Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
Carl Sandburg, 1916
Without the jobs in meatpacking, steel, light manufacturing, transport, or those associated with being the center of retail empires, Chicago is still wicked, crooked, and brutal but it is no longer proud, no longer strong. There is no future for Chicago as a place where the pale and slender young men and women flit from bistro to boutique. Or even the fashionably sun-kissed ones.
There are two possible reactions to this. We can either surrender to the fate that decay brings and be willing to become Nineveh on Lake Michigan, crumbling and forgotten, or we can make Illinois a welcoming place for making things, wresting things from the soil, industry, and commerce. And deal tirelessly with the problems those things bring along with them.
There’s a choice and we should make it and commit to it. We don’t have the choice of sun-drenched beaches, mountain vistas, and benign climate. That’s California. We aren’t California.
I agree with you, but unfortunately, I don’t think that’s likely to happen unless something changes. (However, it seems Metra has a decent shot at getting serious reforms now, which I wouldn’t have guessed possible a year ago, so…)
Too many jobs given to friends, too much insider politics. To many taxing bodies (which are a great way to get jobs for friends). Making the system sane means a lot of people (in Springfield, in county seats, etc.) will no longer be able to shake the hands that feed them.
We also have a governor who is resorting to theatrics to try and shame the legislature into action on the pension mess. It’s like he’s a preschool teacher teaching two classes: one of 59 and one of 118. He’s got the worst job in Illinois.
How is Chicago to compete with southern states like Tennessee or Kentucky which also have very little “California” in them but also make things? How is it to compete as well against India and China et al? The Great Lakes location doesn’t mean what it used to. Minnesota doesn’t have to send you its iron and Kansas doesn’t have to send you its beef, they can ship anywhere.
If Chicago wanted to do something useful it would build itself an MIT or a UC Berkeley. Boston has a 5.9% unemployment. They aren’t California, either, God knows, and the MA state income tax rate is slightly higher than yours.
Chicago has godawful primary schools, high crime and horrible weather. Other than those things I’d live there.
Illinois already has two: University of Illinois-Champaign and Northwestern, #5 and #20, respectively, among the top engineering schools. Something to keep in mind: it’s possible to build a new school but not possible to build an established school.
Among colleges generally the University of Chicago is ranked #4 and Northwestern #12.
Which single university was most important in the growth of the World Wide Web? I don’t think there’s any question: University of Illinois. They take their degrees and go someplace else.
Higher education isn’t our problem.
Unfortunately since the HAL 9000 became operational at the University of Illinois in 1997, things have become a bit strange.
@michael, the technological successes at U of I research facilities are quite impressive, but the fact that most people are not aware of them points to the problem. For example, the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the U of I invented the flat-panal plasma t.v., yet I see no jobs from this development in Illinois, other than at the local Best Buy.
I’d be careful with throwing out marque tech school names. Engineering school strengths vary widely by discipline and whether they are research or industry oriented. For example, Northwestern is a great place to go for graduate level materials science. The smashing, bashing and crashing of steel, not so much.
And you wouldn’t hire an MIT or Caltech grad for the factory floor in a traditional manufacturing environment if you have any brains. But you could go to IL, GAtech, Purdue, Rose-Hulman, WI etc and find plenty of good people.
But none of it matters if state officials do their best to make it difficult for your widget maker to survive locally.
Speaking of steel. I was interested to learn that the Chicago District had lost its status as the kingpin steelmaking district in the US and one of the best in the world. Those ore boats out of MN must not have gotten the memo. Hope they are nimble and can set course for No. Carolina……pronto.
PD:
Yes, if you’re a rising tech entrepreneur who can be more or less anywhere, there’s not much reason to prefer cold, neighborhoody, corrupt, traffic-paralyzed Chicago to warm, sunny, open and inviting San Jose/Mountain View/Cupertino. But that has little to do with taxes or government. Google isn’t here because we have low taxes or brilliant state government. Until recently our state government was run by a troop of howler monkeys. Google and Apple are here because of Stanford and the UC system and because once you graduate you’re in a beautiful place so why would you leave?
So yes, it is hard to compete with California. But what about Seattle? They have a 4% unemployment rate and they have rain pretty much every day of the year. Or Boston, with a 5.4% rate. Or Houston with 6%. Houston is a hellhole.
