM"s Lordstown, OH plant employees maybe 40% of the number of workers it did in 1966, when it opened. But at least it's still here, employing people and providing jobs to suppliers in the area. If it were to leave completely...as has happened throughout the northeast and midwest...that would be a hugely negative thing for the area. No one has said things should be exactly as they were in 1965 (another extreme example given), but they have sure swung way too far the other direction...and I'm a Republican and I feel that way.
I bet production at the Lordstown plant is the same or more than it was in the 60's with a fraction of the employment. It's the same thing in the steel mills. 1/2 the employees and more tonnage of steel output per plant. That has nothing to do with foreign competition or offshoring.
It is manufacturing with a mouse click instead of hammers, nails and, well, workers. Advocates of the technology say that by doing away with manual labor, 3-D printing could revamp the economics of manufacturing and revive American industry as creativity and ingenuity replace labor costs as the main concern around a variety of goods.
Now you're beginning to sound like an entitled "1 trick pony". As I (and others repeatedly have stated) no one has suggested job loss due to exported manufacturing isn't real or isn't significant. However, you will never solve a problem by fixating on one of the many problems that are causing it. Continuing to do so shows you don't fully "appreciate" the issues at play here.
If your driveway is full of nails because your neighbor keeps throwing nails on it, you will never fix your flat tire problem simply by patching the tires.
I live in the South and have traveleled the US extensively, and I also spend, on average, 3-4 weeks a year in Germany and Western Europe.
You continue to appear to see only the effects of change on the North and Mid-West. Another news-flash for you... SC has some of the highest unemployment rates in the US, so your hometown isn't alone in job loss. You lost automotive style manufacturing work, and we lost textile work. Unemployed is unemployed. I can't help but notice how you only seem concerned about YOUR area, and ignore the rest of the US.
Why is that?
You state that the examples others (as well as I) have used are extreme, yet you continue to hammer on job exportation as the main (possibly sole) factor in job loss in the US.
That's your right, of course, and I don't see it as a republican or democratic outlook. Its simply what you have exposed yourself to seeing and allowed yourself to believe.
Believe it or not, Europe is experiencing the same situation with technological advances causing job losses, but their socialistic nature tends to protect jobs more there than the US does. And, if you're suggesting the government do more to prevent job loss (continue unncecessary jobs, such as railroad firemen after diesel locomotives were introduced, for example), then I would say you are promoting a socialist idea (no, I'm not suggesting you are a socialist, so please don't be offended).
So, as John Lennon sang in Revolution...
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan...
Just a personal observation...
A good friend of mine married a girl from Gary, and according to him (he is from Cincinnati) she grew up in a fairly decent area of the city. If you asked her where she was from, she would tell you "the greater Chicago area". She couldn't get away from Gary fast enough... from the high-crime and "stinking odor", as she once put it to me. Her father worked for Sears, and she has told me their house was broken into on numerous occasions.
Who wouldn't want to leave a place like that?
When did she grow up there? In the 50's through 60's, Gary was a nice city. With a thriving downtown and upscale shopping etc. My dad used to tell me it was big deal for his mom to drive him to downtown Gary to go shopping when they lived in Hammond in the early 60's.
My grandpa who worked 43 years at a steel mill in Gary finally moved 20 miles south of Gary in '78, two years before he retired. The last straw was when a good friend of his was murdered at a gas station he owned over $20 just a mile away from my grandpa's house.
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Studebaker was the only company to successfully move from horse drawn to horseless carriages.
Well, it's funny. I'm visiting friends in Michigan and have been driving their Chrysler Concorde some. They got it used - think it's around an '02. Pretty plush, power seats.sunroof, etc. and it drives nice. I don't spend much time in sedans but I don't know why a typical driver wouldn't enjoy cruising around in it. Our friends like it a lot.
Nice observation. I can't remember the last time I saw an episode of the Jetsons.
Wasn't the sole function of his job to depress the single button to put the machinery in motion in the morning and then once again to stop it at quitting time?
She left in the mid-70's, and was about 25 at the time, so I suspect she got the "full frontal view" of the area's decline.
