Detroit... 60 yeears of Democratic rule

[haymarket]

Exactly! It's passed back and forth as "fact" which is so obvious it doesn't NEED cold hard facts!


So true...it also wasn't a Detroit phenomenon taking place but something happening across the country.


Not to mention people that work at car plants are skilled labor. There's a reason that Detroit pays salaries that are comparable to foreign auto-makers...you can't pull anyone off the street and stick them in that assembly line. The salaries are compensation for that.

This entire exchange between the OP poster demonstrates the extent to which BELIEFS have consumed and taken over the right wing today. They listen only to each other and their approved media sources which are also far right and they treat with open hostility anything which does not toe that far right line.

You can get in a car and drive around Detroit and SE Michigan and just about every community of any size at all has an auto plant which sixty years ago would have been in Detroit. Wood haven .... Sterling Heights ..... Livonia ...... you could list twenty of them. The suburbs were practically giving away this land at cheap prices decades ago and sometimes generous tax abutments with it. Detroit simply could not compete with that nor did they have the land available in the first place.

Your point about skilled labor is a key one. Long gone are the days of somebody hitting a part with a rubber mallet for eight hours a day - they have robots who do that now.

 

[Fenton Lum]

This entire exchange between the OP poster demonstrates the extent to which BELIEFS have consumed and taken over the right wing today. They listen only to each other and their approved media sources which are also far right and they treat with open hostility anything which does not toe that far right line.

You can get in a car and drive around Detroit and SE Michigan and just about every community of any size at all has an auto plant which sixty years ago would have been in Detroit. Wood haven .... Sterling Heights ..... Livonia ...... you could list twenty of them. The suburbs were practically giving away this land at cheap prices decades ago and sometimes generous tax abutments with it. Detroit simply could not compete with that nor did they have the land available in the first place.

Your point about skilled labor is a key one. Long gone are the days of somebody hitting a part with a rubber mallet for eight hours a day - they have robots who do that now.

Yup, they no longer require workers to turn a profit, that's what our militarized police depts and corporate for profit prisons are for where the system can turn $40-50K per hominid per year; the excess population that the Wall Street/donor/"job creator" class no longer has need for requires mopping up. Easy enough to criminalized those outside the aristocracy.

 

[haymarket]

Yup, they do not require workers to turn a profit, that's what our militarized police depts and corporate for profit prisons are for where the system can turn $40-50K per hominid per year are for; the excess population that the Wall Street/donor/"job creator" class no longer has need for.

What was that line from GANGS OF NEW YORK when the people rioted against the draft? "We will hire half of the lower class to kill the other half."

 

[Fenton Lum]

What was that line from GANGS OF NEW YORK when the people rioted against the draft? "We will hire half of the lower class to kill the other half."

There it is, ever since Bacon's Rebellion, and it still works.

 

[haymarket]

There it is, ever since Bacon's Rebellion, and it still works.

Sadly, its an age old formula that is effective.

I have a younger brother who never liked school much and ended up working in the state prison system for 25 years until he took his retirement. He is a fairly big fellow and did well in the job but four decades earlier he would have been on the line in a plant. But they simply do not need the bodies any longer like they used to.

When i worked for the state legislature I took far too many tours of plants that were massive left overs from earlier decades. Plants with parking lots to fit 5,000 cars and now with less than 500 workers occupying less than a quarter of space in that same plant. Jobs which used to take a 200 pound strong man to do are now done far more efficiently by a 115 pound woman with the aid of robotic machinery. And there is a social and economic cost to this progress.

But then, that is the challenge of our century - what exactly do we do when half of the population is no longer necessary to produce all we consume but are only valuable as consumers of what the other half produces?

 

[AliHajiSheik]

Philadelphia has had only Democrat mayors for 10 years longer than Detroit and everything there is wonderful. Of course, that is after 68 straight years of Republican mayors.

 

[chuckiechan]

Detroit was the wealthiest city in the USA for decades. Then in 1962 they elected a liberal Democratic Mayor, and the people of Detroit have done so to this day.

Hard to argue the results of one party rule. A good example of how the train leaves the tracks when liberals with good intentions, ruin it for all in the city..

