Comments by "" (@jasonreed7522) on "The Most Miserable City in America" video.

  1. The name of the game is always jobs, if they could court some company to build a factory or offices in whatever counts as the nice part of town that would provide the hope and opportunity needed to get the ball rolling for everything else. What failed Garry was having 60% of the population employed by a single factory/employer/industry and not diversifying the economy to handle the shock of "what if they go under/decline?" which steel did in the states and the city lost its income with no backup.
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  2. I think part of it is that most of Europe is significantly older than the USA so the economies of the cities are more diversified. Gary was born in the 1920's as a steel foundry barracks, when 60% of the population is employed by 1 employer/industry, its highly likely that the rest of the population is basically just service for them and not other self supporting buisnesses. (Restaurants and stores that have 90% of their clients be employed by a single factory or mine will close when that factory closes) I think the USA just has more of these Boom towns that were originally just a village that suddenly found gold, oil, or build a steel foundry and one day the well runs dry, the gold or coal gets mined up, the factory closes and then the city/town has nothing else to offer anyone so its economy crashes and everyone moves away. Compare this to NYC or London which have very diverse economies supported by financial, legal, trade/shipping, political, 30 different industries, ect. They have such a diverse economy that if one industry implodes that the entire economy won't collapse with it. Part of this diversification is time and part is city planning, actively finding ways to get other income sources to move into the city. If you have steel maybe you can get cars and canned goods as well, in modern times electronics are huge, even Universities can support a smaller town by litterally importing students from other areas who will pay tuition amd spend money in stores, the university then pays professors good money who then pay taxes and spend money in stores which distributes some income to the area around the university. I think america just has a lot more single industry towns & cities than europe.
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