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Riverside Info » About Riverside
Chicago the beautiful - 1948
(4 posts)-
Posted Monday Aug 31, 2009 19:38 #
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Thanks Spatny! I loved it.
Posted Tuesday Sep 1, 2009 08:45 # -
1300 trains a day, and Cook County the largest manufacturing entity in the country, lots of blue-collar jobs at decent wages and with union benefits. Mostly gone now. Most old ethnic neighborhoods overrun by new legal and illegal immigration. Just drove down this AM to drop my wife at Water Tower place where she is a head model for a student at Vidal Sassoon and I noticed the traffic at 8:15 is stronger leaving the city then flowing into it - and at that hour nothing really flows. I cam back on the Stevenson and it was better,but you pass miles of deserted factories and huge truck terminals, mountains of empty containers with no manufactured goods to put in them. We now import TVs - woe is old Zenith - and cell phones - Good by Western Electric - and bicycles from China - some of them labeled Schwinn because they bought the name - and we ship waste paper and cardboard back so they can recycle it to make the cartons they ship us value-added goods in. Besides selling insurance and delivering pizzas to one another, what are those kids I see out my window going to do to pay the taxes and buy the cars when they grow up. People don't like the reality that now those kids from Dist. 96 are in competition with kids in Bangalore or Shanghai but they are, and will be forever. If we ever had to pay the real cost of gasoline - which is probably well above $10 a gallon when you factor in the cost quotient for the military we are using to protect our supply, the sidewalks in all kinds of places would start rolling up. And if/when ALL cars are getting 40-50 miles a gallon and the amount we use is reduced by half or more, where will the taxes come from to pay for the crumbling infrastructure. When Katrina hit we saw the trailer for this movie- the natives left and the immigrants flooded in to work for the lowest wages the contractors could pay. Ihope the Torrance Ave. plant can sell those $38K Taurus SHOs they are putting together once the incentives are off, but I think it's too early to count on it. Anyway, wasn't it great to see the old rail yard there where Millenium Park is now and see how that has been improved?
Posted Tuesday Sep 1, 2009 10:58 # -
Some Labor Day thoughts: Fast forward to 2008. I recommend a most thought provoking book, "Shop Class as Soulcraft - An Inquiry Into The Value Of Work" by Mathew B. Crawford. It has been called "a lifeboat on the horizon" for our 'wealthy, sophisticated culture foundering amidst an economic and spiritual tempest."
Consider this: Jobs with rules, like filling out tax forms or reading x-rays can be and are easily exported. Skills that require cognitive analysis and hands-on labor cannot. Architectural drawings can be done in India or China and delivered via wireless, but we still need a plumber to connect the pipes, right here. Tax forms can be filled in anyplace via simple tax programs, so accountants are no longer required as they once were, but auto mechanics, who can look at a problem or listen to an engine and know what they are hearing are in great demand. Perhaps 30-40 million more jobs are imminently exportable, and large corporations will continue to do so in order to lower costs. What then will be the "good jobs", the occupations to prepare for?
Posted Monday Sep 7, 2009 11:38 #
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