[Nickel]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Boris555', 'T')exas especially has a large, young immigrant population that pulls the low-income average down.

[Boris555]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nickel', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Boris555', 'F')rom what I hear, you have to pay a grocery bag boy about $15/hour, plus full benefits (medical, 4 wks vac, etc.) under the UFCW contract in Detroit. God knows what the checkers and stockers get.
Here in TX we have plenty of big grocery stores in high-crime areas, and they do fine. But the bagboys get just over minumum wage.

[vision-master]

Why are these "other" peoples jobs so much more important?
Decades ago I was the school janitor. Without someone to keep the grass cut, the heat & A/C working, keep the windows nice and clean, empty all of the trash, wash the walls and so on, how do you think the "elites" would survive?
Every job that provides a service is important!

[Nickel]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Boris555', 'I')f someone cares so little about themself and their family that they will only make the effort to become a bag boy in a supermarket as a lifetime career, then yes, fuck 'em.

[Boris555]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'W')hy are these "other" peoples jobs so much more important?
Decades ago I was the school janitor. Without someone to keep the grass cut, the heat & A/C working, keep the windows nice and clean, empty all of the trash, wash the walls and so on, how do you think the "elites" would survive?
Every job that provides a service is important!

[Boris555]

Nickel, It's interesting that the folks who are blindly supporting the unions (and blaming the minorities for Detroit's problems) in this thread can't seem to form a cogent argument without personal attacks (and apparently, anal-sex references) upon other posters. Try to keep it a little more civil, mmkay?

I never said I was anti-union. I just stated that they can get out of hand, like in Detroit. How many unions have you belonged to? Did you ever help unionize a shop? I have. I am one of the reasons Tom Thumb Grocery stores left Texas. I helped try to unionize them with the UFCW. They were replaced (or bought) by Randalls, which pays HIGHER than union wages. I also exposed some serious management wrongdoings in the treasury department when I worked there, as a member of the Treasury Employees Union. Several upper-managers at our site got canned, one even went to prison.

Unions have their place. Forcing people to pay bag-boys $15/hour with full benefits is not one of them. Suppose the shoe-shiners had formed a powerful union back in the 1930's. Now each office in a closed-shop state could be forced to hire a union bootblack at $27.50/hour plus full benefits, whether or not it was needed. Sorry we can't afford to hire more help to do something useful, like clean the toilets more often, we've gotta pay the shoe-shine boy.

So unions, like government, are necessary but need to have their wings clipped on occasion.
And for the record, I have a LOT of bullets.

[Nickel]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Boris555', 'I')t's interesting that the folks who are blindly supporting the unions... in this thread can't seem to form a cogent argument without personal attacks (and apparently, anal-sex references) upon other posters. Try to keep it a little more civil, mmkay?

[Boris555]

Nickel, Well, Nick ol' bean, you live in your world, I'll live in mine.
Re-read the thread from the beginning and put yourself in the position of a person of color, like me. You see one heck of a lot of racism. Then maybe you'll understand why I am well armed and proud of it. Hopefully you are not unnerved by a gun-owning dark person such as myself.

And as someone who busted his a** and worked his way up from making $1.25/hour as a dishwasher to well over $100K/year...well , I know something about ambition and hard work.
And if you really knew about unions, you would know that each local sets the wage scale for the region. So Union wages in Texas are different from those in Detroit.

I think you should get a Union job. The training is usually excellent (at least down here) and the people are generally good folks. You'll also learn about which you speak. You'll find that even within the union people don't like slackers who don't carry their weight and they don't like the union leaders who piss away their money and screw up their pension investments.

And you keep talking about all these people with piles of gold and many yachts. Yes, they exist. No, they are not common, they just get all the press. I work for a multi-billion dollar corporation and our CEO is a pretty nice guy. Lives in a nice house, but I haven't seen any piles of gold when I've been there. Most CEOs are more like this.
I suspect you're quite young, because you sound much like I did a few decades ago.

[TommyJefferson]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Boris555', 'Y')ou're a real humanitarian, vision-master. And a great ad hominem debater.

[TommyJefferson]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Boris555', 'T')hen maybe you'll understand why I am well armed and proud of it.

[vision-master]

Was on bicycle ride today with an old friend. He worked road construction for over 20 years. We was talking about Union stuff and he started telling me how this one company he worked for had drivers that wanted to be Unionized. The company told them they would sell off all the trucks if they tried bargining. They did & the employeer sold off the trucks and contracted out the service.

Later my friend found out the owners wife left him and she got $20,000,000. This this the sort of shit that fires my ass. Fucken plain ass greed with no consideration for their workers. People like this need assholes like me to deal with - don't ask.........

[katnipkid]

Want to see photos of Detroit in ruins? Go to ruins of detroit dot com. You may need to do a search on ruins of Detroit. Amazing. Some areas are barren wilderness again.

Kunstler had a link on his blog awhile back on Gary IN as well.

