Richard Florida's Creative Class focus doesn't actually work.

[bailey]

Analysis [[even by Florida himself) shows what I think many here already knew.

Among the most pervasive, and arguably pernicious, notions of the past decade has been that the “creative class” of the skilled, educated and hip would remake and revive American cities. The idea, packaged and peddled by consultant Richard Florida, had been that unlike spending public money to court Wall Street fat cats, corporate executives or other traditional elites, paying to appeal to the creative would truly trickle down, generating a widespread urban revival.

Urbanists, journalists, and academics—not to mention big-city developers— were easily persuaded that shelling out to court “the hip and cool” would benefit everyone else, too. And Florida himself has prospered through books, articles, lectures, and university positions that have helped promote his ideas and brand and grow his Creative Class Group’s impressive client list, which in addition to big corporations and developers has included cities as diverse as Detroit and El Paso, Cleveland and Seattle.


Well, oops.


Florida himself, in his role as an editor at The Atlantic, admitted last month what his critics, including myself, have said for a decade: that the benefits of appealing to the creative class accrue largely to its members—and do little to make anyone else any better off. The rewards of the “creative class” strategy, he notes, “flow disproportionately to more highly-skilled knowledge, professional and creative workers,” since the wage increases that blue-collar and lower-skilled workers see “disappear when their higher housing costs are taken into account.” His reasonable and fairly brave, if belated, takeaway: “On close inspection, talent clustering provides little in the way of trickle-down benefits.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...ive-class.html

Of Course, Detroit/Rustbelt cities and Michigan are featured...

The most risible example of this may have been former Michigan Jennifer Granholm’s “cool cities” campaign of the mid-oughts, that sought to cultivate the “creative class” by subsidizing the arts in Detroit and across the state. It didn’t exactly work. “You can put mag wheels on a Gremlin,” comments one long-time Michigan observer. “but that doesn't make it a Mustang.”

Alec MacGillis, writing at The American Prospect in 2009, noted that after collecting large fees from down-at-the-heels burgs like Cleveland, Toledo, Hartford, Rochester, and Elmira, New York over the years, Florida himself asserted that we can’t “stop the decline of some places” and urged the country to focus instead on his high-ranked “creative” enclaves. “So, got that, Rust Belt denizens?” MacGillis noted wryly in a follow-up story last year at the New Republic. Pack your bags for Boulder and Raleigh-Durham and Fairfax County. Oh, and thanks again for the check.”

From his own article in January in the Atlantic.

.... this overall effect turns out to be an illusion. The "average" amount left over is higher simply because the most highly skilled and highly paid group does so well that it pulls up overall wages. The punch line changes dramatically once we consider the effects of higher housing costs on the three different classes of workers.

Highly skilled knowledge, professional, and creative workers continue to benefit. They have more than enough left over in the more expensive metros. The positive correlation between their wages left over and housing costs [[.58) indicates this, and the line on the scatter-graph points upward.


But the opposite is true for the other two classes of workers. The correlations between left-over wages and housing costs are negative and significant for each of them [[-.36 for service workers and -.20 for blue-collar workers), and the lines on the scatter-graphs slope down.


The benefits of highly-skilled regions accrue mainly to knowledge, professional, and creative workers.


The trickle-down effect disappears once the higher housing costs borne by less skilled workers are taken into account.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/job...eography/4465/

[canuck]

Yes, I dont want to be an apologist for Florida but, either way these discrepancies happen whether a creative class crashes on a city or not.

Florida has capitalized on the fears and aspirations of city administrators like a good quack doctor, doling out prescriptions that are self evident any old way you look at them.

[Gannon]

But everyone will have to admit, that given the myopia of academia in general, his analysis was spot on...only short-sighted to focus only on those who played the same game he does, thinking that letters strung after a person's name dictates how much one needs to worship them and not question their conclusions.

I remember some of the same working with that ThinkTank group on improving the music industry in the city...the academics lined up and got attention, anyone without their credentials was largely ignored. This is the breakdown of the efficacy of adademia, and Florida is one of their poster-children. Glad he's owning up to it.

I think it is gutsy for him to publicly correct his early errant conclusions, which proves he isn't merely continuing to gather friendly data...it is all too easy to dismiss information which doesn't support a thesis you've spent a lifetime assembling...

He lost me when he based his entire "Cool" concept on the fact that he, along with many of us, became convinced to spend over $600 on a pair of glasses. That was early in his Orchestra Hall speech, where he was introduced by Kwhyme...and I caught this shot the instant he was heckled about the Madison-Lennox after boasting about how much he LOVED old buildings.

