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Post by redwolf on Jan 16, 2008 8:25:22 GMT -6
Blue-Collar Jobs Disappear, Taking Families’ Way of Life AlongBy ERIK ECKHOLM "Middle-aged men moving in with parents, wives taking two jobs, veteran workers taking overnight shifts at half their former pay, families moving West — these are signs of the turmoil and stresses emerging in the little towns and backwoods mobile homes of southeast Ohio, where dozens of factories and several coal mines have closed over the last decade, and small businesses are giving way to big-box retailers and fast-food outlets."www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/us/16ohio.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th
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Post by blueneck on Jan 16, 2008 18:49:52 GMT -6
This is a very sad story, and one that can be told about most small industrial Midwest towns. The factories close, and the big boxes move in, the small business close and the fast food joints come. So the higher pay benefit jobs leave and are replaced with lower pay lower benefit jobs. The towns then see a reduction in their tax base and their schools, roads, police and other services and infrastructure suffers. I am familiar with Jackson and Wellston OH. Jacksons decline started when the railroad locomotive repair shops were closed - its been a steady drip and then a stream of the rest of the industrial jobs since. Wellston was a mining town that when the mines closed the town died. So just what we need is even more supply side economics and globalization - we just don't seem to have enough of it - if only we had more we could have even greater "prosperity" at least thats what the mainstream candidates are all saying
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