American Ruins: Gary's Once and Future Terminal.

[Datafever]

AG, I think that your statement validates what I have said.  If union workers had all been buying American to begin with, it would have prevented those companies from having to move production offshore in order to remain competitive.

Union workers are a huge consumer market here in the US.  But like everyone else, they shop for the best bargains that they can find - because they don't realize that buying import is the same as shooting themselves in the foot.

I know several union people in the electrical and plumbing fields, and not one of them drives an American auto.

[Erie Lackawanna]

While there are a couple neglected buildings in downtown Scranton, you really cannot compare that to Gary and Detroit, which are for all intents gone in many places.  Scranton's just an old time city trying to hold on and doing its best.

I apologize if I gave the wrong impression..I really liked Scranton and enjoyed my visit there..some great folks..that's why it bothered me..it was just odd to look up at twenty story building and then as I walked toward it..to realize it was pretty much a shell...I went over to Scranton Hobby...stayed at the old Lackwanna Station which has to have one of the most impressive interiors of any station I have ever entered...I hope Scranton gets some of it's lifeblood back...I just came away feeling..is'nt that a d_____n shame...? 

No apology needed - I was just trying to say that difference is in Detroit there's this entire skyline of 50 story buildings, each one of them an archetectural gem, and you walk up to them and they are all abandoned.  I've also stayed at the Scranton station and I've stood outside the Michigan Central Station... it's a quite a stark difference.  If Detroit and Gary had held on as well as Scranton (which is old, run down and trying really hard) it would be a lot nicer than what has happened to both of them (used up and thrown away like an old rag).  I love American cities and American railroads stations.  It's sad to see so many of them so down at their knees.

[Anonymous]

AG, I think that your statement validates what I have said.  .

 

It's not that I'm  necessarily trying to prove your line of thinking is "invalid" . I just like my strategy better than yours.

Forcing jobs back into america, will make america better ...

 

 

[Modelcar]

 

.....And buying "American" now really doesn't cure the problem....Such as the automobile...15, 20 or even more % of it's parts are manfuctured in another country.  Some "American" brands are totally assembled in either Mexico or Canada...!

[Poppa_Zit]

Okay. Now let's hear from all of those who right now are using a 100 percent made & manufactured in USA computer.

[Modelcar]

 

.....The page would be blank.

[Poppa_Zit]

Or watching a USA M&M television.

'Tis noble to talk about limiting imports and buying only American-made goods, but in reality it would be nearly impossible. As we read above, not even union workers care to participate, and according to some they are the ones who stand to gain the most.

But it's great fuel for flapping gums on a winter night, ain't it?  

[MP173]

The lines certainly blur at times.  Buy an American car?  Are you sure it is made in America?  Dont buy a car from Japan?  Chances are it was made right here in USA. 

If you purchase an "American" car then the chances are you are not sending a share of the purchase price to Detroit for re-investment or return to the shareholders (owners) but more than likely you are paying for someone's health benefits that doesnt even work there anymore!

It is very complex these days.

ed

[Datafever]

Or watching a USA M&M television.

'Tis noble to talk about limiting imports and buying only American-made goods, but in reality it would be nearly impossible. As we read above, not even union workers care to participate, and according to some they are the ones who stand to gain the most.

But it's great fuel for flapping gums on a winter night, ain't it?  

I wouldn't say that union workers gain any more than any other American.  I only bring them up because it would be easier to organize them to buy American than it would to convince someone who is an Asian immigrant (for example).  But we all benefit from American-made goods, even non-union workers such as myself. 

And PZ, you are right.  It is interesting to talk about it, but I dare say that few people ever would consider actually changing their lifestyle and do something about it.  "The government ought to..." mentality reigns supreme. 

[Modelcar]

 

....Yes, that's correct...."the government ought to"...and again, I'm not talking politics....All govenment should work on our "'free trade policy" for starters and then maybe us, the citizens would have something to start to work with.

[Poppa_Zit]

I wouldn't say that union workers gain any more than any other American.  I only bring them up because it would be easier to organize them to buy American than it would to convince someone who is an Asian immigrant (for example).  But we all benefit from American-made goods, even non-union workers such as myself.

I agree. But what I wrote was "some people say" -- at least that's their claim.  

And PZ, you are right.  It is interesting to talk about it, but I dare say that few people ever would consider actually changing their lifestyle and do something about it.  "The government ought to..." mentality reigns supreme. 

Ahhh... the old "Do what I say, not as I do."

It goes back to the heartland townfolk who decry: "Wal Mart has ruined the main street shopping districts in small town America..." argument.

Except if the people of those small towns hadn't abandoned their local merchants to take advantage of wider selection/cheaper prices at Wal Mart, those ghost town-squares would still be the center of the town's commerce.    

[jclass]

Our exports are now commerce rather than production.  Anybody know how much money came into the US from the Super Bowl?  American Idol?

[Datafever]

It goes back to the heartland townfolk who decry: "Wal Mart has ruined the main street shopping districts in small town America..." argument.

Except if the people of those small towns hadn't abandoned their local merchants to take advantage of wider selection/cheaper prices at Wal Mart, those ghost town-squares would still be the center of the town's commerce.    