Detroit in RUINS! (Crowder goes Ghetto) - YouTube

Any one have an example of this with Republican rule of a city for over 50 years?

I would be curious to know..

This is why Obama sought demographic change. He saw that it vanquished the republican party, and as a result you have Detroit, Chicago, and other massive ghettos. Obama forgot about the electoral college, and probably would have moved heaven and earth to help Hillary change it if she would have won to make his demographic change stick.

 

[Neomalthusian]

How would it be a factor when foreign automakers pay similar salaries to the big 3? If anyone has been squeezing those companies it would be the US CEO who makes much more than any of their competitor counterparts.

The level of desperation and partisanship inherent in trying to make the story of Detroit about CEO compensation is truly astounding.

Yes - many of those were definitely factors in the population decline. I have yet to see the poster buck up their claim that it was Democratic party policies of Democratic mayors that were responsible however.

Democratic Party and Big Labor politics ruled the city government for over a half century. Every government pension deal and labor contract for a half century required abject apathy that they were going to beat the already-battered tax base into the ground as if the money was still there for the taking to satisfy labor unions, when it wasn't. Detroit would have gotten ugly regardless, but giving unions the keys to the city for a half century made it incalculably worse.

It wasn't just the fact that the leaders were Democrats that Detroit became irrecoverably screwed. It was because the leaders of the city (who happened to be Democrats) were union puppets. If they had been Republicans who were union puppets, it would have been the same, because it wasn't the letter behind the name that ruined the city, it was the the cowering and service to labor unions during this period of decline that ensured Detroit's bankruptcy.

 

[Fenton Lum]

Sadly, its an age old formula that is effective.

I have a younger brother who never liked school much and ended up working in the state prison system for 25 years until he took his retirement. He is a fairly big fellow and did well in the job but four decades earlier he would have been on the line in a plant. But they simply do not need the bodies any longer like they used to.

When i worked for the state legislature I took far too many tours of plants that were massive left overs from earlier decades. Plants with parking lots to fit 5,000 cars and now with less than 500 workers occupying less than a quarter of space in that same plant. Jobs which used to take a 200 pound strong man to do are now done far more efficiently by a 115 pound woman with the aid of robotic machinery. And there is a social and economic cost to this progress.

But then, that is the challenge of our century - what exactly do we do when half of the population is no longer necessary to produce all we consume but are only valuable as consumers of what the other half produces?

The power structure has decided, quite some time ago now, that they no longer require "we the people" for consumption either, so they see no need for society as a whole to have an income sufficient to do the consuming.

And it is nothing new at all. The "capitalists" of Britain advised the "capitalists" of america thusly during the american's "civil" war:

The advantages of slavery by debt over “chattel” slavery—ownership of humans as a property right—were set out in an infamous document called the Hazard Circular, reportedly circulated by British banking interests among their American banking counterparts during the American Civil War. It read in part:

“ Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are glad of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages."

Slaves had to be housed, fed and cared for. “Free” men housed and fed themselves. For the more dangerous jobs, such as mining, Irish immigrants were used rather than black slaves, because the Irish were expendable. Free men could be kept enslaved by debt, by paying wages insufficient to meet their costs of living. The Hazard Circular explained how to control wages:

“This can be done by controlling the money. The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the war, must be used as a means to control the volume of money. … It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that."

The government, too, had to be enslaved by debt. It could not be allowed to simply issue the money it needed to meet its budget, as Abraham Lincoln’s government did with its greenbacks (government-issued U.S. notes). The greenback program was terminated after the war, forcing the government to borrow from banks—banks that created the money themselves, just as the government had been doing. Only about 10 percent of the “bank notes” then issued by banks were actually backed by gold. The rest were effectively counterfeit.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/240517700/The-Hazard-Circular-Documentary-Evidence

 

[iliveonramen]

The level of desperation and partisanship inherent in trying to make the story of Detroit about CEO compensation is truly astounding.

As opposed to the view that it's unions? Most of the top competitors of US automakers have unions and have salaries comparable to US autoworkers.

When it comes to compensation there's only one place where the US differs drastically from it's competitors. I'm just pointing that fact out.

