.

[CA renter]

Agreed.

[The-Shoveler]

“Additionally, this healthcare debacle is why many of us are staunchly opposed to a for-profit healthcare system. There are far too many conflicts of interest in such a system, and we are NOT getting better care as a result.”

+1

”
I view low wages as an external cost like pollution. Saying you need to pay low wages is like saying you must be allowed to pollute in order to compete.

They’ll whine that ALL those jobs will go away, but they won’t. Only some will. So instead of having the 100 people at the poverty wage paying place all dependent on the dole for food stamps and health care, we’d have some of them on the dole and many of the remainder would be working at the place that paid real wages and still made decent stuff that was worth the price paid. We’d all have to do with less disposable stuff.”

+1

Great posts guys

Yea and I need to set hard stops too.

[SK in CV]

Interesting development here:

The bad news for Detroiters is that the city’s bankruptcy will likely only deepen the decay of its downtown housing market.

That might deter most prospective home buyers. But some look at Detroit’s hard times and see profit.

Specifically, bargain-hunting Chinese investors. Since the bankruptcy was announced on July 18, talk of snapping up Detroit housing for a pittance has picked up on Sina Weibo (link in Chinese), reports Sina Finance. And it appears to be translating into real interest; Caroline Chen, a real estate broker in Troy, Michigan, says she’s received “tons of calls” from people in mainland China.

“I have people calling and saying, ‘I’m serious—I wanna buy 100, 200 properties,’” she tells Quartz, noting that one of her colleagues recently sold 30 properties to a Chinese buyer. “They say ‘We don’t need to see them. Just pick the good ones.’”

http://qz.com/107937/the-latest-chinese-investment-craze-downtown-detroit-housing/

It isn’t impossible for Detroit to come back. Though I doubt there is either the political fortitude nor the private risk capital to make it happen any time soon. Gentrification takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of risk. I don’t suspect these particular investors are going to take it that direction. I hope I’m wrong.

[livinincali]

[quote=The-Shoveler]
I view low wages as an external cost like pollution. Saying you need to pay low wages is like saying you must be allowed to pollute in order to compete.

They’ll whine that ALL those jobs will go away, but they won’t. Only some will. So instead of having the 100 people at the poverty wage paying place all dependent on the dole for food stamps and health care, we’d have some of them on the dole and many of the remainder would be working at the place that paid real wages and still made decent stuff that was worth the price paid. We’d all have to do with less disposable stuff.”
[/quote]

Low wages are subjective. Why should we attempt to set the minimum wage at a level where you can support a family of 4 on a single income. Clearly there are numerous members in our society that work part time for some discretionary income that are not supporting a family of 4 and do not require a wage that supports a family of 4. Honestly is retail clerk, or pizza delivery driver, or burger flipper a career that we should inspire people to start a family around. When was the last time you walked into one of those places and saw mostly people that looked like family breadwinners on the other side of the register.

As you can see from Europe when you set various employment standards and work rules the result seems to be locking the inexperienced youth out of the work force. Youth employment is tremendously high in many European countries and a lot of that has to do with work place rules and wages that make it way to risky for business to hire inexperienced youth. If you make it risky and cost prohibitive to hire inexperienced youth where are your future experienced productive employees going to come from.

Do you think target and walmart are going to raise prices when minimum wage goes up to maintain what are small profit margins (<10%) or do you think one of them will take to opportunity to explorer more self check out stations and new technologies that bill your credit card as you walk out the door.

[spdrun]

Mix the best of Europe and the US.

Europe: guaranteed vacation time, limit on working hours to 35/wk, public health insurance and pensions. This takes benefits out of the hands of employers, preserves employees’ sanity and family time, and forces more hiring to happen since productivity is limited by hours (spread the wealth).

US: Employment at will, right to work — makes it easier to let go employees that aren’t performing, unlike in Europe where such rules are more rigid.

[burghMan]

Caroline Chen, a real estate broker in Troy, Michigan, says she’s received “tons of calls” from people in mainland China.