And the biggest advantage of shopping at the mom & pop stores is that they actually greet me by name.  And offer really good advice.  Personalized service, I guess I would call it. 

[Anonymous]

  It is interesting to talk about it, but I dare say that few people ever would consider actually changing their lifestyle and do something about it.  "The government ought to..." mentality reigns supreme. 

 

Better to start  working towards a fix somewhere than to sit around whining how it would never work  because all the capacitors are already made in singapore.

Lets not waste time in a dead end worrying where the motherboard in my present computer WAS manufactured, lets set our sights upon where MY NEXT ONE will be made.

Lets be progressive, rather than retentive.

 

Afterall, with effective tariffs in place, the American mobo industry would not have withered and (nearly) died .

 

Same with TV's, and a jillion other things. 

[SALfan]

It goes back to the heartland townfolk who decry: "Wal Mart has ruined the main street shopping districts in small town America..." argument.

Except if the people of those small towns hadn't abandoned their local merchants to take advantage of wider selection/cheaper prices at Wal Mart, those ghost town-squares would still be the center of the town's commerce.    

This is something I can speak to from personal experience.  People in the small towns wouldn't have been so eager to abandon the local merchants if those merchants hadn't ripped them off viciously for so many years.  In my hometown the leading local merchants ran the town for their benefit and charged outrageous prices, until traveling somewhere else to do business got quicker and easier.  Then those very same merchants whined and cried, but it was too late.  Most of them are out of business now, and good riddance.

[Murphy Siding]

Afterall, with effective tariffs in place, the American mobo industry would not have withered and (nearly) died .. 

  Mobo?  Mr. Mobo risin'.....?

[Datafever]

This certainly isn't the forum for discussing the pros and cons of tariffs, but the railroad industry would be quite negatively impacted by them.

[Anonymous]

  Mobo?  Mr. Mobo risin'.....?

 

techno-nerd slang for "motherboard"...the main printed circuit board that the rest of the cards, chips, etc, plug into.

Production of which has largely moved to asia.

Not because asian workers are superior to american, I feel obligated to point out,  just cheaper.

 

 

 

[Anonymous]

but the railroad industry would be quite negatively impacted by them.

 

True that...but maybe once a competant means of production re-established itself on these shores , the RR's could snare a share of that business.

 

Maybe my attention span is too long for the convenience of others, but when I see 200 shipping containers rolling into the midwest from the west coast, I see jobs that are not here anymore.

And that certainly is relevant to "American ruins" as well as rustbelt archeology 

[Murphy Siding]

  Mobo?  Mr. Mobo risin'.....?

techno-nerd slang for "motherboard"...the main printed circuit board that the rest of the cards, chips, etc, plug into.

Production of which has largely moved to asia.

Not because asian workers are superior to american, I feel obligated to point out,  just cheaper.

  Thanks.  I thought we'd taken off on a weird tangent, and were discussing old DOORS albums there for a minute.

[Anonymous]

  Thanks.  I thought we'd taken off on a weird tangent, and were discussing old DOORS albums there for a minute.

 

{snit rant} "here we were having a perfectly good discussion about computer hardware, and now here you are bringing up geezer rock " {/snit rant}    ME-OWWWWW!!! etc.

[Anonymous]

Here in my town, someone spent a fortune restoring the PRR passenger terminal, while allowing the train concourse to remain in ruin, meaning that it is virtually worthless for it's intended purpose. Add to that the location is remote from ANY shred of local  convenience AND THE FACT that Amtrak will likely never return to this town,and you have a classic example of nostalgia's heart being bigger than it's brain.

 

ALL THE WHILE, another former passenger rail  platform, right in the city's business core , and immediately next to the city bus main transfer hub, continues to waste away. Talk about misdirected priority.

[edblysard]

Ok,

Lets try this...

Assume AG gets the Antigates Motherboard Company(AMC) up and running...where will the company purchase the basic product...the wafer board, the machines to drill the board, the capacitors and such...the automated solderer and laser cutters...all that stuff?

And American made computers to run the program to do the work...from who would you purchase them?

My bet is that almost all of that is made overseas, so you would be adding to the container traffic with the purchases...and which Americans will do to small amount of assembly needed, if any?

Assume he manages to automate the entire process, up to and including packaging, shipping and all that, he still needs a small work force...which segment of America will work for the wages he will be willing to pay?

Know anybody willing to work without a medical benefit package?

 

And let's say he manages to build such a fantastic product it makes your old HP or Dell  run faster that the Air Force's Super Crays....who would be able to afford them?

Not picking a fight, I am looking for serious answers...I have a part time job at a local woodworking company, we sell high end woodworking machines, exotic woods, and top end hand tools...who wants to guess where Shop Fox, Delta, Jet, Powermatic, Porter Cable and DeWalt have their shop tools made?

(Hint, Rockwell no longer does the castings....for anybody)

[prospekt mira]

 

 

Short sighted greed. Long range planning in Corporate America has become the year end report.