Democratic Party and Big Labor politics ruled the city government for over a half century. Every government pension deal and labor contract for a half century required abject apathy that they were going to beat the already-battered tax base into the ground as if the money was still there for the taking to satisfy labor unions, when it wasn't. Detroit would have gotten ugly regardless, but giving unions the keys to the city for a half century made it incalculably worse

.
So it has nothing to do with globalization and economic changes? It seems to me that almost every former industrial city in the US faced similar issues. Maybe they didn't fall as far but most weren't as wealthy as Detroit. Maybe some rebounded better, but they were a bit more diversified.

It wasn't the fact that the leaders were Democrats that Detroit became especially ruined. It was because the leaders of the city were union puppets. If they had been Republicans who were union puppets, it would have made no difference, as it was the cowering and service to labor unions during this period of decline that ensured Detroit's bankruptcy.

Sooo...in your view if pensions and unions didn't exist Detroit would be a bustling metropolis? I will grant you that the city would of had more leeway when it came to it's finances but the city's fate was tied to US manufacturing and no matter what the conditions where, Detroit of the 1950's wouldn't exist.

 

[Neomalthusian]

As opposed to the view that it's unions? Most of the top competitors of US automakers have unions and have salaries comparable to US autoworkers.

I'm not just talking about unions in the context of automakers. I'm talking about unions in the overall context of Detroit and its government.

So it has nothing to do with globalization and economic changes?

Of course it does, but adding union-dominated politics on top of the economic decline is like blood-letting to treat iron deficiency. It makes it unbelievably worse.

It seems to me that almost every former industrial city in the US faced similar issues. Maybe they didn't fall as far but most weren't as wealthy as Detroit. Maybe some rebounded better, but they were a bit more diversified.

Sooo...in your view if pensions and unions didn't exist Detroit would be a bustling metropolis?

I don't know if it would be a bustling metropolis but, at an absolute minimum, the city wouldn't have sunk as far and would have rebounded faster had unions never existed there. Unions decimated this city. And the story doesn't end there. The next chapter in this story is Illinois. Utter destruction.

 

[iliveonramen]

I'm not just talking about unions in the context of automakers. I'm talking about unions in the overall context of Detroit and its government.

Which I started to realize halfway through my reply. My bad.

I don't know if it would be a bustling metropolis but, at an absolute minimum, the city wouldn't have sunk as far and would have rebounded faster had unions never existed there. Unions decimated this city. And the story doesn't end there. The next chapter in this story is Illinois. Utter destruction.

Which I agree with. Without Unions and pensions then the city itself would have more financial flexibility.

It would still be facing a decreasing population, empty factories, high unemployment and other traits you find in most rustbelt cities.

 

[haymarket]

The level of desperation and partisanship inherent in trying to make the story of Detroit about CEO compensation is truly astounding.



Democratic Party and Big Labor politics ruled the city government for over a half century. Every government pension deal and labor contract for a half century required abject apathy that they were going to beat the already-battered tax base into the ground as if the money was still there for the taking to satisfy labor unions, when it wasn't. Detroit would have gotten ugly regardless, but giving unions the keys to the city for a half century made it incalculably worse.

It wasn't just the fact that the leaders were Democrats that Detroit became irrecoverably screwed. It was because the leaders of the city (who happened to be Democrats) were union puppets. If they had been Republicans who were union puppets, it would have been the same, because it wasn't the letter behind the name that ruined the city, it was the the cowering and service to labor unions during this period of decline that ensured Detroit's bankruptcy.

Please present the data showing your claim that the city cowered to the labor unions and that was what caused the decline of Detroit.

 

[Neomalthusian]

Please present the data showing your claim that the city cowered to the labor unions and that was what caused the decline of Detroit.

I would tell you to do your own homework, but you already know. You always pull this little maneuver when a discussion isn't going the direction you want it to, you suddenly play completely dumb and demand "data" showing things that everyone, yourself included, obviously already knows. No one disputes the absolute political dominance of Democrats and unions in Detroit since the 1960s. Not even you.

 

[haymarket]

I would tell you to do your own homework, but you already know. You always pull this little maneuver when a discussion isn't going the direction you want it to, you suddenly play completely dumb and demand "data" showing things that everyone, yourself included, obviously already knows. No one disputes the absolute political dominance of Democrats and unions in Detroit since the 1960s. Not even you.