Yeah, she wasn't alone, that was when the time when all of of the middle and upper middle class people moved out to neighboring communities.
I still drive through Gary on occasion and it's unbelievable bad. Stop lights have been replaced with temporary stop signs and what isn't boarded up has security gates. Definitely a sad situation.
I pass through Gary at least once a year, when we are in South Bend on Studebakering and take the excellent South Shore Line railroad from South Bend into downtown Chicago. There are two Gary stops. I know what you're talking about.
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OW
Styling is courtesy of Virgil Exner VI. Note the generous use of glass and huge tailfin.
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OW
Wow!
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Honda makes 250K cars in a plant with 2000 workers, GM needed 6000 workers...any intelligent businessperson would realize that 4000 people have jobs at GM they should not have...they should be eliminated, period...the company does not exist to provide jobs, the company exists for profit, and out of profit come jobs...no profit, no jobs...conservatives understand that, liberals don't, because they think companies exist so that employees can suck it dry...
It all comes down to change and adaptation...life changes and they either adapt or die, just like the dinosaur...Gary, Detroit, etc. chose not to adapt, so the final result was the only one...
Also remember, when gas was cheap in the 80s, Detroit was humming, but Texas and Louisiana were in the dumps...when oil went up, oil states thrived while auto states suffered...let the free market do its thing, and just realize there will be fallout, and that fallout must adapt...or die...
From the 1930's-1960's timeframe, Youngstown's population peaked at around 160-170,000 residents, but as the steel industry declined, people moved away. Latest estimate I saw for population is around 72,000.
The city tends to bulldoze homes that have become abandoned, to keep blight from setting in, and once a block gets down to one or two homes, often they'll pay the owner to move to a more populated area, so they can take that block "off the grid", shutting down electric and other utilities, and stopping maintenance to the streets. In some cases, I think they even block off the streets.
I've never been through Youngstown, but looking at the streets from overhead maps, it's pretty depressing looking, how the town just seems to be disappearing.
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My consistent point...it is only human sentimentality that has a problem with this...cities and towns come and go as the nation changes, whether from mining to farming, farming to manufacturing, manufacturing to services, or whatever...it is just what happened over 100 years ago doesn't matter to us because we don't SEE the deterioration, whereas here we SEE the rundown areas, the people moving, the empty houses, etc.
How many people in the stagecoach industry, buggy whip industry, horse stable industry lost their jobs when Henry Ford started making cars???...yet, we see Ford's cars as PROGRESS, as society moved forward...
Plus, it is no coincidence that the deteriorating regions now are where UNIONS grew too powerful and drove their own companies out of business, but I don't see anyone complaining about the destructive force of the unions, all they compalin about is the rundown areas...Philly, Detroit, Cleveland, Gary, etc all died because the unions who controlled everything killed their own golden goose by demanding more than their labor was ever worth...but nobody in those dying areas can see the truth, they just lament how bad things are, yet they made them that way...
'Taking care of our own', first, and not only thinking 'hey, what's best for me this very minute' is not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
With manufacturing becoming more technical, why would anyone want to invest in a plant where the local work force may not have a HS diploma or any type of work ethic. I know that's not universal, but we certainly have an education issue in many areas. Expecting to drop out of HS or graduating w/o any type of skill and expecting a $20hr job just isn't going to work. I've seen how thats worked around the mills.
I was talking to my friend about his small machine shop. The skills needed today to work in his shop require more than what is provided in HS. Instead of manual lathes and presses etc and lots of labor, he has million dollar CNCs and less employees that are more skilled. That's just the way it is. He's just a small shop and he spends money anywhere he can to keep from having to add employees.
Talk about 'entitlement mentality'--you're probably a proponent of affirmative action too.
As with everything, it's all about balance and not lopsided-ness.
Then why have foreign companies located plants in "backwards" areas where they are given huge amounts of subsidies at state taxpayer and other's expense?
So you are saying people in Detroit don't have a HS diploma? Or Youngstown? Or Dayton? That's bordering on ignorant.
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