The Glade 4.0

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-0 ... en-streets

Go look.

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I always wondered why Detroit always gets all the press about this, as opposed to say East St. Louis, which is much worse and is basically Mogadishu right now. The overall murder rate there is almost three times that of Detroit. In Edgemont, a subdivision of ESTL, the murder rate is actually over 0.25%. That's right, a 0.25% chance to be murdered every year you live there. They have no trash service either so there's just piles and piles of garbage just building up everywhere.

This isn't a murder story, go look.

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Every time I look at stuff like Detroit, and read comments whining about how Republicans are destroying poor people's lives, it makes me hate liberals just a little bit more.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Fantastic link, thanks. I've been following the decline of Detroit for a while now, it's an interesting topic.

Why not do the right thing and hate both? Or rather, have a disdain for the simplistic thinking of any entrenched blanket approach ideology.

Because conservatives ***** and whine about different things. The appropriate time to hate them is Jesus.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

There's some decent looking properties in those photos. It's a shame.

The disintegration of Detroit isn't conservatives fault or liberal's fault. Its what happens when a city gets built around an industry / single enterprise and that enterprise leaves for whatever reason.

You gloss over two main points. Over-dependence on a single industry - the local, liberal government allowed a situation to develop where the city survives based on a single industry. Then, which brings me to the second point ("whatever reason") that industry was choked out (at least in large part) by out of control liberal unions and the like.

Since when is it the government's job to develop an industry? Isn't that the private sector's job?

The "liberal unions" are hardly the only reason the auto industry left Detroit.

They're by far the most important. Plants built in states that don't protect the unions in the same fashion have nothing like the problems of the Michigan, and Ohio auto industries.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No, but they need to manage their finances properly. If the government finds its revenues fully dependent on one industry, it should prepare for that industry to take a hit, without having to immediately declare the city bankrupt. Instead, they spend, spend, spend, and push the limits on what they can afford during good times, and when the industry tanks, they go under.

Interesting facts about Detroit:
-In 1960, Detroit's 1.8 million residents had the highest per capita income in the USA. Today, there are less than 700,000 people in the city.
-Detroit owes over $20 billion. That is over $25,000 per resident.
-In 1950, Detroit had 296,000 manufacturing jobs. Today there are less than 27,000.
-Between 2000 and 2010, 50% of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan have been lost.
-There are many houses for sale in Detroit for less than $500.
-There are approximately 80,000 abandoned homes in Detroit.
-About one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles is vacant or derelict.
-47% of the residents of the city of detroit are functionally illiterate.
-Less than 50% of Detroit's residents over age 18 have jobs.


Detroit needs to be torn down and vacated, and start from scratch. Unfortunate, the first step in doing so was blocked by a judge with some ridiculous reasoning. She ruled that Detroit's bankruptcy filing violates the Michigan Constitution because it would result in reduced pension payments for retired workers. (So will Detroit defaulting on its payments, however.) She also stated that Detroit's bankruptcy filing was also not honoring President Obama, who took Detroit’s auto companies out of bankruptcy. Like that changes the economics of the situation, but since when is "honoring the president" a legal concern?

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Detroit is a gaping sore in our country produced by the festering disease that is American progressive politics. Detroit is what's waiting to happen if we continue to raise the minimum wage without looking at the long term economic impacts of wage compression. Detroit is what's going to happen if we continue to support the delusional notion of a government controlled economy. We fought a cold war over the notion of controlled economies and their human rights impact, only to end up in a far worse place than idealized American perceptions of Soviet poverty. And, amazingly, we continue to not listen to the heads of state who point out how their controlled economies survive: by exporting debt.

Detroit should terrify anyone who supports the Democratic Party's political agenda, because Detroit is what happens when you follow their asinine economic recommendations. Mind you, the Republicans are not any better on economics, but that's because our government has a TOXIC economic culture, and that toxic economic culture persists regardless of the party of our president or who controls our congress.

