"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Monday, November 03, 2008

HOW THE "RUST BELT" GOT RUSTY

Shannon Love posted an excellent analysis at ChicagoBoyz.

He asks, "Why isn't Detroit a paradise?"

One really has to ask the obvious question: If Obama’s economic policies work so well, why isn’t Detroit a paradise?

In 1950, America produced 51% of the GNP for the entire world. Of that production, roughly 70% took place in the eight states surrounding the Great Lakes: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

The productive capability of this small area of earth staggers the imagination. Virtually everything that rebuilt the industrial bases of Europe and Japan came from those eight states. Cars, planes, electronics, machine tools, consumer goods, generators, concrete - any conceivable item manufactured by industrial humanity poured out this tiny region and enriched the world. The region shone with widespread prosperity. People migrated from the South and West to work in these Herculean engines of industry.

So what happened?

It's simple, really.

Yet, a mere 30 years later, by 1980, we called that area the “rustbelt” and it became synonymous with joblessness, collapsing cities, high crime, failing schools and general hopelessness.

What the hell happened?

Obama happened.

Of course, not Obama personally but rather the same ideas that Obama espouses. What those ideas did to the Great Lakes states, they can do to the entire country.

Shannon Love identifies the specific policy problems as the unions' stranglehold and invasive, nanny-state government interventions.

Read. The. Whole Thing. Now.

The thing is, applying these failed socialistic policies nationwide could turn the entire United States into a "rust belt," and if the economic engine engine of the American economy fails, tens of millions of people around the world will literally starve.

The election of Obama would consign the world's poor to misery and starvation.

If that's not what you want, vote accordingly.

9 comments:

jhpiiiesq said...

I suppose the fact that the rest of the world was still recovering from the devastations of World War II had nothing to do with the US being the world GNP leader in 1950. It takes a bit long then 5 years to rebuild a country's economy when most of its industrial centers are bombed into ash and rubble. What happened between 1950 and 1980 was not a commie-socco-liberal anti-American plan to destroy our own country, but rather the rest of the world economies getting back on their feet and giving us good old fashion market competition again. This would be obvious if you would take a moment to study the economic recover of Europe, starting with the formation of the the European Coal and Steel Community. The six founder nations are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. What these countries figured out form World War II was what we the people still have not figured out; war and blind nationalism are bad for economic growth, and thus bad for stable societies. The more we the people go in for empire building and pissing away our national resources in Korea, South East Asia, the Middle East, and everywhere else, the further and further we will continue to slip for our position as world leaders. The only meaningful physical security is found through economic security, and economic justice. Countries that make money together do not wage war against one another, and civilian populations that are justly enfranchized in their economies do not revolt against their managers. But here I stray from economic history to predictive soco-economic evolution. I guess it is just easier to blame the lefties...

h. sapiens said...

Hahah. You're going to lose. Your 'astuteness' hasn't much helped your lameduck president or your lying, incompetent candidates. Will you cry on November 4th when your party loses?

diaphora said...

Gotta agree with jhpiiiesq. This pop economics stuff is great for bar room debate, but it's just plain silly to think that Shannon Love has any authority to be quoted.

She says, "The wealth, power and economic dominance of the region at the time cannot be overstated. Nothing like it has existed in human history."

Did she even go to college?

It can be overstated because she's dead wrong. Let's try London, at the time of the apex of the British Empire.

Love's post is just a stupid right wing attempt to appear to be intellectual. Nice try. You just look dumb.

I have an idea: instead of forming an opinion and then trying to substantiate it, why not sift through history, evidence and data, AND THEN come to a conclusion about what it means. The latter shows you have some brains.

Reliapundit said...

haha:


you asshole libs call uoc c:


"pop economics stuff"



haha!


marxism is bar room shit.

which killed 150 million people.

jhpiiiesq said...

Reliapundit,

I do not have any particular love for Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, or any other form of fascism based on the works of Marx. So please skip all that name calling mumbo-jumbo. I am, however, an intellectual, and therefore have to ask; Where does this 150 million dead claim come from? I do not dispute the fact that fascist governments (actual ideology espoused does not really matter,) do indeed murder people. Democratic countries have long histories of similar abuses. However, I take issue with a number that is between two and three times the estimates of total world death between 1936 and 1945, aka WWII. Saloth Sar is only estimated to have killed 0.5 to 1.7 million, and he is one of the worst in recorded history. So, where does your number come from?

Pasadena Closet Conservative said...

Well get out the WD-40 because they'll never take us alive!

Reliapundit said...

ww2
+
mao
+
stalin
+
pol pot
+
kim/noko
+
and so on...

that's 150 right there...

Reliapundit said...

btw asshole:

nazism and facsism were socialisms.

like marx.

tech not marxists but socialists.

like castro and mugabe and chavez and saddam and iran and arafat and


obama.

remember:

hitler versus stalin was like stalin versus trotsky - only more people died.

iow: internecine, ideologically speaking.

jhpiiiesq said...

Reliapundit,

Your argument becomes clear and expressive. I am seriously impressed. I feel my arguement crombeling to bits in the light of your regerious determined objective analayses of the historical data. The only thing that impresses me more then your elevated rhetoric is your ability to formulate coherent factual citations and statistical analyses. You must have been the most charming fellow at whichever institute granted you your degrees in diplomacy, foreign policy, and mathematics. I seriously congratulate them on their fine workmanship. Truly, you are a bescumber feist of the first order.