Companies Leaving is a Bigger Problem than just for Detroit and MI

[DTWflyer]

Same story, different company, different city - same region.

http://www.ajc.com/search/content//b...to_duluth.html

NCR moving from Dayton to Atlanta.

The power center of the US is in the South and West.

The Great Lakes and Midwest are quickly turning into a no man's land.
There is zero innovation, new growth, new companies or anything in this region.

Typical of our throw-away culture.

[carman]

The leaders in Georgia seemed pleased and show no concern for participating in the gutting of the Midwest. I understand survival and it is their prerogative. But something about this smacks of divisive to me. I don't know, maybe I am just becoming numb.

[Sstashmoo]

Atlanta isn't much better off than Detroit. Scratch the surface a bit. Mayoral corruption, crime, staggering unemployment, off-sourcing, foreclosures, they have it all with numbers only slightly better than Detroit. These cities like Atlanta and Dallas and cities west, have a huge problem, no water. Atlanta literally dried up Lake Lanier a few years ago. All it's going to take is some sort of epidemic from improperly stored and or mishandled water, then make room for the returnees.

[gazhekwe]

Moving to Atlanta right now does seem shortsighted, when they don't have enough water for the current population to survive a drought. Just hoping it won't happen seems a bit short-sighted to me. Droughts can go on for years and years, or recur in frequent cycles.

[casscorridor]

This will continue to happen so long as we have markets as an economic system. Why else would resources and investment flow to such unsustainable places? It is nothing short of the throw-away, speculative nature of markets... any way to make profit in the short term while forgetting about the future.

Michigan can be much much more sustainable than those southern and western boom towns. There is a reason black bottom was called black bottom before it was demolished for public housing projects and freeways. Our region has some of the most richest soil in the country, and plentiful water. And wind resources to generate energy.

But does any of that matter in the market? Not really, unless it makes profits in the short therm for the few who actually have money to invest. I say we abolish capitalism and markets as an economic system for a participatory and democratically planned economy.

check out Participatory Economics for more info.

http://www.parecon.org

[DetroitDad]

From Wikipedia;

One of the primary propositions of parecon is that all persons should have a say in each decision proportionate to the degree to which they are affected by it. For example, an individual who is the only one using a desk at work should have virtually complete control over the organization of his or her desk so long as such organization does not have significant adverse effects on others. The same logic implies that in more socially interactive contexts, decision-making power would be relatively more dispersed and inclusive, distributed in proportion to the degree which actors are impacted by decisions. Robin Hahnel explained the principle using the example of pollution,

"if only the residents of ward 2 of Washington, D.C. feel they are adversely affected by a pollutant released in ward 2, then ward 2 is the relevant region. But if the federation representing the residents of all wards of Washington, D.C. decides that a pollutant in ward 2 affects the residents of all wards, then the entire city of Washington is the relevant region […] However, the above procedure in the annual planning process protects the environment sufficiently only if present residents in the region of impact are the only ones who suffer adverse consequences. While this is the case for some pollutants, it is often the case that future generations bear a great cost of pollution today. The interests of future generations must be protected in the long-run participatory process and by an active environmental movement."[2]

This decision-making principle is often referred to as self-management. In parecon, it constitutes a replacement for the mainstream economic conception of economic freedom, which the authors have argued is an inadequate and misleading concept, incapable of providing useful guidance for situations where people's freedoms conflict. They argue its very vagueness has allowed it to be abused by capitalist ideologues. In the "ABC's of Political Economy" and "Economic Justice and Democracy", Hahnel offered critiques of the mainstream concept as formulated by Milton Friedman in "Capitalism and Freedom." For example, Hahnel argues that "the first problem with Milton Friedman's way of conceptualizing the notion that people should control their own economic lives is that it merely begs the question and defers all problems to an unspecified property rights system. […] The second problem is that while Friedman and other champions of capitalism wax poetic on the subject of economic freedom, they have remarkably little to say about what is a better or worse property rights system. […] What is entirely lacking is any attempt to develop criteria for better and worse distributions of property rights."[3]

So in a nutshell you're saying the Midwest should have a say over what Atlanta does because it negatively affects this region and the countries sustainability as a whole? That is going to be a tough sell my friend.

[yupislyr]

So, how is this any different then say, Michigan's incentives to get all the film business?

The move makes sense from the standpoint that the NCR parts distro centre for this continent is already nearby in Peachtree City, along with some helpdesk operations. Next up is a large training facility that is currently being built and plans are already underway to move most of the North American tech dispatchers to the area.

I doubt the current and future status of the local water supply has even crossed any of their minds.