I wonder if Chicago’s problems aren’t a number of things coming over time, mostly perhaps the fact that it is simply not as necessary or useful as a transportation hub. With a more globalized economy a mid-continent railhead and port isn’t going to be as important. Chicago is just a nicer Cleveland, and that city isn’t doing too well, either.
You mean other than its Pacific port, cheap electricity, and comparatively small population of urban poor?
“I wonder if Chicago’s problems aren’t a number of things coming over time, mostly perhaps the fact that it is simply not as necessary or useful as a transportation hub.”
You are kidding, right? Pull out a map.
The companies moving to IN or TN, or western MI stay close to 80/94 and I-65 for east and south access, respectively. Going west, in IA, I-80. WI its 294 to 94 or I-88 to I-39. To the SW and MO etc you have 55 or 57. And all these connect within a half hour to an hour to the arteries in and around Chicago, and have for many decades. The same logistics issues apply to traditional locations further from Chicago proper.
Now go get a map of rail lines in the US. (Truck and rail absolutely dominate transportation of goods in the US.) Only Kansas City rivals Chicago.
You were saying something about how Chicago had lost its logistics touch?
This comment is actually a reach back to the blog post about housing and Paul Samuelson’s query about the robustness of QE.
At issue on unexpectedly light home purchasing were competing factors like income, affordability (mortgage rates) and bank underwriting standards, especially in light of bank alternatives. Just this AM come two pieces of data that muddy the water.
First, data on car purchases, the second major time financed consumer purchase. Turns out banks are lending aggressively for car purchases to and including increasing the fraction of loans to subprime borrowers from 17 to 23%. They define subprime as scores below 620. Hmmm.
Second, and you can go over to zerohedge and see the graph, what the hell happened to mortgage applications in May?
Inquiring minds want to know.
People are always talking about the great climate, referring to weather, in California. Yes, we definitely attract a boat load of people because of that asset, along with a host of other geographic genetics we lord over other states. However, there are other climates making or breaking a state — one being the business climate, as to whether it’s friendly or adverse. If it’s the latter, and there is little else to hold people’s loyalty to an area (like we may have in CA), then they leave. Simplistically, if you want to reverse that trend, then you have to create a desirable climate that would draw business back into the area. This usually involves an overhaul in eliminating government fraud, taxation and regulation relief, and stopping forced unionization of shops in order to encourage more job creation coming from outside states.
Two of the states Red mentioned, TN and IN, have RTW laws. And, interestingly, after IN passed their RTW legislation in 2012, a national poll found that 74% of U.S. voters support such RTW laws. But, much that goes on in this country is based on politics and not the will of the people. So, RTW continues to be maligned and out of favor in states, including those with some of the greatest economic struggles — IL and MI.
Yes, CA doesn’t engage in RTW, and is doing just fine, as pointed out by Michael. But, as he also is aware, we have such a plethora of natural assets, luring and keeping people here, it makes us more of an anomaly than a standard, in being able to stay above water, as unresolved fiscal problems continue to mount at our door. Nonetheless, with the advent of an unexpected seismic jolt, financially or from one of the many fault lines lacing this state, I think we are but a Chicago or Detroit in-the-waiting.
Red
That was a good grab on data about car and housing loans. I don’t think the housing industry learned it’s lesson from the last sub-prime ride, as the same scenario seems to be building, except much faster.
Red:
If more is coming in and out of ports that take foreign goods doesn’t it stand to reason that Chicago, which is far from either ocean, will end up less vitally important than it once was? If you’re raising pigs and corn in Iowa don’t you end up sending a lot of your pork straight to either coast rather than via Chicago? This isn’t a theory I’m invested in, just honestly curious.
You know, one could explain a lot of what’s happened to the Midwest in terms of phototropism. I liked Evanston and Chicago but at one point, as I was chipping frozen Labrador Retriever poop out of the snow in my backyard I had to ask myself why the hell I was tolerating it. Life is just more difficult there. Just getting kids bundled up and un-bundled 10 times a day, and the traffic getting to O’Hare or downtown or anywhere, all so you can freeze half the year and sweat like a racehorse the rest of the time.
Jan
Last night I was reading a paper on housing the Cliff’s notes version of which was that home prices were 5-10% below equilibrium, perhaps due to tight lending standards.