It may seem like a small point, but Troy is not Detroit. It’s even in a different county. There are some very nice areas around Detroit, including Troy, north of the “8 Mile.” Michigan has some very nice, upscale cities (even though it is very flat and the weather is not great.) Although the heydey of the auto industry is gone, there is still lots of industry in Michigan.

The problems with Detroit are mostly in the city proper. Drive south from Troy to Detroit on I-75 and you can see it the neighborhoods get worse the further you go. By the time you reach downtown, the abandoned buildings and decay are quite obvious even from the highway.

I don’t see the city ever recovering. It seems to be past the point of no return. There are entire neighborhoods that would have to be razed. Maybe it will recover slowly, after many decades it could all be cleaned up, but I don’t think I will see the city of Detroit recover in my lifetime.

[njtosd]

[quote=burghMan] It’s even in a different county. There are some very nice areas around Detroit, including Troy, north of the “8 mile”. [/quote]

BurghMan – you must be from CA. It may be “the 5” here, but in Detroit, it’s just 8 mile (also the name of Eminem’s movie). It separates Detroit from everything else.

[burghMan]

I do live in CA, but I’m from an industrial city similar to Detroit that ends in “burgh” (note the “h”)

In the past year I traveled to Detroit (Rochester Hills) quite a bit. My co-workers were making fun of the fact that I had to go to Detroit, but I was pleasantly surprised when I got there the first time.

I have lived in CA for a long time though. I guess I picked up the habit of putting “the” in front of road names.

[CDMA ENG]

[quote=Hobie]Sure there were problems with labor costs but in the mid-late ’80’s Toyota Celica had a ‘betty’ to announce if your door was a-jar. No American car had this. The wow factor coupled with a affordable price point garnered consumerism attention and money.

Market forces prevail and the cool factor of the hip, airplane cockpit gauges took hold. Detroit countered with the Pinto and Gremlin. or K car even. C-mon. The Japanese skunked us. We did not learn and they took, and continue, to take huge market share.

Simply put, with or without unions, Detroit had viable competition that is winning by delivering a better product.

Relax the enviro constrictions on manufacturing and relax the constraints of energy production and Motor City will return as we will always need lots of new cars/trucks.[/quote]

Man… As much as I like to bash unions… Hobie is completely correct. Unions were just the “knob turners” that put the product together. The management and marketing staff refused to understand thier markets and the companies suffered for it. Unions merely compounded the problem. Let’s distribute the blame correctly here.

If McNamara had continued to head Ford the Japanese and Germans may have been ran out of North America. He understood what forgein product represented to the consumers and moved quickly to match it.

Detroit with be an interesting experiment in urban reconstruction.

CE

[FlyerInHi]

SK, I talk to many Asians and other foreigners who have never been to America, They have a warped understanding of our country. They can’t believe that it’s really that bad. They expect America to be modern and advanced. In most places in the world, they build house of concrete. So they don’t realize that American houses are wood that rot away. Repairing the facade of an old wood house that contains architectural details costs a fortune.

Detroit’s decline started 60 years ago. Those houses are rotting away and spread over 140 sq mikes! Few of us want 60 year old houses except in primo locations.

Buying houses sight unseen in CA or NY is one thing. But Detroit? I doubt the Chinese investors know what they are getting into.

All that said, I’m a big believer of buying where there is a growing Asian population. They tend to be professional and educated. Can’t go wrong in terms of appreciation. Bay Area and the suburbs of NY (such as Fort Lee) come to mind. But those are expensive.

If i wanted to gamble on an “undervalued” city, I’d bet on Baltimore (thanks to proximity to DC) before Detroit. But maybe the urban core of Detroit has a fighting chance if the liabilities of servicing the other areas could somehow be done away with in bankruptcy.

[spdrun]

Actually some places in northern and western NY are more like Detroit, sadly. Suburbs of NYC are actually much cheaper than San Diego if you look in the right places, but what you gain in price/rent ratio, you lose in higher property taxes, unless you’re real lucky.

[CA renter]

[quote=SK in CV]Interesting development here:

The bad news for Detroiters is that the city’s bankruptcy will likely only deepen the decay of its downtown housing market.

That might deter most prospective home buyers. But some look at Detroit’s hard times and see profit.

