Detroit: Motor City to Medical Mecca?

[kryptonite]

Birmingham, AL has a thriving health care district that is keeping their economy moving despite a similar loss of industrial jobs that has been Detroit's fate.

The University of Alabama complex which includes highly ranked UAB Hospital and research facilities is the main single employer in that area.

The expansion of Detroit's main hospitals in the Midtown area will improve the local economy and help diversify the economy as manufacturing shrinks further in the future.

The days of high-paying factory jobs are ending. Manufacturing will continue to employ people in MI and the US but it will no longer sustain the economies of most Midwest and Northeast metro areas. They will need to replace the industrial jobs that are gone with jobs in health care, IT, technology, tourism, finance, etc.

[Detroitnerd]

Birmingham, AL has a thriving health care district that is keeping their economy moving despite a similar loss of industrial jobs that has been Detroit's fate.

The University of Alabama complex which includes highly ranked UAB Hospital and research facilities is the main single employer in that area.

The expansion of Detroit's main hospitals in the Midtown area will improve the local economy and help diversify the economy as manufacturing shrinks further in the future.

The days of high-paying factory jobs are ending. Manufacturing will continue to employ people in MI and the US but it will no longer sustain the economies of most Midwest and Northeast metro areas. They will need to replace the industrial jobs that are gone with jobs in health care, IT, technology, tourism, finance, etc.

You guys are willfully living in a fantasy land. Of course, by the time you find out all this stuff doesn't really work, it will be too late.

[kryptonite]

You guys are willfully living in a fantasy land. Of course, by the time you find out all this stuff doesn't really work, it will be too late.

Well your plan of continuing to base our local economy on high wage factory jobs does not exactly appear to be such a great economic model for about 40 years now. Here it is 2010 and oh my, unemployment in MI is over 13% and people are begging for any kind of job and leaving the state by the hundreds of thousands. Why? Because the types of jobs you propose don't exactly exist these days.

[Detroitnerd]

Well your plan of continuing to base our local economy on high wage factory jobs does not exactly appear to be such a great economic model for about 40 years now. Here it is 2010 and oh my, unemployment in MI is over 13% and people are begging for any kind of job and leaving the state by the hundreds of thousands. Why? Because the types of jobs you propose don't exactly exist these days.

Sure they do. The jobs Detroiters used to have are still in existence: In China, in Thailand, in Malaysia. Thanks to Reaganomics, NAFTA, GATT and a concerted effort to offshore American manufacturing, the economy in former manufacturing areas is screaming. And that's the way it's supposed to be. If they can eviscerate the American middle class [[all while telling us how it's OK, we're all going to be performing services for each other in the new, exciting knowledge-based economy) then we'll work hard with a gun in our back for a bowl of rice a day. They will finally invest in American manufacturing when the last tax is scrapped, the final environmental law is struck down, and the sole remaining labor organizer dies. Ever wonder why two of the main manufacturing enterprises still going in our area are foreign-owned [[Severstal, ThyssenKrupp). We owe it all to our leaders; they want it that way. Thank you, American business leadership!