[Patrick]

The thing I have noticed about the South is that it lures many manufacturing companies with HUGE tax incentives. Yet, none of these companies can promise the southern powerbrokers that the jobs will remain 20 years from now. How can we know that many of thge transplants won't get up and leave Alabama for Mexico...which I promise you...will happen. The South still seems to fail at brining brainpower jobs to their shores. They look for bullshit grunt work assembly operations that are becoming too $$ to have in the USA.

[Onthe405]

^ This applies to other countries in addition to our southern states. The "global economy" has even been devastating on many areas previously thought of as a haven for cheap labor. For years, international corporations set up manufacturing plants in Juarez & Tijuana Mexico. This provided them dirt cheap labor and inexpensive distribution access via land to the lucrative USA market without the environmental, labor, or tax standards found in the US.

Particularly in the last 5 years, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have been thrown out of work with no notice from management, no severance, and no options for relocation. The companies just lock the door overnight and workers usually hear via the news that the factory has been replaced by a new one in Southeast Asia or China.. The labor is even cheaper than Mexico, and basic human rights don't even have to be respected.

Much like in Detroit, factories are not sold and no provision is made for redevelopment---they are simply abandoned and left as economic and civic ruin. I fear we are entering an era of communism and capitalism without conscience.

The old adage about war apparently also applies to the global economy: in an effort to compete with, and destroy, your enemy--- you become them.

[MrNittany]

Not reported in that story ....... but reported where I am [[Cincinnati, this is a fairly big story here, of course) is that the state of Georgia is using $5,000,000 in FEDERAL STIMULUS funds to buy a building and construct another as part of the incentives to bring NCR from Dayton to Georgia.

Frankly, that's an outrageous use of stimulus money, and the officials down there should be ashamed that they're using it to "win" at the expense of another part of the country.

A tough, tough, tough, tough loss for Dayton ...... an already hard-hit town [[once the third-largest "GM Town" behind Detroit and Flint; now, there are no factories left open) which will now lose their only Fortune 500 company, a 125-year-old company born in the Miami Valley, an integral company in the town's history.

The company has been successful there, in fact highly successful this past decade, despite the CEO Bill Muti's claim "it's tough to recruit people to Dayton." But Muti doesn't care about the town: he has no ties to Dayton and has NEVER lived there since becoming CEO in 2005 [[frankly, NCR's board should have forced him to relocate to Dayton as part of the job).

[iheartthed]

But Muti doesn't care about the town: he has no ties to Dayton and has NEVER lived there since becoming CEO in 2005 [[frankly, NCR's board should have forced him to relocate to Dayton as part of the job).

Most, if not all, of the board of directors probably doesn't live in Dayton either. He was probably hired on with the intent to move the company from Dayton...

[DetroitDad]

^ This applies to other countries in addition to our southern states. The "global economy" has even been devastating on many areas previously thought of as a haven for cheap labor. For years, international corporations set up manufacturing plants in Juarez & Tijuana Mexico. This provided them dirt cheap labor and inexpensive distribution access via land to the lucrative USA market without the environmental, labor, or tax standards found in the US.

Particularly in the last 5 years, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have been thrown out of work with no notice from management, no severance, and no options for relocation. The companies just lock the door overnight and workers usually hear via the news that the factory has been replaced by a new one in Southeast Asia or China.. The labor is even cheaper than Mexico, and basic human rights don't even have to be respected.

Much like in Detroit, factories are not sold and no provision is made for redevelopment---they are simply abandoned and left as economic and civic ruin. I fear we are entering an era of communism and capitalism without conscience.

The old adage about war apparently also applies to the global economy: in an effort to compete with, and destroy, your enemy--- you become them.

Why don't we make sure that the environmental, labor, and tax standards are equal across the entire "global economy", if not for human rights issue, then at least for our own well being?

[MrNittany]

Most, if not all, of the board of directors probably doesn't live in Dayton either. He was probably hired on with the intent to move the company from Dayton...

True, of course, on the first point ......... it's just unfortunate when decision makers are VERY detached [[NCR's CEO has lived in NYC in his 4 years at the helm) from the communities their companies are an integral part of.

Does Alan Mulally still live in Seattle? I remember that was a story for awhile upon his initial hire.

[crawford]

Non-story. NCR management has been based in NYC for years now. The top 200 executives are all based in Manhattan.

NCR really left Dayton in the 1970's, when they cut all the factory jobs. Now they're just moving the scraps to cheapo exurban Atlanta.

[runnerXT]

yup 1300 white collar jobs leaving a small city is a non story.

[Danny]

The great rust belt midwest cities is DEAD! Gary Indiana was first then came Youngstown, Ohio.

Detroit Cleveland and Pittsburgh is hanging on their coal and steel even though its rotting slowly out of existance.

Get use to it. We're in the 21st Century. Globalization, internet commerce, media pop-culture collective intelligence and syllogistic storytelling is the norm. If we don't go along with the trend, then fall.