Detroit...

[kentuck]

Growing up in Appalachia, I remember people moving north to find work. Some moved to Cincinnati. Some moved to Dayton. Some moved to Lima. A few moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana and other places. By and large, most of them moved to Detroit, because if you needed a job, that was a place to find it. You might be lucky and find a job with General Motors, Ford, or Cadillac. If not, there was always work to
be found.

Fresh out of high school, I moved to Detroit and lived with an uncle for a while, as I worked about 75 hours a week in a meat-packing plant. The overtime made it good money. I was able to pay cash for my first car, a two-year old Mercury Parklane Cruiser. It gave new meaning to the term "land yacht".

But, today, Detroit is one of the most depressed cities in America. What happened? Was it really the unions that destroyed it? Or was it the animosity towards unions that destroyed it??

Since the time of Henry Ford and the first automobiles, Detroit was the hub of manufacturing in this country. What happened to this once-great city?

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

1. Grew up in Detroit so

my perspective might be skewed. As far as cars go, the Big Three seemed to take the customer for granted and the Germans and Japanese snuck in and grabbed a huge share of the market in the mid 70's.
It was never the same after that.
For the record, I worked for about 9 months at the Ford Wixom plant on the line. Anyone who says auto workers are lazy and overpaid is seriously ignorant.

[kentuck]

2. I remember the ugly little cars...

they made on the cheap, hoping to compete with the Toyota Corolla and other small cars. They never seemed to adapt after the first oil shock in 1974.

[RKP5637]

3. To me, this is exactly what happened, "the Big Three seemed to take the customer for granted." nt

[notadmblnd]

4. The riots, the desegregation of the public schools and resulting white flight to the suburbs

that's what happened to Detroit.

[jotsy]

5. You want the whole list or just the top 20,000 Sir Tuck?

Okay so that's an exaggeration, yes.

Excessive compensation packages for upper management. I'd expect if given charts over a few years, we'd find a corporate structure that's a bit heavy on the top as well.

Likely yielding to the wishes and whims of big oil when they might have had a better shot at a stronger foothold on the small car markets before international models got heavily imported.

I'm guessing costs for insurance of all kinds went through the roof and splintered requiring new product premiums.

Demand and its relationship to inventory and price structure are and have likely been for some time, out of whack with one another and the lessening viability of this consumer base.

Labor was relocated in order to make the most of them who already had just that. All other consideration outside of profit doesn't qualify as such, damn the people and the community they developed and depended on. Things that might be everything to you and me is as insignificant as fractions of pennies to the affluent.

The Gordon Gecco mantra minus an o is what happened to the city. What's worse is such callus notions are not frowned upon, but envied and emulated.

These are guesses, I've not read up on the topic, though I do know a guy who knows a lot about the early days at Ford.

Other classic American cities are feeling a public pinch as illustrated in Atlanta on Wednesday, when 30,000 people showed up to get applications for a housing program. Unemployment is said to be stable but when benefits run out and folks still haven't found work, they're not counted anymore...at all. I see Detroit and Atlanta as precursors and more communities including my own Northwest hub where families are starting to live together as generations in tight quarters. Employment ads in the Sunday paper used to be its own section, now it barely fills a single page.

It is a short sighted society that would allow itself to bleed so profusely from the mid section. That may be the problem though, they don't see us as part of their society.

[kentuck]

6. And we cannot overlook the fact that the unions had enemies...

in the corporate world that were looking for ways to break them. They would subsidize foreign auto makers to build plants in different states to compete with the union laborers in Detroit. It wasn't just the foreign auto makers that helped to tear down Detroit, it was anti-union politicians pushing them from every angle they possibly could.

[kwassa]

7. The auto industry deserted the city themselves

They started setting up plants in locations all over the country and abandoned the ones in Detroit. The American auto industry also peaked in the 1950s, and then slowly, then quickly started losing market share to foreign cars.

The jobs left, the city collapsed. Other major cities have the same problems with the globalization of manufacturing, most of whose jobs have left the country altogether, never to return.

[Urban Prairie]

8. My former place of employment 1974-1982 RIP

Michigan Central Station-owned by Penn Central RR, then Conrail, which was a US government project to combine about five nearly bankrupt railroads into one, that finally made a profit in '81. I was laid off permanently in July '82. and about 5 years later, the building was abandoned and many of the remaining employees were also laid off or were in management and transferred to HQ in Philadelphia.