I've spent 10 years trying to explain why everything most of you were taught about economics is wrong. I've watched as government pressure, Department of Education and other federal money sources in particular, have driven out or made difficult to hire, keep, retain economists and economic historians that disagree with the current heterodox mainstream economic ideas. Hell, Florida State is currently facing all sorts of negative pressure because it allowed the Coke Brothers to endow economics chairs, provided that classes in free market economics were taught.

Well, Detroit is a very real world example of what our toxic economic policies and poor economic training inflict on a community, region, or state: disaster.

When I say Karl Marx was right, that's not a good thing. In fact, we want to be as far away from Karl Marx being right as possible, because Karl Marx knew which way a government controlled economy would inevitably end. Unfortunately for us, Karl Marx conflated state controlled mercantilism with pure capitalism, and worlds of stigma resulted from that conflation. The truth is, though, the invention Karl Marx didn't anticipate is the invention that made him right: the time clock.

Human beings are fungible, economic production engines. Particularly in the manufacturing industry, human beings are considered higher order automatons. Piece-rate matters. Six sigma is all about getting 99.999% of your production curve within 6 standard deviations of the median on a normal curve. (Lean is operations and non-production aspects). Trust me, when we're dealing with systems that involve human beings, we don't care about anything but your productivity, and that applies until you are more valuable than a Democrat believes you have any right to be.

And in a society wherein your economic power is a fraction of your total productive power, by fault of deliberate government intrusion, to say the government can fix it, to rely on the government to resolve your economic woes, and to blindly trudge forward with faith that politics is the solution, when politics is 90% of your economic problem, is foolish. And Americans are undoubtedly foolish in this respect.

It doesn't matter if the minimum wage is $1.00 an hour or $1,000,000.00 an hour: someone still has to dig the ditches, pick up the trash, and clean your septic tank. Handling more money doesn't mean you have more economic power. As I have pointed out in another recent thread, John D. Rockefeller's $1.4 billion net worth trumps the net worth of the 10 richest living human beings on the planet. Would you rather have his $1.4 billion in 1937 dollars or Bill Gates's $75.6 billion in 2014 dollars?

There's really no contest there. We handle more money with less economic impact. People aren't wealthier today than they were 10 years ago or 20 years ago. They handle more money that covers less distance.

In 1960, a salary of $50 a week meant I was going to retire without the need of a government, corporate, or military pension at 55. Today, if you don't make $50.00 a day, you're not making minimum wage.

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The minimum wage in 1960 was $1. That's $40 / week. In 1961 it was $1.15. If you could retire comfortably on $50/week in 1960, that means you could do it today on $9/hour.

The minimum wage today is not significantly higher than it was in 1960 when the US was almost 60% of the world economy. If you buy the argument that inflation is much higher than the government advertises, its actually significantly less.

Xequecal:

Today's minimum wage is significantly less than $1 an hour in 1960 dollars. If you use just Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, you'll arrive at the conclusion that a 1960 dollar is worth roughly $5.18 in today's dollars. On face, you'll say that today's minimum wage constitutes a fairly significant increase in purchasing power. That's not the case, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not adequately track volatile market inflation and true cost of living indices. If you start factoring volatile, staple markets into the inflation calculations, a 1960 dollar is worth roughly $14.40 in today's dollars: just shy of twice the Federal minimum wage.

And that doesn't get into all the regulatory shifts in the cost-of-living, goods, and production in the United States since 1960. Our government lies. Our government, in particular, lies about the economy with such alarming consistency that the rest of the world no longer trusts our currency.

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How does this not completely destroy your argument that minimum wage increases cause economic disaster, considering that the minimum wage when our country was at its economic apex was double what the minimum wage is today?

That $1 -> $14.40 number is pretty scary though, that means if you start saving for retirement at age 20 you need a 6% rate of return just to break even on the money you invest.

