primitives wax nostalgic for good old days

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6764038

Oh my.

AllentownJake  (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 10:23 AM
Original message
 
Somethings just don't come back

I grew up in suburb right outside of Allentown, PA. Once upon a time we were an All-America City. When I was younger, just 25 years ago the city had a thriving downtown and a safe city. 25 years later, after years of bad economic management in the nation as a whole and some poor management by some of the cities mayors, Allentown is a very different city. Billy Joel wrote his song at the start of the decline, not the bottom.

As I walk around the downtown the signs of the old businesses are still there, although the businesses have changed. You can still see their signs. Shoe stores, Appliance Stores, Restaurants that have long since closed. Most of the new businesses, to the space that isn't vacant, don't have the capital to afford a new sign so they generally put a banner up in its place. The businesses are generally dollar stores or run-in 7-11 type grocery stores.

We once had a world class department store down town. It was the center of the community. It would have fashion shows, bring in Hollywood's B-list, and flower shows. Everyone in town over 30 has a story about Hess's. The older ones about shopping the younger ones going there as a kid at Christmastime. We replaced it with a Macy's and a Penny's two miles down the road in a mall.

A lot of the row homes, which are architectural works of art are falling a part. A good portion of them are owned by absentee landlords who rent them out and let the citizens fend for themselves. You look at the outside of these homes with their Victorian design and you know that a lot of investment was placed into them originally. If you can take away the 25 years of neglect you really have some awe inspiring neighborhoods.

The old Western Electric (which became AT&T,than Lucent, than Agere, than LSI) plant where my Dad spent 35 years working is vacant now. They built a AAA baseball stadium down the road and use the employee parking lot for parking for the Stadium during the summer. You drive past the old factories, many of which closed before I was ever born. Some of them closed with Bethlehem Steel in the 80s. Broken windows, decaying roofs, eyesores where men once worked.

Allentown hit rock bottom in the early 2000s and the new Mayor has done a great deal of work to bring some of the city back, but the fact is the city is never going to come back to what it was. Older residents think back nostalgically to what the City was. Younger kids dream of leaving.

I know Allentown's story isn't alone or the worse of these type of stories. I scratch my head and wonder why a vibrant community was simply abandoned one day.

So forgive me, when I hear things like jobless recovery and it being just accepted as the way things have to be from the administration. I think about Allentown when I hear those words and I know what the cost of a Jobless recovery will be on my country as a whole..

Wow.  Hess's in downtown Allentown isn't around any more?

Damn.

franksolich bought two of the very best three-piece suits he ever owned, at Hess's.

la_chupa (22 posts)      Tue Oct-13-09 10:33 AM
Response to Original message
 
2. small town America is a sad tale

My grandparents lived in a small town in Texas. Once upon a time when I was a kid there was a really cool little downtown area with wooden sidewalks and old mission architecture. I distinctly remember a candy shop.

Now it's all boarded up and the people who used to own those shops all work at Wally World for minimum wage.

Who needs authentic western barbecue (beef not pork even though I live in NC now) when you can have McDonald's.

pity really

TexasObserver  (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 10:37 AM
Response to Original message
 
5. Unfortunately, every recovery is a jobless recovery until the jobs come back.

But the problem facing Allentown is much more fundamental. US and global business interests allowed globalists to gut American manufacturing, particularly that in the rust belt, including Allentown. In the name of the "free market" - a misnomer if ever there was one - American iron and steel producers were undercut and the results are places like Allentown and other factory towns that produced such goods.

I know the bad job market is terrible for many Americans, and I lament the loss of those jobs, too. My point of disagreement with you is over your sense that a recovery is not happening unless jobs are being created. Yes, it is very unfortunate, but just as a patient improves long before they can get up and around, so is this recovering economy. It's barely out of ICU, and it's still eating Jello.

Recoveries take years, not months.

AllentownJake  (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 10:38 AM
Response to Reply #5
 
9. Dude

Get over yourself, this was not meant to be economic analysis it is a personal story of the 30 year decline of my medium size town.

Go sell your nonsense in another thread.

TexasObserver  (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 10:39 AM
Response to Reply #9
 
10. Thanks, but I'll provide whatever comments I deem appropriate.

And you can like it or not like it.

The thread is about your topic, and my comments are about your topic.

So, stick to the topic and stop engaging in a personal attack against me simply because I take issue with your chronic "it's not a recovery with no jobs."

AllentownJake  (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 10:40 AM
Response to Reply #10
 
11. I swear I have two stalkers on here

One in the morning, one at night.