[Chesire]

Not sure why I keep watching this thread and news on Detroit in general. I have no ties whatsoever to that place except good memories of a GTO convertible P. Perhaps its because I get the sneaking suspicion that Detroit is the canary in the coal mine for major urban areas.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Chesire', 'I') get the sneaking suspicion that Detroit is the canary in the coal mine for major urban areas.

[Plantagenet]

Detroits back middle class was wiped out in the 1967 Detroit riots when thousands of black-owned businesses were looted and burned to the ground. They mostly weren't insured.

"Detroit had the nation's first black-owned and -operated radio station, WCHB; the Broadside Press, one of the first black-owned publishing houses; the Concept East Theater, one of the first black theater companies in the North; and the first African-American history museum as well as one of the first African-American bookstores.

This abundance was due in part to so many black Detroiters being comfortably middle class. Black workers were grossly discriminated against in the automobile industry, but they still made far more money than in the rural South, from which so many came. And their salaries paid them enough to buy houses in fine old neighborhoods, giving Detroit the largest black home-ownership rate in the country.

And Detroit had excellent public schools that provided classical training in music and art, notes Gerald Early, author of "One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture." "Motown came about because black urban life had reached a certain level of self-sufficiency and entrepreneurial achievement," says Mr. Early, now a professor of modern letters at Washington University in St. Louis. "The achievement was based on excellent, racially segregated schools that promoted the classics, and churches where there was a lot of playing of Mozart and Handel." At her Northeastern High School graduation in 1958, Ms. Reeves sang a Mozart Alleluia.

Much of Detroit's achievement was simply wiped out in the riots. As Ms. Street notes, black record shops and bookstores were burned despite Soul Brother signs in the windows. Few small black businesses had insurance, so they closed forever. The middle class simply left, and Detroit's institutional structures could not survive its departure.

However polished downtown looks today, Detroit's neighborhoods are another story. Retail activity never returned. Even 40 years later, what should be commercial streets combine empty lots with Detroit's peculiar triumvirate of gas stations, dollar stores and check-cashing outlets, plus "party" (liquor) stores on prime corners. And so much vacant land is available that, with official city support, a group called Urban Farming has planted hundreds of acres in the former riot areas.

Most of the public housing where so many Motown stars grew up has been demolished. The Brewster towers, where all four original Supremes lived in what they've described as clean, safe housing, had been among the first projects in the country built for African-Americans. In her autobiography, Supreme Mary Wilson wrote that when her family took an apartment there in 1956, "I felt like I just moved into a Park Avenue skyscraper."

But today Brewster is considered unsalvageable. Most buildings have been closed, leaving the grounds to be patrolled by drug dealers and pit bulls. And, indeed, Detroit's crime remains at frightening levels -- with 366 murders last year, Detroit's homicide rate was 47 per 100,000 residents, over five times the national average; with 25,356 car thefts, it had a rate 4.56 times the national average."
from the Wall Street Journal

[vision-master]

How is New Orleans doing these days?

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gideon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Andy Capp', 'H')e worked road construction for over 20 years. We was talking about Union stuff and he started telling me how this one company he worked for had drivers that wanted to be Unionized. The company told them they would sell off all the trucks if they tried bargining. They did & the employeer sold off the trucks and contracted out the service.

[Boris555]

At the risk of feeding the trolls, let me tell you a story about a man I talked to on a business trip in San Antonio yesterday.
This man lives in San Antonio. He owns five houses, four of which he rents out. He makes a decent income renting the houses.
He is also a native of Illinois, and he spends six months a year (every other month) as a union welder up north, mostly in PA. He makes a lot of money in that six months. Union welders are well paid.

I asked him why he doesn't just live up north, because is seems like a hell of a commute, and he could work full time and make even more money.
He told me: "It's too damn expensive up there. Here, living is cheaper, housing is cheaper. I can live better here working half time up there than I can living there working full time." And he proceded to tell me about his real estate investments in San Antonio which will be his retirement soon.
Then he complained how union wages down here were too low. And he didn't seem to see the irony in what he said.
But hey, he's figured out a system and I've got to hand it to him.

That guy reminded me of some friends of mine who call themselves "life-long socialists" that retired to a luxury retirement village in Mexico "because they're a more socialist country". It's amusing to hear them talk about the great cheap labor in Mexico and how their modest retirement income allows them to have a full time maid and cook. When I asked them how the locals felt about the Americans coming in and building these places they said "I don't know, we don't really associate much with the locals."

Just thought I'd pass that along. Humans are humans no matter what their political affiliation.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Boris555', 'T')hat guy reminded me of some friends of mine who call themselves "life-long socialists" that retired to a luxury retirement village in Mexico "because they're a more socialist country". It's amusing to hear them talk about the great cheap labor in Mexico and how their modest retirement income allows them to have a full time maid and cook. When I asked them how the locals felt about the Americans coming in and building these places they said "I don't know, we don't really associate much with the locals."
Just thought I'd pass that along. Humans are humans no matter what their political affiliation.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gideon', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')o you don't. I'm the dangerous kind when it comes to labor relations, nough said on a public forum.