Ted Evanoff, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article about the economic condition of the state. Indianapolis, and to a lesser extent Lafayette and Bloomington, have been weathering the economic storm while the rest of the state has been suffering.
Although the Indy area added 6,000 jobs in August to rise to 908,200 positions, much of the rest of the state is in shaky transition as old auto and RV factories close or shed workers and communities struggle to find a new economic engine.
. . .
Indianapolis and two college cities in its economic orbit — Lafayette and Bloomington — have been cushioned by the slow rise of a new economy. Built on technology and innovation, sheltered from foreign competition, it has been seeded by shots of venture capital.
Doubtless Indianapolis’s success has to do with the perfidy of big city elites at the expense of honest Hoosiers in the rest of the state; whereas the relative success of the Lafayette area is attributable to the thrift, ingenuity, hard work, and quality blogging of its local citizenry. I am at a loss to explain the success of Bloomington, but presume it has to do with the past greatness of its men’s basketball athletic squads.
Speaking of athletic squads, the North Central Conference cities are not doing well generally:
Outside the metro area, the economic divide appears. Hit hardest have been old industrial centers, including Anderson, Connersville, Elkhart, Marion, Muncie, New Castle and Richmond. Of the state’s 133,400 laid-off factory workers, 116,000 labored outside the 10-county Indianapolis area at now-closed or shrinking factories for Borg-Warner, Guide, Dana, Visteon and others.
Assembly jobs have shifted to places such as China, where factory wages average about $200 a month. Although high-tech plants have opened in the U.S., many locate near cities to access technical workers.
I can’t speak personally to the other cities, but Richmond has been staring this economic displacement in the teeth for a long time now. About the time I went off to college, my Dad accepted a transfer to a related business in Ohio rather than face the prospect of laying off a bunch of guys at Alcoa that he’d worked with for 10 or 20 years.
Solely relying on manufacturing won’t cut it anymore. At the same time, I can’t get past the notion that we have to keep making stuff to remain strong as a country. Over reliance on the financial industry isn’t healthy either. Historically, the Netherlands and Britain shifted from manufacturing dominance to financial dominance before fading away to becoming secondary powers. So, we need to work for a balance.
As long as it is cheaper and less risky to move jobs overseas, capitalism dictates that companies have to do it. Capitalism is not friends with the working class, it races to the bottom. So either we have to give up Capitalism or we have to make it painful for those jobs to move.
My proposal, though it would probably wreck the global economy: tell all companies that want to sell products in America that they have to abide by a couple of our laws. First, that they must pay all of their workers American middle wage or higher. Second, that their products must pass all of our quality standards.
At that point, the only competition left is in price to move the products to market and location will matter again. At that point, the Chinese will buy chinese products and Americans will buy American products.
Probably a crazy idea, but there has to be some middle ground somewhere. Otherwise I believe the idea of capitalism is doomed when the companies race to the bottom and then have no one to sell their products to.
Twenty years ago, Richmond was losing jobs because plants were moving to the South. I know because I spent many of my summers helping to move middle/upper management from Richmond to these new plants.
I remember this was one of the things I disliked about Clinton on ’92-because the way he grew the job market in Arkansas was by closing down plants in cities like Richmond.
Now even workers in the South are asking “too much” to keep jobs in the states.
I love the Radio Shack commercial: “Don’t just buy stuff, do stuff.” Isn’t there some way that Mitch could get everybody together and decide that we are going to set an example in Indiana where, for fair wages workers and managers will make quality products that earn shareholders a decent return and are purchased at reasonable prices by all Hoosiers? Probably too much to ask because in America enough is never enough…..off to the mall.
A few years back, a sitting County Councilman in Monroe County was asked about the loss of manufacturing jobs in the area. “Let’s face it,” he said, “those jobs are gone and won’t be back.” Teh Republicans used those words at $60, 000+ (an unheard of sum) to defeat him. When the next elections rolled around, naturally these jobs had not returned to Monroe County, but people could go on thinking that they might.
I don’t necessarily view Indpls/Central Indiana as big city elitists. The structure of the economy in greater Indpls by nature is more “recession proof” (Eli Lilly, State, Insurance Companies, Federal Govt. Medical Industy) than that of most of the rest of the state. Many states have a region in which a concentration of the power/wealth is in a few areas such as Georgia in the Atlanta Area.
I see the real issue being many communities (Kokomo, Richmond, Marion, Gary, S. Bend, etc) Living in a post WWII mentaility (smoke stack industries, manufacturing, manufacturing, etc) for waaaay too long and they are now paying the price for not attempting to diversifying their economy until it’s too late.