Conrail was ultimately broken up and most of it was sold to the CSX,and I believe the CN, in which the former began to build sidetracks to and from the new foreign-owned auto plants being built in the SE US. This helped the foreign automakers dramatically cut shipping costs (largely contributing to Detroit's decline as the former auto capital of the US) by transporting new vehicles to the Midwest and the NE via railcar, instead of by via truck. Conrail today remains only as a very small sidetrack switching operation in the NE and Midwest.

[phasma ex machina]

9. Thanks for posting that hauntingly beautiful image.

When dozens of auto manufacturers populated the Great Lakes region during the 1930s the automobile industry was vibrant. Then the three big ogres came along and ate all of the little guys. The ogres got so large that eventually the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. That's my theory.

[Urban Prairie]

11. You're welcome!!

I just wish that I would have thought to take a camera to work and photographed the MCS ornate interior and its exterior lit up at night, and taken lots of pictures of the lighting, as well as the marble walls, and floors of its hallways and the varnished/polished hardwood flooring of the offices on each floor of the building.

The MCS's bustling heydays exist now only in my fading memories.

[kentuck]

12. Excellent portrait, Urban Prairie...

:-)

[Urban Prairie]

15. Thanks kentuck! n/t

[metapunditedgy]

10. Growing up in Detroit, I heard the issue was the riots and flight to the suburbs.

Many buildings in Detroit were just left to fall apart. People living in partially-collapsed buildings.

The money left the city with the flight to the suburbs. Then a war between the city and the 'burbs, spurred on by Coleman Young and probably many other factors.

After a while, there was nothing to gain by setting up shop in Detroit, and the downward spiral (violence, poverty) accelerated. Schools became so violent and (sorry) unproductive that people who could manage it sent their kids out of the city. Police were either afraid of the criminals, or working with them.

Maybe there was something more sinister than that going on behind the scenes, but that was bad enough. I don't know anything about union participation, unless maybe they supported the move to the suburbs.

[kentuck]

16. I think the riots hurt the city very much...

Was it around 1967 or '68 or earlier??

But there was a lot of racism, from all sides.

I recall that my sister was visiting relatives there while the riots were going on. It was like a war zone. Some stood guard with rifles and shotguns in their windows. Cars were vandalized and set afire up and down the streets. There was outright racist hatred, from all sides.

I would love to see Detroit rebuilt.

[metapunditedgy]

18. Detroit is an amazing place. It will affect me forever.

I wasn't around during the riots; some of that info is from other folks who were around at that time. I grew up there in the '80's, after the initial damage was done.

Lots of hatred and violence. Almost 30 years later, I still jump when I hear someone running up (or driving slowly) behind me.

Some of the best people I have ever known were also Detroiters. I wish I could describe it... some truly incredible people I was fortunate enough to know, living in some of the worst conditions in urban America (in my opinion).

[MrScorpio]

13. Detroit and Michigan are an example of the failure of "Free Market Economics"

They owe allegiance to no one, except their stock holders.

[shugah]

21. +

very succinct and hammer hitting nail. i rambled a bit in a post below because detroit once had the potential to change the world... too bad it didn't.

far too many people in MI bought into reagan. sad.

most people in america have no real idea about detroit. it's the car city, or arsenal of democracy, or murder capitol, or that city with the really sad pics. it's actually a city that has been under attack ever since the first union gained a stronghold,

[kentuck]

22. +

And they feel they have no responsibility to the community. If they want to pack up and leave then they have that right.

You are right. "They owe allegiance to no one, except their stock holders."

[PassingFair]

14. Detroit became a one-trick pony.

We put the world on wheels.

We will make a comeback when we have some diversification.



We are the gateway to the midwest.

[Berserker]

19. Is that like

saying the Dallas cowboys are Americas team?

[PassingFair]

20. I guess it's like saying that if the Dallas Cowboys lose for a few years....

it doesn't mean they will lose forever.

[shugah]

17. 'twas the anti-union sentiment.

for a brief shining moment in history detroit showed everyone the progressive path forward. unfortunately that moment of shining drew the ire of those that control the wealth - and look how successfully they thwarted our attempts at some equality for workers, and a strong middle class!

i caution the rest of the city's in america to look to detroit for your future. your grand-kids will be touring detroit like we tour old west ghost-towns. but it is ghost-metropoli...

i am the proud descendant of people who fought to bring unions to detroit! (thank you Grampa for the postal union! you'd be so sad to see how it has all turned out.)

i wonder who gets the last laugh? the greedy who fought hook-line-and-sinker to kill the consuming middle class, or the people who once had decent paying jobs and are now slipping daily in to poverty?

detroit in it's heyday was awesome to behold. it still is, just in an entirely different way.