Have We* Hit the Bottom?

[smudge pot]

You have a right to get excited.

I see Detroit like that as you do. It's still there. People want affordable housing. There are empty houses all over Detroit, and people from outside the city are already buying them.

Why not maximize that?

Thank you sir! I have two rules about posting at DYes:

1) Never post sober
2) Never post sh*tfaced

I can assure you that I came nowhere near violating Rule No. 1. But the bounty on abandoned homes is not as crazy as it might sound.

Local neighbors organize themselves into official partnerships. These partnerships can stake a claim on any abandoned home within their official jurisdiction [[like the old prospectors out West). These partnerships attend a few hours of class on controlled burning. On a calm day, with a representative of the DFD in attendance, as a monitor, these partnerships burn the house to the ground.

When it's over, they take sledgehammers and reduce the remains. Get the kids involved [[ever seen a kid with a hammer, and a license to smash?). And don't talk to me about air pollution, countries like China don't have to bother with Kyoto, so why should an American city that contributed so much to the liberation of China, and Europe, have to worry either?

And most of the smoke will blow over to Canada anyway. So now you have a landscape of standing, healthy homes, punctuated here and there by a pile of ashes. Sure beats the crap out of it being punctuated by dangerous dope houses. It can be done.

[Jimaz]

There's a brief story on page 11 of the Jan 11, 2010 hardcopy issue of Newsweek titled "Europe's About-Face On Offshoring."

An October survey by Cognizant, an IT outsourcing company, found 40 percent of European companies cut back outsourcing plans in 2009. The drop was even sharper in manufacturing....

One company is now returning to Germany for every three going abroad, compared with one in six in 2003. For the first time since 1995, many firms are abandoning China. Job losses to outsourcing have slowed to a trickle.

Hang in there.

[MJCMEX]

Ok Let me be more serious about my answer:

First of all I want to apologize for upsetting any former auto workers or anyone else.
Retroit is correct. That number, $72 an hour, was something that I had seen reported on news stations. I did not look in the Auto Workers Union Book to see what assembly line workers were making.

I have ammended my post:

http://www.uaw.org/auto/11_25_08auto2.cfm

This is a pro Auto Workers Union site that explains how their opponents came up with the $72 an hour number.

According to this the average worker is paid $28 an hour and compensated an additional $10 to $12 in health care and other benefits.

That adds up to about $40 in wages and benefits according to the union itself.

Also for Smudge Pot:

I've seen the reports of decaying homes being autioned off for a dollar a house, and not selling. This is NOT the kind of house I bought or the kind I am talking about. [[I did actually see some houses in the $1,200 range that were nearly as bad)

I think you may have a point even though it sounds kind of extreme. Could something like that be organized or is event he suggestion too offensive to post here seriously?