So the car loan posture caught my eye. And then we see that mortgage applications fell off the face of the earth. Are banks just credit conscious? Repairing balance sheets? Have other EZ places to put money? QE and mortgage rates and pull forward? Consumer finances tight? All of the above?
Me? I think its because Chicago is no longer a transportation hub. Makes sense.
Michael
Please. And I’m pretty much just busting your, um, chops. Of course foreign trade is a pull on total transportation demand. But its like saying Chicago no longer matters because FedEx flys packages through Memphis. Its preposterous.
There are a whole host of issues creating a good or bad business climate, but here in IL transportation infrastructure isn’t one of them. When you stayed at the Arista while signing at Anderson’s you were at I-88 and Rt 59. Go west of there on 88 and there are distribution center after distribution center.
The thing you – anyone – has to ask is why a business takes on the very significant cost and disruption to move a half hour away, over the IN border, to make their machined gears. Or 3 hours to Iowa. Or an hour into southern WI or 4 hours into TN. At the risk of impugning my home turf, other than the attraction (and problems) of Chicago proper, what the difference in schools, climate etc of IN, WI and so on? Its the business climate.
My understanding is that the Chicago railyards have been a mess for a long time; after pulling into the yard it was often easier to truck the freight to the other side of Chicago and reload. The railyard renovations were recently completed and rail traffic in the area near Chicago is expected to triple in the next decade.
PD:
Apparently the port of Chicago is in trouble and the rail yards are mordantly referred to as a “speed bump,” slowing rail traffic down significantly through the city.
The port of Chicago is also having trouble.
Drew:
Yes, but that’s not Chicago, that’s Naperville.
Among other things they would save a whole lot of hours of their trucks sitting on clogged Chicago highways going nowhere. If you could arrange to have your trucks bypass Chicago, wouldn’t you?
I don’t know the rest of the state well enough to have an opinion on it. Illinois to me is Chicago and the north shore, with something like a rump Iowa attached.
Jan:
Nevada is a RTW state and has the nation’s highest unemployment rate. In fact half of the states with the worst unemployment rate are RTW states. If you move beyond UE alone you’ll find a very strong correlation between RTW and poverty. Not saying it’s causation, but unless you’re hoping California becomes Mississippi, I’d look elsewhere.
Michael,
Having RTW laws in a state does not promise a Nirvana-like existence. Places like NE have been hit hard by a collapsing housing market, which makes it more difficult for compensating laws, like RTW ones, to make up the difference. Also, of the 24 states having RTW conditions most of them are located in the south or non-coastal western regions — areas that simply don’t have the wealth of the west coast or eastern seaboard states.
Nevertheless, economic data still supports an overall notion that RTW statutes positively factor in to economically strengthen the areas where they are implemented. For instance, between 1980-2011 it was estimated there was an employment growth of 71% in RTW states, versus that of only 32%, for the same measurement of time, in non-RTW states. Unemployment rates average one percentage point lower in RTW states, as well, when compared to those having no such laws. The up side, the one that unions tout, deals more with benefit packages of pensions and HC, which are more generous in non-RTW states, and the wages are higher as well.
As for the future of CA — I love it here! However, sometimes I look at it’s wealth and privilege as more of a mirage than a reality that can last over time — especially taking into consideration it’s tremendous baggage of unfunded debt.
I can’t tell you what Chicago’s problem is, just how it looks from where I sit. I think that the Powers-That-Be have an unrealistic preferred outcome. I think that Chicago and Illinois politicians imagine an Illinois and Chicago with all green jobs and all high income citizens who are union members.
Whether that’s a desireable outcome is irrelevant. It’s not an achievable outcome, at least not here. Chicago and Illinois’s future are brown for the foreseeable future which means that Chicago and Illinois politicians should be aiming for an environment that attracts brown jobs rather than discouraging them.
Just taking a stab at what that environment would look like, I think it’s producing more energy more cheaply, financial stability, fiscal soundness, physical safety, an honest government, and allowing people to keep as much of what they earn as is consistent with essential services. We have a long way to go.
@michael, there is something to what you say about ports, but I thinks its a small factor.
With three generations of Caterpillar workers, past and present in my family, I know a lot about that company or at least talk to people a lot who think they know a lot about the company. They’ve opened and closed several plants the last few years. Only one of the three or four new plants was opened up to be near an ocean port (Georgia). The plant is expected to ship 90% of its product abroad, so it certainly made logistical sense — I’m frankly amazed they didn’t just build the new plant abroad. CAT also recently announced the closure of its plant(s) in Belgium because of the poor European economy, high labor costs and complicated environmental rules. Basically though about half of CAT’s sales are in the U.S., so a central location for production, near supply lines, is going to make sense for it.