It is up to the person making the claim of fact to support he claim with the evidence - and in this case that is you providing the evidence showing 1) the causal connection between labor unions and the downfall of Detroit and 2) the Democratic Party policies which you connect to the downfall of Detroit.

 

[OpportunityCost]

https://www.careerbliss.com/toyota/salaries/ceo/ - CEO

CEO Reithofer received a fixed salary of almost 454,000 euros and a variable bonus of 2.26 million euros.
https://www.reuters.com/article/bmw...-bmw-executive-salaries-idUSN1431452020070314
- BWM


Is he worth it?! Ford CEO makes more than heads of Toyota, Honda, Nissan COMBINED - NY Daily News
A little comparison showing that Ford CEO makes more than the heads of Toyota, Honda, and Nissan combined.

Money where mouth is at. Now time for you to start weaseling?

Toyota’s top executives, including Toyoda, took pay cuts and gave up bonuses as the carmaker recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide to fix defects linked to unintended acceleration. Toyoda worried he would have to step down as president ahead of U.S. Congressional hearings on the recalls in February, he said yesterday.

What were they making before the recalls?

 

[Neomalthusian]

It is up to the person making the claim of fact to support he claim with the evidence - and in this case that is you providing the evidence showing 1) the causal connection between labor unions and the downfall of Detroit and 2) the Democratic Party policies which you connect to the downfall of Detroit.

It won't matter, you will refuse to perceive any connection and balk the entire way through, even though there is hardly a more dramatic example of a city so dominated by the Democratic Party and Big Labor in the history of our nation, they can't have anything to do with one another because you're a partisan and a big union fan. So you will always spin it some other direction, like how you dug back into history as far as was necessary to find a Republican to blame for Detroit.

What's happening in Illinois lately? Do you know anything about the fiscal condition of the state? Ever heard of Michael Madigan? Aware of anything going on there? Or are you clueless about that too?

Unions' entire purpose is to make public employers spend more on public employment regardless of how battered the tax base is. When the tax base is getting hammered and the economy is contracting, unions' job is to play stupid to all that, pay it a minimal amount of lip service and then demand no cuts be made and that raises keep getting doled out. More, more, more. Their entire purpose is to put upward pressure on state and municipal payroll expenditures, including when the opposite is needed. And when the people they are negotiating with are people they installed (Democrats), who do you think is going to prevail? The unions, or the already-battered taxpayers?

Keep playing dumb, it's really winning the argument for you. And keep an eye on Illinois and their lead union puppet, Speaker Madigan.

 

[haymarket]

It won't matter, you will refuse to perceive any connection and balk the entire way through, even though there is hardly a more dramatic example of a city so dominated by the Democratic Party and Big Labor in the history of our nation, they can't have anything to do with one another because you're a partisan and a big union fan. So you will always spin it some other direction, like how you dug back into history as far as was necessary to find a Republican to blame for Detroit.

Lets find out what matters. Lets see you back up your claims with verifiable evidence.

You have not.

You will not.

You can not.

 

[VanceMack]

Conservatives try to bludgeon Democrats with the idea that Detroit is what happens when Democratic policies take over.

That's false..Detroit is a great example of a lot of things, globalization and the movement of jobs overseas, how blacks moved north to manufacturing centers for jobs right as the bottom fell out of manufacturing, white flight to the suburbs and other large scale changes that took place.

So this all happened overnight, did it? And that explains 60 years of rat party 'leadership' failures with the entire collective sitting around with their collective thumbs up their asses doing nothing?

Yes...THATS why you blindly vote democrat. And thats what you get. And that cycle is repeated in every major city across the country.

 

[Neomalthusian]

Lets find out what matters. Lets see you back up your claims with verifiable evidence.

