What caused the fall of Detroit and how do we fix it?
A lot of my family is from Detroit and is pretty defeatist on the future of it.
I'm not very well educated on the subject and I was curious if any odlf you have any information on it's fall and situation.
Also why do people think Unions killed Detroit?
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Outsourcing?
I got too socialist and the blacks seized the means of production but because socialism is against human nature it didn't work. Meanwhile poor out of business captains of industry had to flee to mexico rebuild their factories with nothing but sticks, stones and their bare hands.
When people blame unions for the collapse of US industry it always comes from a "you made them leave perspective", which essentially is assigning the blame to people who have no agency over the decision. It wasn't the unions who moved those jobs to foreign labor markets, it was the corporation who wanted to protect its profit margin.
It's impossible to see the sense in blaming unions for this unless you assume that the profits of corps are something worth protecting.
Because capitalists love to shift the blame.
Unions gave bargaining power to the workers. This drove up the wages of the workers a bit. But even without that, over time the wages of the workers increased relative to that of overseas. At some point they would have gotten to the tipping point where non-domestic production + transport was cheaper than having it made in detroit. See graph related.
This cycle continues everywhere. Locally and internationally. Once a place gets a lot of manufacturing, a lot of real money goes there, or a lot of currency needs to be bought to pay for that production. This increases the real total value of all the money in this area. These products also need to be sold elsewhere, not just in detroit. So the wages in detroit, and the united states as a whole, steadily increased until they real cost of production domestically was higher than overseas and transportation. At that point all the companies leave and build new factories overseas. Then the now abandoned areas slowly drain of money due to either spending money within the country so theres less, or importing and devaluating their currency. The economy continues to decline, making imports more expensive and money more scarce. Unions have to make consessions because they need the factory for the workers, they cant get it all in capitalism. So unions decline in power, their members stop paying, factories continue to leave.
And all of this despite all the factories the workers build, the real productive ability there was. It isnt that people got lazy, or didnt want to work, or were gibsmedats. All of this could come back if the workers had the power to build it again, but they don't. The capitalist have the power, and they dont care if they have to move, the love it. They can go wherever it is cheapest, and threaten the hard working people even more by threatening to move overseas. They can squeeze the workers for all they have got, they can even get the local governments to pay for the factories or give tax breaks, which happens all the time, such as here .
This all happens because of production for profit. The people need cars, they want to have cars. They can make cars in detroit, they can farm food in Michigan, they can sow clothes, chop logs, make pencils and paper, build houses and fix roads. But they can't do it because the workers need to eat, and to eat they need money, and to have money they need to work for somebody, and if they work for somebody they cannot fix the roads, they cannot build houses, they cannot sow clothes, they cannot mine rocks for construction, or mine coal for electricity.
They got us by the balls and they fucking love it.
Detroit had a nice, booming automotive industry. It was one of the most wealthy cities in burgerstan during the 1950's, but many of the important companies which helped build the city backed out once they realized outsourcing was a thing, from which they could find cheaper labor.
NIGERS
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user, labor built the city. Then capital abandoned them.
Remember, open borders under capitalism is a Koch brothers wet dream
The black working class was quite successful. Many black families could afford new cars, vacations and other things.
Then the unemployment came
NAFTA
One idea is to turn the uninhabited neighborhoods into communal farms.
you know the answer
Perhaps fall caused by too high requirements of workers unions.
What does Niger have to do with it?
Free Trade
>catalyst-journal.com
I'll storytime the full piece when my gf gets home, I left the journal in the car and I don't have access to the online article to share.
basically he breaks down how japanese/european manufacturers were able to better compete and how the cappies basically shot themselves in the foot in an attempt to destroy labor organizing.
Japanese cars were on average ~$2000 cheaper. The wage difference between Japanese and American workers accounted for a cheaper price of ~$500, but it took american plants 30+ more hours per car which offset wages significantly. Tarriffs alone more than made up the difference ($700).
Not only were they cheaper but they kept adding new features american manufacturers lagged behind. This goes directly back to the inneficiency of the big three model in comparison with the flexible model in Japan/Europe. The worst part is that the Japanese and Europeans literally copied the pre-war fordist model which made the big three so dominant in the first place. Problem was that you needed to continue to improve on working conditions, wages, and benefits as this model was highly vulnerable to strike action.
The numbers I "quote" I believe come from the fist major auto crisis of the 70s and 80s that lead to the inevitable deindustrialization of detroit and the rust belt. The auto companies abandoned the fordist model model of constantly improving living standards and guaranteed employment and responded to the inevitable labor action by abandoning the flexible fordist factory model.
No it isnt you moron. Kochs know cheap labor will find its way into the country, high penalties means that they can control and exploit this cheap labor much more than us with the documents. Look at all the massive slave fact- I mean detention centers the right wing administration is building on the border.
As far as I know the cities economy was mostly focused on automotive and other industry.
Most of the industry has been moved overseas and the one that remained has been robotized.
That and the fact that crapitalism is inefficient system.
White people.
Never trust whitey.