One evening on his way home from
work, he saw an elderly woman get her purse snatched. Ignoring the warning
shouts of his friends, Evert sprinted after the purse-snatcher and ripped the
purse out of his hands. Unfortunately, the young man had a pistol, which he
shot at Evert and then ran away. Evert ended up in the hospital, luckily with
only a flesh wound, but his nickname stuck forever. Uncle Gunshot just laughed
about his adventure. "The city was having a tough time when that happened," he
said. Then he added more soberly, "That guy just wanted to eat. But so did that
woman. And she didn't have a pistol. I couldn't just leave her there."
Uncle Gunshot passed away over a
decade ago. He never left Detroit. He never lost his love for the place, though
he experienced its steady decline. I am glad that he didn't read the news this
morning.
Today's U.S. newspapers report the city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. The metropolis can not handle its $18 billion debt. Approximately 38 cents of every city dollar goes toward loan interest payments. If Detroit hadn't declared bankruptcy, the percentage of its money devoted to interest was expected to rise to 65 cents per dollar in just four years. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0719-detroit-bankruptcy-20130719,0,7289375.story?page=2 .
GRAFFITI FACTORY 2 by lundgrenphotography
Ever wonder what it would be
like to struggle in a failing European country like Greece or Spain? Just move
to Detroit. While what some call third-world conditions have existed in pockets
of U.S. cities for decades--remember the slums of the 60's and the race riots
that swept the nation?--we have ignored these neighborhoods of misery until we
now have entire U.S. cities that are being thrown away. Stockton, CA. San
Bernardino, CA. And now Detroit.
But wait. It's not the entire
city that's being thrown away. Thanks to supply-chain economics, corporations
with the means have reduced expenses and increased profits by moving overseas
to cheaper labor markets, or have out-sourced significant percentages of their
component manufacturing to overseas factories, thereby cutting the cost of
their products. So some corporations have escaped Detroit's fate. Got to love
those economic concepts. They're so good at masking the reality of suffering
that accompanies such business approaches.
And the banks. Let's not forget
the banks. Somehow, even when people are losing their homes. Even when people
have no work and don't know how they are going to feed their families. Even
when entire cities fail, somehow the banks always get the first repayments on
debt. Just like cancer that feeds and grows without limit until its host is
dead, banks demand their payments even when they know they are destroying the
very communities that have made them profitable for generations. And our
government and its laws support them in this sickness. That's what happens when
profit trumps life.
In 2010 the University of
Chicago hosted a seminar called Global Capitalisms Old and New, which my
university was kind enough to send me to. http://mfs.uchicago.edu/?/archive/global-warming-copy. Described as a few days that
would be devoted to a reexamination of capitalism's pro's and con's, it turned
out to be far more of a paean for the largely understandable and laudable path
that capitalism has taken over the last few hundred years. Especially hard to
swallow was a talk presented by a political science professor, Gary Herrigel,
who studies supply chain economics. (For one of his recent
articles with Jonathan Zeitlin see "Inter-Firm Relations in Global
Manufacturing: Disintegrated Production and Its
Globalization" click here)
His presentation made reasonable the decisions
of corporations to "out-source" all or part of its manufacturing to overseas
locations where low wages were the norm. His argument was that by taking
advantage of such markets, a reduced but still profitable corporation could
remain viable in the U.S. where its designers, innovators and high-end employees
would continue to have jobs. However, Professor Herrigel also admitted that as
overseas employees learned to be effective workers, they would demand higher
salaries at which time the corporations would have to relocate to a more
undeveloped part of the world in order to retain its salary cost advantage.
Again, notice how the concepts disguise the misery that follows in the wake of
these strategies.
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