[EastsideAl]

Of course what cities like Detroit and the other cities mentioned above really need is not a huge growth in personal income for a smallish number of "creatives," but growth in the type of economic activity that would create large numbers of decent paid jobs. Like, say, manufacturing...

Oh, wait, we decided to give that away, didn't we?

[Gannon]

Capitalism demanded it.

[DetroitPlanner]

Florida is a pompous boor of a one trick pony. He is the Malik Shabazz of the white people. Pay him enough he will say anything.

[Honky Tonk]

Capitalism demanded it.

Like a house of cards, if one does it overseas and turns a competitive profit, the others follow suit. Detroit, again, is putting all it's eggs in one basket with it's development along the Corridor and in the Cultural Center. Meanwhile the outling areas are left to fend for themselves. As more residents chase home invaders in frustration, my guess is they too will eventually move elsewhere where they get the services they pay for. Good luck, then, keeping the dream alive.

[iheartthed]

Florida is a pompous boor of a one trick pony. He is the Malik Shabazz of the white people. Pay him enough he will say anything.

That was funny.

[Gannon]

Capitalism, at its most basic equation, requires the lowest achievable labor and parts costings and the highest achievable selling price for the greatest profit margin and growth, continually. Simple as that.

Everything inbetween is ethics and morals, another study entirely. Economics has no metric for those.

[marshamusic]

Analysis [[even by Florida himself) shows what I think many here already knew.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...ive-class.html

Of Course, Detroit/Rustbelt cities and Michigan are featured...




From his own article in January in the Atlantic.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/job...eography/4465/

Even though I've personally been the beneficiary of arts support - and have been very grateful for it - I've long concluded that the influx of creatives is good, but not enough. This is why I said the following, quoted in this headline of the same site, a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/03/detroit-isnt-some-kind-abstract-art-project/4884/

[mwilbert]

Of course what cities like Detroit and the other cities mentioned above really need is not a huge growth in personal income for a smallish number of "creatives," but growth in the type of economic activity that would create large numbers of decent paid jobs. Like, say, manufacturing...

Oh, wait, we decided to give that away, didn't we?

No, or at least not mostly. Certainly a lot of jobs have migrated elsewhere, but mostly they have disappeared altogether. Global manufacturing employment has been falling for at least 15 years and probably longer. Leaving aside problems of distribution, which are important, collectively Americans don't need more stuff, and manufacturing makes stuff. Productivity improvements mean you don't need as many people to make the same amount of stuff. So manufacturing employment falls.

Could the US have retained more manufacturing employment? Almost certainly. But the underlying dynamic is inevitable.

[Detroitnerd]

Productivity improvements mean you don't need as many people to make the same amount of stuff. So manufacturing employment falls.

So you go to a 32-hour or 35-hour workweek, with no reduction in weekly pay, like France and Germany. More people work, fewer people work overtime, everybody has more money to spend, more time to spend with their families, people are happier, have more money to spend and leisure time to spend it, driving a recreational economy, crime falls, the nation is more secure, etc.

[Shollin]

So you go to a 32-hour or 35-hour workweek, with no reduction in weekly pay, like France and Germany. More people work, fewer people work overtime, everybody has more money to spend, more time to spend with their families, people are happier, have more money to spend and leisure time to spend it, driving a recreational economy, crime falls, the nation is more secure, etc.

The GOP would have a field day with this. Even though those countries have a better quality of life than the US, less poverty, less crime, it's still socialism and that is the root of all evil.

[mwilbert]

So you go to a 32-hour or 35-hour workweek, with no reduction in weekly pay, like France and Germany. More people work, fewer people work overtime, everybody has more money to spend, more time to spend with their families, people are happier, have more money to spend and leisure time to spend it, driving a recreational economy, crime falls, the nation is more secure, etc.

There is certainly a lot to recommend that approach, but it doesn't solve the problem; manufacturing employment in Germany and France has been falling for a long time as well. You can't offset a doubling of productivity with a 20% reduction in hours.

[mwilbert]

US manufacturing productivity. It has actually tripled since 1972.

[Hermod]

So you go to a 32-hour or 35-hour workweek, with no reduction in weekly pay, like France and Germany. More people work, fewer people work overtime, everybody has more money to spend, more time to spend with their families, people are happier, have more money to spend and leisure time to spend it, driving a recreational economy, crime falls, the nation is more secure, etc.

