Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Saw a program on PBS last night about Detroit called Detropia.  Things still look very bleak even with the auto companies making good profit now.  It talked about mayor Dave Bing is trying to consolidate the city's population to a smaller area and try to use the rest of the land to start urban farming.  The program did not really talk about how these two things can be accomplished.  It seems to me people are not going to willingly move to another part of the city unless there is a benefit, like a tax rebate.  As Bing said, the city is broke so how is it going to pay people to move?  And how is this urban farming to going to work?  What do they do with the land in the winter when things don't grow with snow on the ground?  Are these programs still on the agenda?  All I know is that I don't want to be in Bing's shoes!

This program made me think about the fires in Bangladesh factories recently.  There has been a lot of calling by activists to stop manufacturing in Bangladesh and other countries where safety violations are rampant.  While that is well meaning, I am sure the people of Bangladesh and other countries don't want the manufacturing to stop.  People who are starving are willing to take whatever safety risks to feed their children.  The Mexicans are willing to risk dying to cross over to the U.S. to find a job.  So the people of Bangladesh are willing to work in unsafe factories.  We should demand that companies from the U.S. do a much better job of policing the factories that make their products.  But in reality we are not doing the impoverish people any favor by taking away their jobs.

The truth is there are more and more people competing for limited manufacturing jobs all over the world.  Detroit will not get significant number of jobs back.  The city will have reinvent itself.  But with the poor public education system, I am not sure how they are going to be able to train the next generation in other types of work.  This will not be limited to Detroit but to rest of America as well.  I can see where the gap between the rich and poor will widen.  If you are not educated enough to get a professional job, you will be stuck in the service economy.  The middle class will shrink.  Having said that, I am not a pessimist for America as a whole.  Most of America can avoid what happened to Detroit and other old cities. Will talk about that in the future.