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Post by redwolf on Jul 12, 2007 20:22:46 GMT -6
I live in North Carolina, so I'm going to post a couple of links about the economic conditions here. The first is a piece by Tommy Tomlinson that ran in the Charlotte Observer recently. I think it does a great job of describing our deteriorating economic base. www.charlotte.com/local/story/175410.htmlThis next link is a video of John Edwards addressing a group of steelworkers in Cleveland about how personal the mill closings are to him. I would be interested in hearing about the economic conditions in your state and how they play into the big picture.
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Post by blueneck on Jul 12, 2007 20:38:23 GMT -6
Very similar story here in the great lakes states - steel and autos and agriculture were the mainstays here.
Steel is all but gone and what is left is foreign owned and a shadow of what it used to be.
The woes of the US auto industry are widely publicised so no need to belabor it, except what is not reported is the ripple effect among the tier suppliers, tooling and equipment makers and other service suppliers.
even ag isn't what it once was with urban sprawl and so much food coming from brazil argentina and even china! and the govt pays farmers not to farm!
The only new jobs are resturants and big box stores.
Take a drive thru any industrial park that 10 years ago thrived - most buildings are vacant and "for sale or lease" signs hang in front of them, yet new office parks and shopping centers spring up all over only to sit half vacant.
Constant news of layoffs, closings and downsizings.
Michigan is often referred to as being in a "one state depression" as hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have left devasting the once greatest industrial economy in the world.
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Post by rjfliberal07 on Jul 12, 2007 20:55:54 GMT -6
Well here in western PA, it is pretty much the same except we don't have any steel industry left, The only real export I would guess would be agriculture. Pittsburgh and Erie are both still loosing people, and well Philly, I think we all know what is going on in the city itself. Pittsburgh actually recently became a distressed city and now gets the help of the state to manage its finances and move the city toward recovery.
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Post by Ken on Jul 13, 2007 6:45:22 GMT -6
Well here in western PA, it is pretty much the same except we don't have any steel industry left, The only real export I would guess would be agriculture. Pittsburgh and Erie are both still loosing people, and well Philly, I think we all know what is going on in the city itself. Pittsburgh actually recently became a distressed city and now gets the help of the state to manage its finances and move the city toward recovery. I as born and raised in erie. I worked in the Coking Coal Plant as did my father. He was mangement I was Union. Anyway they were brokenin the early 80's just after they were sold by Koppers to Erie Coke. From there, having little or no money for college I enlisted. I got my degree while I was in. I remember coming back after the 91-2 recession and the place had changed drastically. Abandoned buildings, crime, the payscale was horrible and unemployment was double digit. I picked up my Masters Degree and got the hell out of there. Its a shame. For anyone who hasnt been there Pa is a beautiful State. Great State Parks. I always wanted to relocate down in the Gettysburg area. I doubt that will happen
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Post by Ken on Jul 13, 2007 6:54:59 GMT -6
I live in North Carolina, so I'm going to post a couple of links about the economic conditions here. The first is a piece by Tommy Tomlinson that ran in the Charlotte Observer recently. I think it does a great job of describing our deteriorating economic base. www.charlotte.com/local/story/175410.htmlThis next link is a video of John Edwards addressing a group of steelworkers in Cleveland about how personal the mill closings are to him. I would be interested in hearing about the economic conditions in your state and how they play into the big picture. Im in Michigan and things are not at all good. My neighborhood has more for sale signs than hollywood blvd after dark. More and more abandoned too. With the layoffs, people are just leaving the keys with the bank and hoping they can get an apartment even with a trashed credit score. Yea thats fair...Buy a house...Pay your taxes....go to work everyday. Lose your joib through no fault of your own and risk homelessness because your credit gets trashed. Cons always preach that there wasnt enough incentive to work in the 80's. That lazy americans had it easy. unemployment benefits were too high and unions were demanding too much.