CAT has opened a few new plants in the South, which appear to be to avoid unions. The plant recently opened in Little Rock is probably going to end up taking over the production of one of the downstate Illinois plants with a bad union environment — it won’t happen immediately, but slow attrition of lines. The plant opened in Texas appears to be related to NAFTA. OTOH, CAT closed a plant in Toronto, and moved the lines to Indiana.
I’m losing count, but among six recent plant openings/closings, there was only one in which the need for a sea port was predominant. It varies but CAT’s production is about 50% domestic/ 50% abroad, and its customers are 50% domestic and 50% abroad. The U.S. domestic market is nothing to sneeze at, and there are benefits to a central location in that market, but I agree with what I think Drew’s point is, central location is a broad concept, that production can move a few hundred miles in any direction.
Jan:
Can you show causation between RTW and jobs created? Probably some. But cutting labor costs has its own downside. Look at the states you’re talking about: you don’t want to live in any of them. Neither do I.
Wal-Mart seems to be having some trouble with sales which they explain away by saying that the lowest economic class is doing poorly. Right. Because the lowest economic class works at Wal-Mart and gets paid too little even to shop at Wal-Mart.
This race to the bottom solves nothing. States give tax concessions to attract jobs and then lose to another state prepared to offer an even sweeter deal, leaving devastation in their wake. States with lax environmental oversight see corporations profit, and then get stuck with the bill for sick children or when their town burns down.
It’s not as easy as Drew wants you to believe it is. Life is complicated. His life is simple because the only thing he cares about is profit. The rest of us live with the mess those people leave behind. The costs are passed along to us and they go tra-la-la-ing away.
I’m sorry to be vague about this, but I worked several years to support a green job with brown technology near the Illinois shores of Lake Michigan. By brown I mean taking something nasty and using mechanical, chemical and thermal processes to make it into a valuable product. I once explained this matter to the (former?) blogger Engineer-Poet, and he didn’t believe that we were having problems. But it was brown. It wasn’t groovy PBS windmills, but a Frankenstein laboratory of engineering indulgence.
Anyway the regulators were convinced, but cowed by the politicians and hid after stamping their approval. The legislators passed a law to stop this project and others like it one mile from the Lake. The Lake area is to become some combination of SoCal and Door county, the airport was then seized and the earth salted, only that which god allows to grow will do so.
If California is so great, why are so many CA assholes moving to places like Denver?
As for Chicago, again, I’m a complete outsider. My opinion is a clean slate informed by TV, movies, this blog and the few times I’ve drove through the city on my way to Wisconsin.
All I can say is that Chicago, in my imagination, is the closest city I can think of to Gotham from the Batman movies. The rich areas are grand, the poor areas are very bad.
The only thing I hear about Chicago in the media is the murder rate and the political corruption. Nothing else makes the news. I can’t recall reading anything positive about the city.
The few times I drove through the city it was like passing through another country. The run-down industrial areas reminded me of my trips to eastern Europe and the USSR.
The downtown area looks very enticing from a distance and people I know say that it’s great.
I had some free time today and, on a lark, did some research comparing Atlanta and Chicago – two cities that probably could not be more different (caveat: I know just as much about Atlanta as I do about Chicago.) . There didn’t seem to be one clear winner in terms of preference, but the two big data points I picked up on were weather and business climate, which both landed in Atlanta’s favor.
As I said above, California is the greatest if you’re rich or a public employee—otherwise, not so much. That’s why California has net outmigration. Unskilled immigrants crossing the border into the state from the south, middle class folks moving out to states where they can afford to have a decent lifestyle.
The process would probably be going faster if so many people weren’t underwater on their home loans. In LA County about a quarter of loans are underwater; in Santa Barbara County, it’s about a third; in the “Inland Empire” area, it’s nearly half.
In Cook County the percent underwater is between a third and 40%.
In response to Andy’s remarks, I probably should start doing some photo essays on Chicago neighborhoods. It’s not quite as divided as he’s suggesting. In Chicago proper there are still quite a few decent middle class neighborhoods dotting the city. Most of the real problems he’s thinking about are on the South Side.