TexasObserver  (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 10:46 AM
Response to Reply #11
 
14. No, you have two posters who don't agree with your POV, and you start a lot of threads.

If you start threads, you cannot expect everyone to agree with every post you make.

You are the person who made an issue of the "jobless recovery" in your OP. Don't mention it if you don't want it talked about.

This is a topic that interests me. It must interest you, because you start several threads a day about it. If it interests you and it interests me, we're going to be talking about it threads.

AllentownJake  (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 10:53 AM
Response to Reply #14
 
19. This was a lament about the decline of my hometown

It was a lament that the jobless recovery that is being advertised and spun is going to do this to a lot of other cities in America. It was not a discussion of how you can prevent a jobless recovery, whether a jobless recovery is a recovery, or anything else like that.

You seem to be on a mission to spin this recovery and the administrations actions, that is fine. My position if it is jobless it is worthless because what happened to my city is what is happening to real people. See my quote from FDR. That is what I believe.

Here is another one for you:

"But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings." FDR

Maybe we were brought up differently, I believe the economy (since without people there is no such thing as an economy) exist to serve people, not people to serve the economy.

sudopod (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 10:49 AM
Response to Reply #11
 
17. Your post is made of truth and honesty.

I don't know what that guy's problem is, but thanks for sharing your story.

AllentownJake  (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 11:01 AM
Response to Reply #17
 
25. He's not happy that I'm not buying the company line about the Jobless recovery.

Thank you, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

franksolich also thinks the Pennsylvania Power & Light skyscraper in Allentown was awesome.

rubberducky  (1000+ posts)      Tue Oct-13-09 10:47 AM
Response to Original message
 
15. I feel the same way about Detroit.

It just breaks my heart to see the once beautiful old buildings and homes, now falling into disrepair from a lack of love. Some have been so wonderfully restored as treasures from a different era of skilled craftsmen with a great deal of pride in thier work. Allentown was probably built in the same era as Detroit, the new buildings with their steel girders and glass just can`t compare to the craftmanship of the once proud older buildings.

The primitive from southeastern Nebraska:

TwilightGardener  (1000+ posts)      Tue Oct-13-09 11:03 AM
Response to Original message
 
28. Sadly, things can't stay the same forever.
 
I am from PA, and I will not go back there to live, although I do miss it at times. People have been leaving the Rust Belt in droves for decades, and it's not just jobs and economics--it's the weakening of family ties that used to bind people to where their parents and grandparents chose to live. And it's climate, and recreational opportunities.

Although I have family still in PA, most of the younger generations of my husband's family have abandoned the state for warmer sunbelt and coastal areas. You get tired of lake-effect snow and endless gray skies after a while. People just don't feel bound to stay where they were raised out of a sense of familial duty, anymore--so it's not just an economic issue, it's a sociological one, and that's harder to fix.

And when the younger generations leave, that's it. It's over. So unless it becomes trendy for twenty and thirty-somethings with children to move back to the Industrial Northeast and Great Lakes regions, you will see a continued graying of the population and a continued contraction of neighborhoods and towns.

AllentownJake  (1000+ posts)        Tue Oct-13-09 11:09 AM
Response to Reply #28
 
29. Land becomes cheap

Industries move back in, people move back. There is still infrastructure, like any other boom/bust you eventually hit a bust. The sunbelt will have a boom for a while, but the influx of people will bring them the same challenges Arizona, Nevada, and California are facing right now.

I'm 60 miles from NY and 60 miles from Philadelphia. They are working on a plan for a train that connects the two cities through the area and once that happens we will have our own little boom again of commuters.

We had a boom of distribution centers in the areas outside the city (since we are connected by interstate to NY, Philly, and Northern New Jersey). It is going a little bust right now as people are consuming less.

It's a cycle.

Wow.  franksolich used to work for one of those, near Fogelsville.

dugaresa  (748 posts)       Tue Oct-13-09 11:27 AM
Response to Reply #28
 
32. PA is no wasteland. It is a gorgeous state and is actually a leading agricultural state.

Yes we lost heavy industry in areas like Pittsburgh and Allentown etc. However some places have made comebacks and it is a very nice place to live.

Pittsburgh has many of the amenities that larger cities do and it is far more affordable.

A this time of year, it is downright gorgeous to live here with the beautiful fall color. The brisk air and even the overcast days are pleasant.

Perhaps it is not a coastal area but I enjoy the white water and trekking on bike trails and walking trails.