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Post by blueneck on Jul 13, 2007 7:53:03 GMT -6
Michigan is fairly unique in that the high foreclosures there are more driven by job loss than the subprime meltdown as is typical in many other places.
The problem with the neoCON "lazy worker" and its cousin "stupid worker" argument is the fact that US workers are the most productive in the world bar none. And that US colleges crank out the most and best educated technical workers in the world as well - which makes the H1B argument suspect as well.
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Post by redwolf on Jul 14, 2007 9:15:20 GMT -6
Thanks to everyone who chimed in on their state's economy. I think when you start putting these personal accounts together, it equals a very disturbing big picture. I know there are emerging economies, but I don't think they can replace what we have lost from reckless trade policies and corporate malfeasance.
I work in an education field and last week I saw a slide in a presentation that shocked me. It seems that out of 48.5 million public school students in the US, 16 million receive Title I benefits. (I don't know the source for this info, but the presenter was from a prominent, bipartisan educational non-profit group).
What did this say to me? It said that a third of our kids are living in poverty! America, we have a problem.
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Post by jeffolie on Jul 14, 2007 16:11:01 GMT -6
On the bright side, I live in Long Beach, California which is very close to Los Angeles. Everything is good. Yes we have had a small downturn in housing, but the war industry is keeping Boeing making C-17s and the port is one of the busiest in the world. Long Beach is the 5th largest city in California with about 500,000 residents. Employment is about the national average as well as the income.
I am retired and 2 of my kids go the college. We have good parts of town and poor parts with gangs. We have 5 golf courses and parts of town that don't speak English as their first language. One of my daughters lives in a part of town that officially got the title of Little Cambodia. About half are white, 10% black, 25% asian and 25% Mexican. My modest 1800 square foot house runs about $625,000. About 10% are gay.
My family likes it here.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 14, 2007 17:59:10 GMT -6
Jeff,
We're practically neighbors. I live in Cypress, about 5 miles from El Dorado Park in Long Beach. I think things are going to sink considerably as the housing boom winds down. Much growth has been the product of home construction, which is starting to fall.
I'm glad to hear the Defense industry is helping. However, it's nowhere near as big as it once was.
I honestly don't know what else keeps Southern California going, other than the film industry. It's never been very clear to me.
_____________
In contrast, however, I'm more familiar with Baltimore, Maryland, as I lived and worked there when I was younger. I worked as a shipfitter for Bethlehem Steel, at the Sparrows Point facility. Shortly after starting as an on-the-job trainee shipfitter, I was making almost the average hourly wage for the U.S. as a whole.
During much of the 20th century, Bethlehem Steel was the major employer in Baltimore. In the 70's, Baltimore's population was just under 1 million, supported largely by the steel and shipbuilding industries.
Much has changed since that time. Bethlehem Steel has gone bankrupt. The jobs in the steel mills and the adjacent shipyards have vanished. This was a huge blow to Baltimore. The population is now much less than it was during the 70's.
At the former site where the huge steel mill and the huge shipyard once existed, there are nothing but empty buildings. Like many other former industrial centers, Baltimore's economy has declined considerably. Tens of thousands of middle class jobs provided by Bethlehem Steel are gone.
And nothing has replaced them. Thousands of workers lost their entire careers as a result. A lot of them are probably "manufacturing" burgers today. Or simply unemployed.
Baltimore is a real tribute to the "benefits" of globalization.
