Comments by "mpetersen6" (@mpetersen6) on "Explaining America’s Nine Nations part 1" video.

  1. The Foundry it s nowhere near as monolithic as some think. While there is a deep rooted sense of your worth is in your work. There are other factors at work. But one thing I notice is not every community ravaged by de-industrialization has taken the blow equally well. Some have wallowed in self pity. While at the same time others have decided to pursue new opportunities.
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  2. The African American communities of the Foundry, Rust Belt or whatever you choose to call it got hit really hard by the loss of industrial employment in the region. Not that other groups didn't get hit too. But I think they got hit the worse.
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  3.  @wolfpack4128  Where I live we used to have a large number of industrial facilities. All of them with unions. All of them are gone now. Out of business, moved South, consolidated in other locations etc. But the community has moved on to a large degree. Granted there are still those who long for the old days. It's understandable. You could buy a home, raise a family etc. But as you stated. They never understood economics or market forces. There is another factor in the decline of manufacturing in the Rust Belt that often gets overlooked though. A lot of industrial facilities dated from the 1920s or earlier. They were often inefficient to run and did not lend themselves to modernization. Also when they were built there location was often at the edges of the community they were built in. Eventually the the communities grew around them. Their primary mode of transport for materials coming in and goods going out was rail. As railroads began to shut down branch lines that were losing money these companies had to begin relying on trucks. With their location inside of cities often surrounded by residential neighborhoods this was not an ideal solution. I retired out of an automotive facility in 2005. We built engines. There were plans being looked at to expand and begin building transmissions. It closed two or three years later. One reason was the downturn in the economy. The second is the company (Chrysler) simply built too many different engines. At one time we built two different V-6s along with the 4.0 liter inline 6 and 2.5 liter four used in Jeeps. Model redesign and government regulations killed off the 4.0 and 2.5. The V-6s were dropped in favor of the newer Pentastar. The third reason was the plant was basically in the center of the city. Truck access in and out to the Interstate was more of a pain. Also a major portion of the facility went back to the 20s. Newer facilities with more efficient operationing conditions built in and being closer to vehicle assembly plants won out. Other companies in other industries often suffered the same problems. A wire rope company merged with another company. The other company had more modern facilities. That labor rates aside simply took less manpower to run. Another is a company that produces high quality hand tools. They decided to move all of their manufacturing to facilities they already owned and just keep the corporate HQ. All of these companies and others were unionized. In some cases it was the union that was the last straw. In some cases it was simply economics.
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  4.  @andysamet4554  St one time it was one of the most corrupt cities in the US. Then the Socialists got elected and and it went to being one of the best run and corruption free cities in the US. It's been on a downhill slide since the mid 70s.
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  5. 40 years on and this still has a lot of relevance.
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