Many of my friends that relocated to warmer climes complain incessantly to me about the high cost of living. One such couple moved to Nevada and while they enjoyed the sun, they are now upside down on a mortgage that they bought when the economy was booming in Las Vegas. This weekend I found out from her that people are really struggling there and she wishes she could get back to PA if not for her mortgage issue.

TwilightGardener  (1000+ posts)      Tue Oct-13-09 11:43 AM
Response to Reply #32
 
36. No, I understand that it's not a wasteland, I didn't intend to portray it as such.

I am from Pgh, in fact, and I'm not knocking it--it has a lot of things going for it. It's still a vital and important city and has held its own over the decades, certainly better than other places. But I do think that much of the state has suffered not just from industrial collapse but from a more mobile society, weaker family ties.

If you are young and ambitious and can choose to live anywhere in the country, would you deliberately choose...Erie, PA? Johnstown? Maybe, but most likely not--unless being close to your family and your old high school buds (the ones who stayed) means a lot to you.

Now, PA is still one of the most populous states, so I don't think it will ever empty out THAT much overall, but there are pockets that have really gone into decline, and that's sad, but to be expected.

TwilightGardener  (1000+ posts)      Tue Oct-13-09 11:51 AM
Response to Reply #33
 
37. Yes, I'd rather live in MI or PA than in those places, myself. 

I've lived around the country, and I prefer the Plains and the West--mostly for the wide-open rural spaces, low traffic, low cost of living, scenery, climate (it's a little drier out here, though effing COLD), and sunshine. But moving to a big sunbelt city surrounded by endless 'burbs, traffic, people, high cost of living and smog...no thanks. No amount of heat and sun can make up for that misery.

Damn it, don't sell Nebraska to the primitives.

Life is good with neglible primitives occupying our space.

[delilahmused]

Amazing...they lament the demise of small towns and middle class communities yet never miss an opportunity to bash the values that made such life possible. You can't have it both ways.

Cindie

[JohnnyReb]

Well old Allentownjake, one of Allentowns companies moved to my SC hometown in 1967 to get away from the union. And about 10 years later a very large one moved in about 40 miles away for the same reason.

So in conclusion I say, "Look for the Union label....you won't find it or the company."

[The Village Idiot]

It was their values and ideas that destroyed the cities. I remember going to a store called Gibsons, parents buying us slurpees and popcorn as we did our shopping.

I think its a Mexican grocery store now.

TexasObserver is a moron. There is not a recovery without jobs, its not possible.

[franksolich]

Amazing...they lament the demise of small towns and middle class communities yet never miss an opportunity to bash the values that made such life possible. You can't have it both ways.

There's another thing, too.

You know how the primitives wax nostalgic for the old family farm.

Well, if we had the same system of federal, state, and local taxation that existed at the time the old family farm flourished and prospered, we'd still have the old family farm.

Ditto for the old hometown.

The primitives don't get it, though, because the primitives see no relationship between taxes during the Good Old Days, and taxes as they currently are.

[Ptarmigan]

Primitives seem to be really nostalgic and romanticizing the past. I mean look at how they romanticize the 1960s and 1970s.

[thundley4]

The DUmmies should be happy for the collapse of Allentown. It was a dirty, polluted city. You can't produce steel without burning a lot of fossil fuels and putting all those nasty things into the air.  Hey DUmmies, one of the big reasons for companies leaving the US, is all of the environmental rules and regulations.

Top 3 reasons IMHO.  Taxes, Environmental  Laws, Unions.

[jukin]

But the problem facing Allentown is much more fundamental. US and global business interests allowed globalists to gut American manufacturing,

Having been in the manufacturing sector for over thirty five years this is complete bullshit. What killed industry was at first the unions. Not in the overpriced hourly wage but in the rules implemented to make sure all work took twice as long to complete.  These were not ever designed to make the plant work efficiently but to make it work inefficiently.  Automation came to the rescue and kept our overall manufacturing output up but with far fewer jobs.

But what really killed manufacturing was regulations.  OSHA started it and was needed but it swung the pendulum so far many business went out of business or moved elsewhere the regulators were not demigods.  then came the EPA, which again was  necessary, but went way over board. The people that regulate industry are in general ignorant of business. They demand tight artificial deadlines fof unnecessary controls. Again, business quit or moved to friendly atmospheres.

Fun fact, manufacturing is incremental. One does just not go out and make a factory that makes big screen LCDs.  The factory grows and gains experience from making watch black and white LCDs. Then they move up to small color screens.  Then they start to make larger and larger screens.  The government (city, state, and federal) do nothing to incubate industries and much to kill them early on.  Other countries are not this foolish.

Ronald Reagan said it best.  "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. "