Your denial and feigned ignorance isn't going to win you any arguments on this topic, and in fact it never has. You always sit back and demand data of things that everyone knows whenever the discussion isn't going your way. Everyone (yourself included) who has ever read a lick of Detroit political and economic history is fully aware of the absolute dominance of Big Labor and the Democratic Party for more than fifty years. We all know about it. No one honestly disputes what I'm saying, except you all of a sudden, as if you're completely clueless of Detroit. Unions have overwhelmingly supported Democrats in Michigan and Detroit, and Democrats have overwhelmingly held all the political power in Detroit for eons. For decades, Detroit has epitomized the famous quote of then-head of AFSCME Victor Gotbaum when he said "We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss." When the people government unions are negotiating against are the appointees of the Democrats they installed, they are going to get their way, and this requires the taxpaying public take the hit. Do that for enough decades in spite of economic contraction and population decline, and you end up with Detroit. Or Illinois. Or New Jersey.

UAW didn't cause absolutely everything that happened in the auto industry, but it did contribute to the problem dramatically. UAW's power leading up to the collapse was absolutely enormous, and its role in sand-bagging the domestic auto-industry was huge. After that though, the ongoing power of unions to install Democrats in local government that would play softball with them at the negotiating table prolonged and exacerbated Detroit's inability to rebound. The "data" on this would involve decades of bargaining history, pension liability analysis, public sector compensation studies, and so forth. You don't get to assign me the immense task of educating you on Detroit's full political and economic history, but your balking and feigned ignorance of it doesn't make some fake alternative history of Detroit which is flattering to Democrats and unions true either.

 

[Blkdirt Farmer]

I would tell you to do your own homework, but you already know. You always pull this little maneuver when a discussion isn't going the direction you want it to, you suddenly play completely dumb and demand "data" showing things that everyone, yourself included, obviously already knows. No one disputes the absolute political dominance of Democrats and unions in Detroit since the 1960s. Not even you.

Now there is the exact truth about this poster. You have him nailed down tight. :applaud

His tactics are not debate at all. Now that I know this is how this poster "operates" appropriate responses will be made.

Child like, really childish way to be.

 

[Nickyjo]

Mississippi seems to have done poorly under conservative leadership of both parties. Strangely, my liberal California does quite well under democrats. If you want to go back in time, the greatest period of economic growth in history occurred under the momentum started by the New Deal and continued in the generally liberal consensus post WWII, til the cracks started in the 70s.

Better than criticize one party in one city affected by globalization, challenge the policies put forward by it and explain their negative effects.

 

[VanceMack]

Mississippi seems to have done poorly under conservative leadership of both parties. Strangely, my liberal California does quite well under democrats. If you want to go back in time, the greatest period of economic growth in history occurred under the momentum started by the New Deal and continued in the generally liberal consensus post WWII, til the cracks started in the 70s.

Better than criticize one party in one city affected by globalization, challenge the policies put forward by it and explain their negative effects.

You REEALLY think California is 'doing well'???

 

[OpportunityCost]

As opposed to the view that it's unions? Most of the top competitors of US automakers have unions and have salaries comparable to US autoworkers.

When it comes to compensation there's only one place where the US differs drastically from it's competitors. I'm just pointing that fact out.


.
So it has nothing to do with globalization and economic changes? It seems to me that almost every former industrial city in the US faced similar issues. Maybe they didn't fall as far but most weren't as wealthy as Detroit. Maybe some rebounded better, but they were a bit more diversified.


Sooo...in your view if pensions and unions didn't exist Detroit would be a bustling metropolis? I will grant you that the city would of had more leeway when it came to it's finances but the city's fate was tied to US manufacturing and no matter what the conditions where, Detroit of the 1950's wouldn't exist.

Actually they don't.

 

[Neomalthusian]

Mississippi seems to have done poorly under conservative leadership of both parties. Strangely, my liberal California does quite well under democrats.

In economies that are already very strong and have big industries and tons of rich people, everyone can get pretty much what they want. The argument isn’t that liberal policies always kill entire economies, it’s that when there is low, zero or negative growth or, worse, the economic **** is hitting the fan, adding union-dominated government to that equation seals the casket. Unions deny that the money is low or gone, insist plenty is still there and they deserve it, and will batter the taxpayers all the way to bankruptcy if allowed.

Better than criticize one party in one city affected by globalization, challenge the policies put forward by it and explain their negative effects.

I don’t criticize one party, I criticize one interest group that typically controls one party and is especially detrimental where governments are deeply indebted and economies are struggling, because they add fuel to the fire.