JC Callender
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2013
- Messages
- 6,477
- Reaction score
- 3,270
- Location
- Metro Detroit
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Undisclosed
lol...I went to high school and college in the region, and left when the industry decided to begin manufacturing cars and automotive components in the Southern states. Now they manufacture almost everything South of I-40 and build huge plants in Saltillo, Mexico.
The demise of the cities and death of manufacturing in them was a combination of union busting, Reagan starving cities of funds, and local D corruption. Drugs too were a major problem. Damn auto plants in the city during the late 70]s had issues with vice: gambling, drugs loan sharking, prostitution, etc; that rivaled those in the Cass Corridor.
There is still some automotive manufacturing in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and PA, etc. Wisconsin lost it's big Truck and Bus GM plant back in '08.
The bulk of domestic American automotive manufacturing is now done by small non-union suppliers out in the sticks. Japanese and other foreign car companies are non-union. So, they have huge plants in places like OH, KY, TN and AL. These places are out there for several reasons. Small companies and foreign plants in rural areas are harder to organize; they are almost never located along bus routes; property taxes are low, as are other infrastructure expenses, and regulations are lax. As a result, most of these places are 90% white, with management approaching 100%--unless we're talking about the Japanese transplants, those companies are 50-50 Japanese and White.
Few people build manufacturing plants in the city anymore.
Here's another thing that happens when you have good leadership. You're the mayor of Detroit (Coleman Young) in the 70's and 80's. You get together with the leaders of the unions and the auto companies and say "look guys, we have everything here to make great cars cheaply...thousands of machine shops and plants all around Metro Detroit so shipping alone will be dirt cheap, let's come to an agreement on how we can work well together". How bad of a leader do you have to be for everyone to leave Detroit in droves?