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Post by psychecc on Jul 16, 2007 19:49:14 GMT -6
I grew up in eastern Washington State and taught school there until five years ago. It was a beautiful place to live and work. Though I'm not an expert on the local economy, I know that it was heavily supported by Kaiser Aluminum, and more recently a Boeing plant that is no longer owned by Boeing. (Several years ago, Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago from Seattle, citing a more "business friendly" tax structure). Agriculture and health care were also important. I have attached a couple of articles about the closing of Kaiser aluminum plants. I know several people personally who have only recently gotten their careers back on track after losing jobs at Kaiser when its new owners found it more desirable to sell (at enormous profits) its options to buy electricity than to actually buy that energy and run its plants. One article mentions the vast indebtedness of Kaiser at the time of its bankruptcy, but it fails to mention the many millions made in this energy selling scam by Kaiser's owner. In my opinion, Kaiser's bankruptcy was a choice, not a necessity. Of course, the thousands of affected workers were not consulted for their opinions about the loss of jobs, pensions, health insurance, etc. Those steel workers union jobs paid well, and the dollars spent by Kaiser employees are estimated to have re-circulated through the local economy about three times; so the impact on the area as a whole was great. www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=021702&ID=s1102846www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=011403&ID=s1287887I'm not sure how agriculture is doing, but I understand that the large health care industry in Spokane is under some stress. The local news runs stories about many doctors leaving the area due to low pay rates offered by the main insurance supplier. They appear to have something approaching a monopoly. I'm still in touch with many people from the area who say that the economy continues to lag despite reported low unemployment numbers. It's tough to replace a $65,000 annual manufacturing wage with the kind of money found in the "service sector."
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Post by whoswho on Jul 20, 2007 13:13:14 GMT -6
I have lived all my life (50+ years) in the eastern Kentucky/southern Ohio area, and I have never seen it as economically devastated as it is now. It has never been too healthy, but now I wonder if it possible for it to ever have an economic comeback. They might as well just bulldoze it over. What kills me is local efforts to boost the economy. They seem to think that if we make the towns attractive enough, with a few new sidewalks and street lights, that companies will say "how pretty" and want to come here. I don't think they honestly know what the heck to do, but they are blowing money on things like digital parking meters. Helloooooo, we have no jobs. They are all in China now. Or Mexico. There is no cavalry coming to save you. We are adrift and things will stay that way. When something like Walmart does come in, they are all excited over a handful of new dumdum jobs. They seem to think that it is exactly equivalent to those bunches of engineering jobs we lost.
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Post by judes on Jul 20, 2007 15:02:34 GMT -6
Ditto to the above and to the previous comments about Michigan. I live in Flint MI, it was voted the worst city in the nation to live in several years ago, and it has gotten much much worse since then. Michael Moore showcases Flint in both "Roger and Me" and "Farenheit 911" as he is from here, so you can get a taste of what it was like then, from which it has eroded even further. There is only a shell of a city that once was, it is completely obliterated in every aspect. Sad really. The crime has been through the roof, the other weekend they reported 12 seperate shooting incidents within a small radius. As soon as I am done training my Mexican replacements in my current engineering job and am officially severed, I may be looking for a new place to live. The sad thing is I'm gonna lose my ass if I can even manage to sell my house. They are for sale everywhere around here. And then there's the question of where to move?
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 22, 2007 14:37:28 GMT -6
San Diego County (California) is now nearly in Recession, according to a news story from the North County Times, titled Report: Job growth stalls in San Diego CountyBelow are excerpts from the article. By BRADLEY J. FIKES " Job growth has nearly ground to a halt in San Diego County, raising the risk of a recession later this year, two economists who track the local business climate said Friday.
The latest monthly employment report shows that woes in real estate and construction have spilled over into the local economy, said the economists, Kelly Cunningham of the San Diego Institute for Policy Research and Alan Gin of the University of San Diego.
The county's unemployment rose to an estimated 4.6 percent in June, from 4.2 percent in May, the California Employment Development Department reported Friday. The unadjusted rate was also 4.2 percent in June 2006. California's unemployment rate for June was 5.2 percent, the same as in May and up from last June's rate of 4.9 percent....
overall job growth has slowed down over the last three years. The number of jobs added for the year June 2006 to June 2007 increased by just 1,600, or 0.1 percent.
"This to me is a pretty bad report," Gin said. "Last year, we added 18,000 jobs. And the year before that, we added 20,000 jobs."
Cunningham said, "That's the worst job growth we've had since '93."...