Specifically, bargain-hunting Chinese investors. Since the bankruptcy was announced on July 18, talk of snapping up Detroit housing for a pittance has picked up on Sina Weibo (link in Chinese), reports Sina Finance. And it appears to be translating into real interest; Caroline Chen, a real estate broker in Troy, Michigan, says she’s received “tons of calls” from people in mainland China.

“I have people calling and saying, ‘I’m serious—I wanna buy 100, 200 properties,’” she tells Quartz, noting that one of her colleagues recently sold 30 properties to a Chinese buyer. “They say ‘We don’t need to see them. Just pick the good ones.’”

http://qz.com/107937/the-latest-chinese-investment-craze-downtown-detroit-housing/

It isn’t impossible for Detroit to come back. Though I doubt there is either the political fortitude nor the private risk capital to make it happen any time soon. Gentrification takes a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of risk. I don’t suspect these particular investors are going to take it that direction. I hope I’m wrong.[/quote]

It looks like the Chinese have bought the propaganda that unions are what has brought Detroit to its knees. Unmanageable costs for the city’s infrastructure (including employees) are not the problem; they are a symptom of a much bigger problem that stems from the decline of the manufacturing sector in the U.S., a growing wealth/income gap that is only getting worse, and population/demographic shifts. These Chinese investors are going to be in for a VERY rough time, IMHO.

[spdrun]

^^^

(Good. If they were too fucking stupid to do their research, they’ll be getting what they asked for. They may as well be buying the Brooklyn Bridge sight-unseen. Shame on their countrymen who are selling them on this crap, though.)

This being said, the problem stems as much from decline of manufacturing/realignment as it does from extreme and prolific corruption in Detroit. Cities have had one problem or the other and survived, but typically not both.

Chicago: extremely corrupt, but with a fairly diverse economy still.
Pittsburgh: no extreme corruption (some as always), but had to go through massive realignment after “Big Steel” died out in the US.

[SK in CV]

[quote=spdrun]^^^

(Good. If they were too fucking stupid to do their research, they’ll be getting what they asked for. They may as well be buying the Brooklyn Bridge sight-unseen. Shame on their countrymen who are selling them on this crap, though.)

This being said, the problem stems as much from decline of manufacturing/realignment as it does from extreme and prolific corruption in Detroit. Cities have had one problem or the other and survived, but typically not both.

Chicago: extremely corrupt, but with a fairly diverse economy still.
Pittsburgh: no extreme corruption (some as always), but had to go through massive realignment after “Big Steel” died out in the US.[/quote]

Detroit’s problems go back at least 5 decades. Manufacturing job losses, the race riots, population decline, the racism towards its first black mayor back in the mid-70’s, when both businesses and other politicians rejected his leadership and policies irrespective of their benefits for the people of Detroit, corruption, unions, even the way the city was designed, constructed, and developed. And more. It isn’t any two things. And it isn’t like any other city. Nor can it be repaired like any other city.

[birmingplumb]

Henry Ford pulled the farmers sons off the family farm leaving ma and pa holding the bag. Then the Cass Corridor was built to house the several hundred thousand transient southern worker. We had 100,000 at Ford Rouge, 60k at dodge main. Conner Avenue had 100 bars from Jefferson to 6 mile ( 6 miles) and at quiting time just after the War, there were 100’000 people on Conner. That was our heyday. One by one, plants closed helped by the Japan invasion in the 70’s. People bought Toyota’s vw’s and Datsuns. Once secretive auto companys were forced to sub contract components to compete with the jap government subsidized foreign cars. ( prob ours too) Once the sub contractors had control and we sold our equipment, they sold all our technology to Kia and others who sprang to the front with bought technology from suppliers with no loyalty. So thats where we went wrong folks. Suppliers broke the monopoly. It was good while it lasted. Detroit is a shell of it’s former self. When the plants pulled out, they left a waste land of welfare and liquor stores for the children to study. 4 th generation of welfare is here in Detroit. Add corrupt slick ass college boys politicians and u have the fox guarding the hen house. I moved my children to San Diego 3 years ago from Detroit. God bless San Diego and the forum and especially Bearish Gurl. Motown

[Author]

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