Paul 

 

 

Only the greed isn't Corp Americas alone. Let the corporate managers miss a Y/E target and the market read wall street analysts and by extension the American citizens who hold 401ks will turf them like yesterdays dirty socks as they seek stocks with the highest return. It's all a viscious circle.

[doghouse]

Michigan Central looks much like the Buffalo Terminal....David Plowden, who has taken some of my favorite railroad photographs, has a book out on the theme of buildings in the heartland reverting to their natural state. It's called a Handful of Dust. The photo below is the Michigan Central ruin. Using my imagination, I could see it as a once bustling, noisy place full of activity.

http://davidplowden.com/

 

There is an abandoned station that sits near the exit to the tunnel under the Detroit river from Windso. The yard belongs to one of the canadian rr's.  Is this the one? 

[Datafever]

While I understand that it feels good to blast corporations for wanting to make a profit, it must be realized that nobody invests money into a business just to see it wasted needlessly.  Investors (and that isn't speculators) make up the overwhelming majority of the trading that occurs on the stock market.  And investors (which does include mutual fund managers) look at long-range profitability - 5 years and longer.

Are there some corporate leaders that play to the short-term market?  Sure.  But they are the exception by a long ways.

And BTW, we have a thriving semiconductor industry here in the US.  What we lack is extremely cheap labor to do the menial work of assembly.  Maybe instead of imposing tariffs, we should eliminate the minimum wage laws. 

[Poppa_Zit]

Ok,

Lets try this...

Assume AG gets the Antigates Motherboard Company(AMC) up and running...where will the company purchase the basic product...the wafer board, the machines to drill the board, the capacitors and such...the automated solderer and laser cutters...all that stuff?

And American made computers to run the program to do the work...from who would you purchase them?

My bet is that almost all of that is made overseas, so you would be adding to the container traffic with the purchases...and which Americans will do to small amount of assembly needed, if any?

Assume he manages to automate the entire process, up to and including packaging, shipping and all that, he still needs a small work force...which segment of America will work for the wages he will be willing to pay?

Know anybody willing to work without a medical benefit package?

 

And let's say he manages to build such a fantastic product it makes your old HP or Dell  run faster that the Air Force's Super Crays....who would be able to afford them?

Not picking a fight, I am looking for serious answers...I have a part time job at a local woodworking company, we sell high end woodworking machines, exotic woods, and top end hand tools...who wants to guess where Shop Fox, Delta, Jet, Powermatic, Porter Cable and DeWalt have their shop tools made?

(Hint, Rockwell no longer does the castings....for anybody)

Ed -- your post sticks out like a sore thumb because it makes too much sense, as usual.

The usual modus operandi  here is to choose nebulous subjects, create ridiculous hypothetical situations to argue ad infinitum, ad nauseum in the abstract, expell copious amounts of gasbag rhetoric and mock other people's opinions as inferior to your own.

Again, while it is noble to talk about limiting imports and buying only American-made-and-manufactured goods as a solution -- a great premise -- in reality the desired conclusion would be impossible to attain without making extreme sacrifices no one is willing to make. But it's a good discussion if you avoid facing the facts.

[Poppa_Zit]

And BTW, we have a thriving semiconductor industry here in the US.  What we lack is extremely cheap labor to do the menial work of assembly.  Maybe instead of imposing tariffs, we should eliminate the minimum wage laws. 

Most libs won't let themselves see that "The Minimum Wage" and "A Living Wage" are NOT intended to be one and the same. But when you have an agenda, why let facts and logic get in the way...

In your scenario, robots could be used for assembly. They don't get sick, take vacations, expect raises, draw pensions and need expensive health care. Or does creating jobs for robots count?

But this thinking is contrary to the base argument here, that we need to cut imports to create more jobs in this country.

When Henry Ford first announced he was about to initiate the assembly-line process to manufacture his automobiles, he was blasted by critics who projected it would ruin the economy as it would reduce the number of Ford employees. In reality, The Ford Motor company grew exponentially and so did the nation's economy, thanks to Ford's assembly line, which made auto transportation affordable -- finally -- for the masses. It also created an entire new layer of businesses (and jobs) in the industry -- the number of filling stations, repair garages, tire companies and hundreds of other ancillary businesses supporting the auto industry. Plus motels (motor inns), jobs to build highways, yadda yadda...

[rrnut282]

Unless things have changed, Adept makes their robots in San Jose CA.  They also write software to program them using computers with Motorola chip-sets.  I can't vouch for the chip's origin, but at least they are an American company.  Utilizing this equipment would allow AG to automate the manufacture of his mother-boards with (mostly) US-made equipment.  If he needs help, I can program them, design the tooling and work-cells, and I don't even need medical insurance.

[Erie Lackawanna]

Michigan Central looks much like the Buffalo Terminal....David Plowden, who has taken some of my favorite railroad photographs, has a book out on the theme of buildings in the heartland reverting to their natural state. It's called a Handful of Dust. The photo below is the Michigan Central ruin. Using my imagination, I could see it as a once bustling, noisy place full of activity.

http://davidplowden.com/

 

There is an abandoned station that sits near the exit to the tunnel under the Detroit river from Windso. The yard belongs to one of the canadian rr's.  Is this the one? 

 

Yes