Dave,
That would be cool. Like I said, I really know very little about Chicago and my impressions are the product of skewed sources and ignorance
“Can you show causation between RTW and jobs created? Probably some. But cutting labor costs has its own downside. Look at the states you’re talking about: you don’t want to live in any of them. Neither do I. “
Michael,
Another way to look at this question, is how would the states having RTW statutes look, economically and employment-wise, if they didn’t have this legislative moderating employment tool in place — the right to choose whether to join a union, pay dues etc. or not?
You’re right that I enjoy living in CA for any number of reasons, and would have difficulty adjusting to another state — particularly because I’m an ocean type. But, every place is different, with different demographics, cost factors, and appeal for different people. For instance, cutting labor costs, in an area having a lower or more stable cost of living is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when it creates more jobs for more people.
I also personally think big labor unions have far too much control over the labor market — dealing with both employers as well as employees. The bosses ramrod strikes, wage and benefit increases, no matter how costly it turns out to be for their membership or for the people who employ them. The only predictable ‘win’ is oftentimes only the labor leaders. They get paid no matter what the outcome is.
“If California is so great, why are so many CA assholes moving to places like Denver?”
Ass holes?
IMO, people have their own individual threshold of “I’ve had it,” to be reached in places like CA before they finally hook up the old U-haul and head to Denver. Sometimes, it’s the dollar crunch of the expensive lifestyle that finally wears them out — especially in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Other times it’s the choking density of the metropolitan areas, the crime rate, or being caught up in ever-increasing tax-the-rich propositions, as has been created by Gov. Brown — temporarily, of course.
BTW, what about this latest Gallup Poll saying that the current day national UE number is 8.9%? Am I reading this thing wrong?
This is kind of a doom and gloom piece from Zerohedge claiming that there’s no scenario where this ends well. Maybe he is a student of Nouriel Roubini! Anyway, his predictions are short and to the point. So, I’ve excerpted all of it below, except for the chart referred to in his opening line.
According to the author, Tyler Durden, it doesn’t really matter where you live — IL, CA or Denver, CO — it’s all going to end up the same for everyone.
Jan,
“Ass holes?”
Well, that’s how most natives see them. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s it was Texans.
I had seen the zerohedge piece jan cites earlier. We talk a lot about public employee pension shortfalls and what we should do about it – or if you are me, what we shouldn’t do about their irresponsibility – but irresponsibility is not the sole province of public sector employees. Live for today resides in the habits of private sector employees as well.
Given that the country has reached or is at least approaching debt capacity this may be the biggest issue of our time. (defined as the next 25 years) BTW, for those who didn’t see it and wonder “how come we aren’t as well off as statistics say we should be?”…an article on the deflator and GDP was fascinating. I suggest you find it and read it.
Given that the nation is and will be so woefully short in resources to support the aged when the torches and pitchforks take to the street can anyone explain why we pursue public policies like green energy that retard our ability to reduce resources allocated to the Middle East for more expensive than necessary oil or defense of ME supply? Its nuts.
Texas has some great places to work and live. And some great golf courses and in Austin, a great music scene.
The problem with Texas is there are too damned many Texans.
Stuck in Pittsburgh with limited internet (wife loves quaint hotels). I think the really interesting part of this discussion, since I know little about Chicago or Illinois beyond what Dave posts, is the big picture issue.
Suppose we follow the Drew/jan plan. Every state in the union looks like Texas. That means we have 30% of the country without health insurance. We have limited support for public education, so we have low secondary graduation rates, and we lose our top universities. How do we compete with the rest of the world when the best university is the University of Texas or Baylor? (Goodbye U. of Chicago). What happens when we stop investing in basic research? I could go on, but I think you catch the drift. At present, places like Texas benefit from the investments of other states. What happens when those states copy Texas and stop their investing? (OTOH, the quality of barbecue goes way up, and we all get to wear sh*tkicker boots.)
Steve
@steve, good for you to be in the Midwest; I expect your common sense to improve accordingly for now.
I think if Governor Perry and his successors make any headway in their efforts to poach Illinois businesses with tens of billions of dollars of financial incentives, Texas might find a large migration of FIBs following those jobs, demanding schools provide medical coverage for football players and other expectations of an ordered society, perhaps gun control.
Too brief a visit PD. OTOH, I won’t be here long enough to bring down the area average.