No, they will still work the longer work week and be paid more because more of it will be at overtime rates. The base costs in worker benefits, contribution to state unemployment insurance, and workman's compensation
will still make it cheaper to hire two guys with overtime instead of three guys.

The US high pay for industrial workers grew from the following phenomena:

1. Industrial expansion for WWII and the post-war boom increasing demand for workers.

2. Severe restrictions on immigration post-1920 restricting the supply of workers followed by the low depression era birthrate.

Pay declined for the following reasons:

1. Automation and movement of factories overseas reducing the demand for workers.

2. The slug of baby-boomers joining the workforce coupled with relaxation of immigration enforcement increasing the supply of workers.

The rental rates for labor are subject to the economic laws of supply and demand.

[Detroitnerd]

No, they will still work the longer work week and be paid more because more of it will be at overtime rates. The base costs in worker benefits, contribution to state unemployment insurance, and workman's compensation will still make it cheaper to hire two guys with overtime instead of three guys.

Oh, big, big surprise: Hermod is against high pay and European-style short workweeks, but chooses instead to say it's inevitable, which is the cop out the right wing likes to use to ease what little social conscience hasn't atrophied and fallen off over the years.

God knows we don't want to have short work weeks and high pay. It would ruin the country, right? I mean, look what it did to Germany ...

... oh, wait ...

[Det_ard]

The rental rates for labor are subject to the economic laws of supply and demand.

Not in liberal fairy-tale-land they're not. Free lunch for everyone!

[nain rouge]

If there's anything I hate, Detroitnerd, it's someone who doesn't think we should be free to be slaves. Here, you want to limit corporate abuse of our personal lives and improve our overall quality of life! Have you no heart for General Motors, no kind bone in your body for Wal-Mart?

[WaCoTS]

US manufacturing productivity. It has actually tripled since 1972.

....because the same amount of work is now being done by 1/3 of the amount of people, the other 2/3s of the work force having been replaced by machines, or computers and forced into other job sectors, or simply left unemployed?

[Detroitnerd]

If there's anything I hate, Detroitnerd, it's someone who doesn't think we should be free to be slaves. Here, you want to limit corporate abuse of our personal lives and improve our overall quality of life! Have you no heart for General Motors, no kind bone in your body for Wal-Mart?

Oh, no! I'm a monster! I'm horrified by my working-class chauvinism. I should count myself fortunate to be able to get any rent for my labor at all!

[Detroitnerd]

"America manufacturing has not been decreasing – it has been increasing. Far from 'losing' manufacturing, the U.S. has seen a steady rise for decades- even after the financial crisis of 2008. No other country comes close save for China, which is now slightly ahead. But consider that China has 20% of humanity, and the U.S. has 5%. Not bad for 5%, not bad at all. ..."

"... Shortening the hours of labor automatically exerts an upward pressure on wages since it means more workers are necessarily shifting the supply side of things in favor of workers. Classically the shortening of the work day has been seen as a critical way of improving the lot of the working class, a thought which seems lost in contemporary America."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/...uring-decline/

[Det_ard]

Dnerd's foolish approach to "solving" this problem by mandating less work for equal pay is regressive, not progressive.

What's been happening with manufacturing already happened with agriculture. At one time 75% of Americans were directly involved in agriculture. Now it's between 1% and 2%. DNerd's solution would have been to require those 75% of US workers who were farm workers to continue to work on the farm, rather than letting the market work its magic and pull those no longer needed in agriculture toward industry. Result of letting the market work: the industrial revolution and a huge increase in living standards.

Now the same thing has been happening for decades in manufacturing, and we see the shift to non-manufacturing jobs. [[Don't belittle these as burger-flipping service jobs, service jobs are also web developers, attorneys, urban planners and journalists) Service jobs pay more on average than manufacturing jobs.

Our food cost as a % of our disposable income is at a record low, cost of products [[cars, TVs, computers) continue to fall on a quality-adjusted basis.

Capitalism works. 500,000,000 formerly poor in China and India are proof.

[nain rouge]

No one is saying that capitalism doesn't work, but as a system it has always - ALWAYS - been plagued by serious social inequality. If wasn't for the constant efforts of reformers, we'd have seen little remediation. No unions, no middle class Motor City as we knew it, for example.

[JBMcB]

"... Shortening the hours of labor automatically exerts an upward pressure on wages since it means more workers are necessarily shifting the supply side of things in favor of workers.

It also increases the pressure on making workers more productive or replacing them with machines, which is how the US makes so much stuff with so much less labor.