Large losses of jobs in real estate and construction are canceling out job gains, Gin said....
Gin, who compiles a monthly index of leading economic indicators, said last month that his numbers indicated a recession was possible. His index has been fallen in 13 of the last 14 months, signaling a steady deterioration in San Diego's economy.
The chance of a recession is "getting higher," Gin said....
"The culprit is real estate," Gin said. "You've lost 7,400 jobs year over year in construction. And in the real estate side, you've lost 3,300 jobs there. The rest of the economy is OK fundamentally, but the problem is now this real estate fallout is spreading into other sectors."
Cunningham said that nonresidential real estate construction has also begun to slacken.
"The commercial side of it is starting to see slowing down," Cunningham said. "So both of those things together seem to reflect a slowing economy and perhaps pulling us into recession."..." The full article can be found at Report: Job growth stalls in San Diego County
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 22, 2007 14:56:19 GMT -6
California's overall economy showed signs of a major slowdown in June, adding a total of only 400 jobs for the month. This is a minuscule amount for a state with a population of over 35 million. Below is an excerpt describing the situation from the Los Angeles Times. The title of the article is State's job growth hits the brakesBy Lisa GirionJuly 21, 2007 " Dragged down by the real estate slump, California's employment engine ground to a near standstill in June with a net gain of 400 positions, state figures released Friday showed....
As expected, financial activities and construction were the biggest losers among six sectors that posted employment declines in June, according to the state Employment Development Department report.
Reflecting layoffs by troubled sub-prime mortgage lenders and the big chill in home building, the financial activities sector lost 5,700 jobs, while construction shrank by 5,300. By comparison, the four other declining sectors lost a total of 5,900 jobs.
"Slowing state job growth has been primarily caused by the slowdown in residential building and resale activity," said Stephen Levy, senior economist for the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy. "A continuation of the slowing will cause problems for this year's and next year's state budget."...." The entire Los Angeles Times article can be found at State's job growth hits the brakes
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Post by jeffolie on Jul 22, 2007 15:34:48 GMT -6
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 22, 2007 15:37:57 GMT -6
Florida is already in recession, due to the collapse of the bursting of the Housing Bubble. Below are excerpts from a Bloomberg article documenting Florida's decline, titled Miami Condo Glut Pushes Florida's Economy to Brink of Recession By Bob Ivry" Construction cranes dot the skyline of Miami July 20 (Bloomberg) -- In the middle of the biggest glut of condominiums in more than 30 years, Miami developers keep on building.
The oversupply will force prices down as much as 30 percent, the worst decline since the 1970s, and help push Florida's economy into recession as early as October, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at West Chester, Pennsylvania-based Moody's Economy.com, who owns a home in Vero Beach, Florida.
``Florida is the epicenter for all the problems that exist in the housing industry,'' said Lewis Goodkin, president of Goodkin Consulting Corp. and a property adviser in Miami for the past 30 years, who also foresees a recession. ``The problems we have now are unprecedented and a lot of people will get burnt.''....
While the housing industry is responsible for 10.6 percent of the nation's jobs, in Florida it accounts for 20 percent, Zandi said. Florida construction jobs fell 2.9 percent in May to 626,200 from the peak in June 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics....
Florida's robust economy of 2001 to 2005 was driven by the thousands of well-paying jobs related to the real estate market and homeowners who used home-equity loans to pay for items such as boats and big-screen TVs, McCabe said.
``All those jobs are going away now, and we're seeing the trickle-down effect in declining sales in big-box retailers and home-furnishing manufacturers,'' McCabe said. ``Florida is headed to a recession.''....
Puig Development Group, a closely held company that converted rental apartments to condos, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 29. The Hialeah, Florida-based Puig and its subsidiaries controlled 2,900 units in Florida, including 980 condos, worth about $210 million....
``Puig got a little overzealous and a little overly optimistic, and was caught when the market slowed,'' Glass said.