Steve
Andy,
Californians seem to have reputations that precede them, when they move to other areas of the country. Often times they are viewed as superficial softies, lefties, or run-of-the-mill carpetbaggers. I guess it’s all in the eye of the beholder, and how deep one’s imagination draws another’s persona. Nonetheless, the way you graphically captured “us Californians,” in that comment, made me smile.
“Suppose we follow the Drew/jan plan. Every state in the union looks like Texas. That means we have 30% of the country without health insurance. We have limited support for public education, so we have low secondary graduation rates, and we lose our top universities.”
Steve,
The way you describe such a plan is akin to having Philistines running amuck throughout the country! I wonder how this country even got started without an entire bureaucracy of government officials in place at the get go!
Actually, I think the outcome you described is a bit over the top. And, even with Obamacare in place there will be countless of people not covered by insurance — some by their own volition. Also, with projected shortages of HC personal, those with insurance may not be able to receive timely medical care that has been over-promised. There are lots of gapping holes in the ACA, starting with implementation, going onto fiscal implications, with more troublesome questions regarding quality and rationing, something already documented in other countries with nationalized HC.
As for public education, you seem to have a sordid opinion for other options involving the private sector. Ironically, there have been various educational experiments, with the private sector running schools. And, for the most part, they produce a higher level of education, students are better prepared for college, with higher graduation rates from these privately-run secondary schools. Why there is so much loyalty to an antiquated, oftentimes inept system that is failing children, especially those from poorer neighborhoods, is beyond me.
As a parent of a son educated in the public school system I was privy to all the problems there, including the waste of time spent in public school bureaucracies, including some of the nonsense of committees who end up doing nothing but gossiping and paperwork. In fact, in the elementary and middle schools our son attended, the only way things got done were from a hand-full of parents upgrading a school with an innovated, independent spirit, versus the inertia exercised in most rigid public school settings. It was these parents, me included, who dug up asphalt and planted gardens, painted handball courts, funded science murals and jazz programs, built climbing walls in the gym, started after-school programs, ran book fairs and read-a-thon events…and more. Red tape had to be cut and parents had to privately dig deeply into their own pockets for funding, because if one went through conventional means, it would take years for anything to materialize out of needed requests.
IMO, the private sector is where good ideas are generated and then expeditiously implemented. Government, OTOH, is where the same-old-same-old is kept on tax-payer life supports, for fear of anything new coming around and disrupting top-loaded public school administrations and teacher union’s guaranteed comfort zones.
“Suppose we follow the Drew/jan plan. Every state in the union looks like Texas”
Even Texas isn’t following the Drew/jan plan:
Obamacare critic Rick Perry seeks cash from law
Here’s yet another piece confirming that California and Illinois are hemorrhaging tax dollars, as well as New York.
Walter Russell Meade concludes his blog remarks with what he sees as being behind such shrinkage:
Does Detroit come to mind?
The bold, though, was added by me, as an emphasis of cause and effect certainty, when you lean on people too much. Either people flee, which is what is happening in high tax states, or if that option is taken away, then productivity goes down — think the old Soviet Union. There’s always a tipping point for every grand but non-starter idea.
This may be off the wall, but I was reading and thinking about Elon Musk’s hyperloop train concept and thought that it might be more suitable for freight rather than people. I don’t know if the will is there to convert to a new system, because you’d need major investment in the infrastructure before having enough key supply lines installed, and presumably would need to figure out if current cargo containers are adaptable (could something that large and heavy be propelled through those tubes? I have no idea, and if not it may make the idea unfeasible.) If the engineering was possible and some big money folks would buy into the idea, Chicago could certainly become a major hub again.
It just seems to me that a new concept, new paradigm, would be needed for cities like Chicago to reinvent themselves. Otherwise, times change and the new order replaces the old, and the best the city could do would be to manage the decline well (though that clearly isn’t happening now either.)
I’ve thought about that, too, but it depends on the transport cost per ton-mile. As you can see from the graph in that post, air travel is extremely expensive relative to other modes. Even if it’s only twice as expensive as highway transport, the figure I’ve generally seen, that’s still a significant difference. It makes sense for certain goods, not for others.
It makes the most sense for personal transportation. Hyperloops intended for human transport don’t need to compete with trucks, trains, or barge. Just with air travel and there’s a lot of room there.