Because relative purchasing power is not the only thing as play here. That said, the current Federal Minimum wage represents a 725% increase in the minimum wage since 1960. Have all other pay thresholds experienced a 725% increase since 1960? Better yet, what's the actually aggregate economic inflation in the United States over those 54 years?

The minimum wage in 1960 was livable. It was actually pretty comfortably livable for a family of four. The minimum wage today barely supports a single person independently, and it only does that in low cost markets. The fact that the minimum wage is below the real poverty level today should indicate that there's a problem. More to the point, raising the minimum wage NEVER results in a corresponding increase to other pay brackets. Do you not grasp this? Do you not understand what wage compression is?

In 1960, $1.25/hour was a 25% pay increase over the minimum wage. Today, you would need $9.06 an hour to get a 25% increase over minimum wage. At minimum wage, your raw gross income is $15080 per year, assuming you work the full 2080 hours. At $9.06 an hour, your raw gross income is $18844.80.


According to the Federal government, you can support a family of four at $11.46 an hour. Incidentally, that poverty mark was $10,200 in 1984, thirty years ago. The Federal Minimum Wage was $3.35 an hour, which was 68% of the Federal poverty level for a family of four. Today Federal Minimum wage is only 64% of the Federal poverty level for a family of four. Incidentally, neither of those poverty level number are meaningful.

In 1960, for instance, the average house was roughly $18,000. In 2014, the average house was $226,000.

All raising the minimum wage has done is increase the body of people living in poverty. It is a government mandated increase in the cost of production that has universal market impacts: period, end of discussion, all liberal/progressive/Democratic nonsense to the contrary is NONSENSE.

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So what are you advocating? I see you come here and rail against 'liberal/progressive/Democratic' policy.
But you acknowledge that the minimum wage isn't livable, you feel the middle class has gotten poorer in the last 70 years. And I know you don't favor reducing the payout to people in the upper income levels?

What exactly is the fix in your eyes?

I mean not that I'm advocating it, but from your description it sounds like the real fix is to set some sort of scaled wage distribution within employers where the difference in wage from top to bottom isn't so severe. But I know that's not what you advocate, so what, if Khross had absolute power to dictate policy not only at a local, state & federal level, but also within employers themselves; what would would you do?

Why does "the fix" even need to touch on redistribution?

Quit printing more money or at least don't print any that isn't tied to GDP.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Detroit at this point can't be fixed. it needs to be torn down, the entire populace evicted, and rebuilt.

However, a good fix for the future is to have the government stop trying to control the economy. Stop making laws that protect unions, or try to redistribute wealth, etc. All attempts to redistribute wealth eventually lower the quality of living for everyone. A wealth divide is not a bad thing if even the poorest people live well. The moment you try to fix that legislatively, it hurts everyone. The rich get poorer, the poor get poorer. Only the rich can survive getting poorer. The poor can't. In an attempt to "help" people you eventually make their plight worse.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

How do you explain the very high per-capita wealth of Australia and several European countries?

http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/11/news/economy/middle-class-wealth/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Switzerland has a minimum wage of $25/hour. Australia is about $16. Both of these countries beat the US in both per-capita wealth and median wealth. Switzerland also has a labor force participation rate of 79%, much higher than the US. Neither are on the Euro, and you can't use the natural resources excuse for them like you could for Norway. The Netherlands are beating us on a 29-hour workweek.

Xequecal:

Curious thing, the three countries you mention all have far more absolute property rights than the current United States. More to the point, if your own link, which is the article I was expecting, it will tell you why these people have more net wealth than the average American: they're more likely to own property, because property is a long term investment in those countries, not just another credit driven consumer sector like it is in the United States.

So, the answer happens to be, once again, bad Federal policy.

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The socio-economic system in the US today encourages folks to earn less and discourages earning more, given the prevalence of monetary redistribution.

That there's your progressive agenda at work.

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In time, this too shall pass.