Florida banks have already quit making loans to Miami condo developers, said Kenneth H. Thomas, a Miami bank consultant and a lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
``South Florida lenders were the first to put money into the condo market, they were the first to see the oversupply and they were the first to get out,'' Thomas said....
Because of the lag time between making construction loans and closing sales on completed condos, loan problems showed up for Florida lenders in first-quarter bank statistics from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in Washington, Thomas said....
Florida banks posted a 43 percent jump in the first quarter in loans no longer paying interest compared with the last three months of 2006....
Miami condo sales fell to 599 in May, a drop of 46 percent from a year earlier, according to the state realtors association. Condo sales in Orlando, home of Walt Disney World, have plummeted 80 percent, said Zandi of Moody's Economy.com.
``The statistics are scary,'' said Michael Wohl, a partner in the Pinnacle Housing Group, a Miami developer that has stayed out of the condo market. ``There's going to be a lot of blood in the water in the next 18 months.''....
Since it can take up to four years for a condo project to travel from conception to completion, many of the towers rising from the coral rock of Miami were planned and financed during the Florida housing boom, which lasted from 2001 to 2005.
Lenders typically require enough advance sales to cover the cost of a construction loan. Customers' deposits, however, don't always mean the sales will close, said Ian Bruce Eichner, a developer whose latest Miami Beach condo tower is scheduled to open in November.
``The market is as close to a depression as Miami has seen in 30 years,'' Eichner said. ``There's a gargantuan supply of homes and the overwhelming preponderance were built for speculators, not for people who are living there.''
As much as half of those putting down deposits for Miami condos are speculators looking to flip units, or sell them quickly for a profit without living in them, said McCabe of McCabe Research....
Buyers Walking Away
With sale prices falling, McCabe said he expects up to 50 percent of them to walk away from their deposits in the next 18 months rather than complete the sales....
Many ``flippers'' closed on their units and now can't sell them, said Michael Cannon of Integra Realty Resources-Miami Inc., leaving completed condo towers with floors of dark windows and empty balconies.
The Jade Residences at Brickell is an example, Cannon said. The 338-unit, 48-story waterfront tower, a block from the Brickell Avenue financial district, opened in August 2004 with buyers willing to pay as much as $5 million snapping up all the units. Now, the new owners have listed 112 condos for sale and 17 units totaling $15 million are in foreclosure....
In the 1970s, when condos were a new product, Florida developers built 500,000 units and prices fell 50 percent, said Brad Hunter of MetroStudy, a research firm in West Palm Beach...." The entire article can be found at Miami Condo Glut Pushes Florida's Economy to Brink of Recession
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Post by jeffolie on Jul 22, 2007 17:10:52 GMT -6
Thirty-seven new high-rise condos and 20,000 new units are being built in Miami's 1,040-acre downtown, where sales fell almost 50 percent in May, according to the Florida Association of Realtors. The new units will join the 22,924 existing condos in Miami-Dade County that were for sale in April, according to Jack McCabe, chief executive officer of McCabe Research & Consulting LLC in Deerfield Beach, Florida. That's the most unsold units since McCabe began tracking sales in 2002."
Thats about 43000 condos at about 600 being sold per month, resulting in about 72 months of supply - about 6 years.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 22, 2007 17:46:50 GMT -6
Though the following excerpt is somewhat out of date, it still gives a fair assessment of the Colorado economy. Potential for Recession Based on High Consumer Debt and Rising Interest Rates " Sept. 12, 2006--Colorado's economic growth will slow in 2007, as a late-year recession interrupts a five-year period of national economic expansion, according to the "U.S. Bank 2007 Economic Forecast," prepared by Tucker Hart Adams, Ph.D., U.S. Bank's Rocky Mountain Region chief economist.
"Consumer financial stress in the face of rising interest rates, along with the potential for housing prices to flatten or fall are the big threats to the Colorado economy in 2007," Adams writes in the annual forecast. "There is a 75 percent probability that a national recession will be underway before the end of 2007 - driven by falling consumer spending. The onset of the Colorado recession may lag the national contraction, pushing the worst of the state's problems into the first half of 2008...."
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jul 30, 2007 13:11:58 GMT -6
Below is an interesting map that compares individual American state GDPs with those of specific foreign countries. For example, California's GDP is roughly the same as that of France. This graph and the accompanying discussion can be found at Strange MapsThe above link and map come from a thread from Elite Trader. The poster of the thread made the following list of the GDPs of individual state economies. The "#" refers to the state/country's world GDP ranking. (For example, California is the world's 8th ranking economy.) " 1. California, it is often said, would be the world's sixth- or seventh-largest economy if it was a separate country. Actually, that would be the eighth, according to this map, as France (with a GDP of $2.15 trillion) is #8 on the aforementioned list.
2. Texas' economy is significantly smaller, exactly half of California's, as its GDP compares to that of Canada (#10, $1.08 trillion).
3. Florida also does well, with its GDP comparable to Asian tiger South Korea's (#13 at $786 billion).
4. Illinois ¡V Mexico (GDP #14 at $741 billion)
5. New Jersey ¡V Russia (GDP #15 at $733 billion)
6. Ohio ¡V Australia (GDP #16 at $645 billion)
7. New York ¡V Brazil (GDP #17 at $621 billion)
8. Pennsylvania ¡V Netherlands (GDP #18 at $613 billion)
9. Georgia ¡V Switzerland (GDP #19 at $387 billion)
10. North Carolina ¡V Sweden (GDP #20 at $371 billion)
11. Massachusetts ¡V Belgium (GDP #21 at $368 billion)
12. Washington ¡V Turkey (GDP #22 at $358 billion)
13. Virginia ¡V Austria (GDP #24 at $309 billion)
14. Tennessee ¡V Saudi Arabia (GDP #25 at $286 billion)
15. Missouri ¡V Poland (GDP #26 at $265 billion)
16. Louisiana ¡V Indonesia (GDP #27 at $264 billion)
17. Minnesota ¡V Norway (GDP #28 at $262 billion)
18. Indiana ¡V Denmark (GDP #29 at $256 billion)
19. Connecticut ¡V Greece (GDP #30 at $222 billion)
20. Michigan ¡V Argentina (GDP #31 at $210 billion)
21. Nevada ¡V Ireland (GDP #32 at $203 billion)
22. Wisconsin ¡V South Africa (GDP #33 at $200 billion)
23. Arizona ¡V Thailand (GDP #34 at $197 billion)
24. Colorado ¡V Finland (GDP #35 at $196 billion)
25. Alabama ¡V Iran (GDP #36 at $195 billion)
26. Maryland ¡V Hong Kong (#37 at $187 billion GDP)
27. Kentucky ¡V Portugal (GDP #38 at $177 billion)
28. Iowa ¡V Venezuela (GDP #39 at $148 billion)
29. Kansas ¡V Malaysia (GDP #40 at $132 billion)
30. Arkansas ¡V Pakistan (GDP #41 at $124 billion)
31. Oregon ¡V Israel (GDP #42 at $122 billion)
32. South Carolina ¡V Singapore (GDP #43 at $121 billion)
33. Nebraska ¡V Czech Republic (GDP #44 at $119 billion)
34. New Mexico ¡V Hungary (GDP #45 at $113 billion)
35. Mississippi ¡V Chile (GDP #48 at $100 billion)
36. DC ¡V New Zealand (#49 at $99 billion GDP)
37. Oklahoma ¡V Philippines (GDP #50 at $98 billion)
38. West Virginia ¡V Algeria (GDP #51 at $92 billion)
39. Hawaii ¡V Nigeria (GDP #53 at $83 billion)
40. Idaho ¡V Ukraine (GDP #54 at $81 billion)
41. Delaware ¡V Romania (#55 at $79 billion GDP)
42. Utah ¡V Peru (GDP #56 at $76 billion)
43. New Hampshire ¡V Bangladesh (GDP #57 at $69 billion)
44. Maine ¡V Morocco (GDP #59 at $57 billion)
45. Rhode Island ¡V Vietnam (GDP #61 at $48 billion)
46. South Dakota ¡V Croatia (GDP #66 at $37 billion)
47. Montana ¡V Tunisia (GDP #69 at $33 billion)
48. North Dakota ¡V Ecuador (GDP #70 at $32 billion)
49. Alaska ¡V Belarus (GDP #73 at $29 billion)
50. Vermont ¡V Dominican Republic (GDP #81 at $20 billion)
51. Wyoming ¡V Uzbekistan (GDP #101 at $11 billion)" I don't how accurate this list is, but it's certainly interesting. It was also surprising to see that California's GDP is roughly 3 times as large as that of the state of New York. However, part of the explanation is that California's population is now almost 2 times as large as that of New York, (36 million vs. 19 million). In fact, the population of Texas at 23.5 million is now larger than that of New York state.
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Post by blueneck on Aug 1, 2007 5:20:22 GMT -6
Wow what a great map. and it brings home the point that thanks to corrupt and inept politicians and business "leaders" we are squandering that economic might If the trends of outsourcing continue more and more of those states will be compared to third world countries as they rise ( at our expense) and we continue to fall Side note - I wonder if its coincidence that Minnesota was compared to Norway - as a good bit of Minnesotans are of Scandanavian decent
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Aug 10, 2007 13:51:29 GMT -6
SAN DIEGO ECONOMYThough I'm not from San Diego, I'm close enough to have some awareness. Also, one analyst from San Diego who writes about the San Diego housing situation, named Rich Toscano, has written a good short summary of the economy there. This seems like a good addition to the State Economy section. Toscano's article, titled May Jobs, sums it up. The local economy is having a tougher time making up for housing-related job losses.by Rich Toscano " The employment sectors that benefited from our erstwhile housing boom, while having experienced seasonal growth in recent months, continue to shed jobs based on a year-over-year comparison. Between May 2006 and May 2007, the construction industry lost 6,900 jobs, retail lost 1,800 jobs, and finance and real estate gave up 3,200 jobs. The three sectors shed 11,900 jobs between them.
Meanwhile, the rest of the economy slowed its rate of expansion. Up until May, year-over-year employment growth outside the housing beneficiary sectors had been running at about 20,000 jobs. May, however, saw the addition of only 16,100 jobs from the prior year. This was still more than enough to make up for the housing-related losses, but the margin was quite a bit narrower than in recent months.
In total, the San Diego economy added 4,200 jobs -- an increase of just 0.3 percent from last May...."
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Post by redwolf on Sept 14, 2007 12:14:05 GMT -6
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Post by beachbumbob on Sept 15, 2007 6:06:39 GMT -6
here in central illinois, manuf jobs have dried up, Caterpillar broke the union a decade ago so new jobs there pay $13/hr, well under the poverty rate for a family needs to survive. News releases tout $7/hr call center shops.
we all know where this heading
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Post by redwolf on Sept 17, 2007 8:58:05 GMT -6
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Post by whoswho on Oct 2, 2007 12:58:47 GMT -6
It only fell into the same categories as "moving, paying bills, errands and homework" recently. Years ago, you had to have some very grievous faults to be fired. It was unheard of to be fired otherwise. There was one guy where I used to work who worked in Human Resources. He was caught selling jobs. They never did fire him or move him, he continued to work as always.
So many people are unemployed now, the cards are stacked against you for finding equivalent employment.
And I always wondered... if they can fire masses of people for nothing.... how then do they know a good employee from a bad one?
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Post by liberalcapitalist on Oct 2, 2007 14:45:00 GMT -6
I live in New York,specifically,the east end of Long Island.The economy here is fair to middling,we are a tourist area that thrives during the warm months but just about shuts down during the winter.There is still quite a bit of construction,but its almost all mcmansions out of reach of the average person.Affordable housing is one of the biggest issues here. There are lots of service jobs,especially during the summer,bur finding staedy year round work can be a real issue for those without specific training.(I work for a security company,which is doing well,since it depends on fear for its clientele) West of me there are places that offer technical jobs in computer technology and some manufacturing,but since Grumman moved out,the manufacturing industry has struggled. There's a large immigrant population here,and many dayworkers wait by the 7-11's and train stations to be hired for the day,many by construction and landscaping companies. We also have many empty strip malls and store fronts,and due to the nature of it being a tourist-driven economy,at the end of each season many stores close up and disappear,never to open again,and are replaced the next year by another store that does the same thing;people do this to make a quick buck over the season. The housing industry doesn't suffer here like most other places because the builders cater to a rich clientele,who doesn't have to depend on low mortgage rates to sell homes;but the average person is stuck paying very high rents for meager apartments,sometimes basement rooms. We're probably a little better off than most areas of the country,but we're on shaky ground just the same.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jan 4, 2009 13:35:51 GMT -6
I found some additional information about the demise of Bethlehem Steel's shipbuilding division, especially the facility in Baltimore (Sparrows Point), Maryland. During World War II, there was a surge in US shipbuilding, along with an increase in membership in related unions. The biggest of those was the International Union of Maritime and Shipyard Workers of America--IUMSWA. (I was a member of the IUMSWA myself at one time.) At its peak during World War II, the IUMSWA had 250,000 members. www.lib.umd.edu/archivesum/actions.DisplayEADDoc.do?source=/MdU.ead.histms.0038.xml&style=ead" In the years immediately following the war, the IUMSWA suffered huge losses in membership, as the industry once again experienced rapid decline in the wake of demobilization. Although in the ensuing period, the IUMSWA launched campaigns to secure federal commitments to rebuild the nation's merchant marine, no such action was forthcoming. The Korean conflict (1950-1953) only temporarily reversed the general post-WWII slump in new ship construction. The decisions of U. S. investors to finance shipbuilding overseas severely undercut the union's efforts to maintain jobs in the later postwar decades. Indeed by 1973, the IUMSWA's membership had shrunk to approximately 21,000....
The influx of foreign-built vessels into the American merchant fleet has led to massive layoffs in several important yards. In 1979, workers at Bethlehem-Sparrow's Point, Maryland, were hit with some 2,000 layoff slips. In addition to unemployment caused by merchant fleet usage of foreign-built ships, the IUMSWA has also had to deal with the Reagan administration's encouragement of foreign companies in producing material for the U. S. Navy. The problem of foreign competition was aggravated by the refusal of the Administration to provide the industry with the type of protections other governments have afforded to their home producers, especially heavy domestic subsidization....
IUMSWA's membership numbers continued to decline, by approximately 50%, during the 1980s. The resultant financial difficulties led in part to the union's merger with the International Association of Machinists in 1988. " The 96% decline in IUMSWA membership was not due to an independent decline in unionization. It was due to a decline in employment in the shipbuilding industry. Unions can't help an industry if all the jobs have been outsourced to a foreign country. As I've stated elsewhere, there's a large multiplier effect from shipbuilding. Shipbuilding requires a huge amount of steel. If we lose 96% of our shipbuilding industry, we also lose a huge chunk of demand for the American-made steel that shipbuilding uses. Bethlehem Steel's shipbuilding division at Sparrows Point, MD, was directly adjacent to Bethlehem Steel's steel mill -- at Sparrows Point, MD. Here again, is an industry where there is a tremendous opportunity for growth (or more accurately, restoration.) And here's another place where a "buy-American" policy could provide a large number of "new" jobs, without costing taxpayers a dime. It's time for a heavy dose of Protectionism. And it's time for an even heavier dose of TARIFFS on manufactured imports.
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