Jeffery

How about this one"

Fascinating. I love the UP, and as usual, Sherman, yr pix are a joy to look at. Also, one finds these abandoned branch lines in northern Wisconsin, too..mostly logging lines, but a bit of a bleedover from the iron range, too (nearly Hurley). They use these for snowmobiling in the winter...you can see how they would be good for snowmobiles. (BTW, like the way you caught that old station. Neat to see that survive).

That old town was all but flattened during WWII. What you are seeing are reconstructions. My ma's childhood memories of this old town was piles of rubble after the war. The 19th century neighborhoods (say areas of OTR vintage) surrounding the (formerly) historic core were hit, too, but mostly survived My grandmother was born in Nuremberg, in the St Lorenz parish or district in the old town. My great-granmother lived into her 90s, but lived just north & east of the castle in one of those 19th century neighborhoods, when I knew her. I've been to Nurnberg a number of times, and have a small collection of Lebkuchen tins and boxes, from the famous Christmas cookie. The city has or used to have a toy industry, so sort of appropriate for a Christmas market. They also had some heavy industry, too, like machine tools, etc. MAN ...Maschinfabrik Augusburg Nurnberg...was a big employer. I think they even had a foundry or rolling mill...the Luitpoldhutte...

Hah...i brought this to the General Assmebly and their eyes glazed over. I told them to table it and then we can vote..er..."come to consensus"...on it next week. Told them this was just a trial balloon. Also posted it at the private FB group and their website forum. Dont expect much interest.

Whats going on in Sacramento? It shows as a "construction start", but they've had light rail for years now...

How about we start imposing insanely high taxes on unhealthy foods ... ...like we do with cigarettes and alchohol. Sounds reasonable.

Back to the fallout from the Great Recession. The UK Gaurdian reports: Land of the free, home of the hungry .... food insecurity is a common, growing and enduring problem. According to Gallup polling, one in five Americans reported not having enough money to buy food in the past 12 months ...Around the country, food banks are feeling the pinch of market forces: as poverty climbs, demand is rising and supply is falling as people who would have donated have less left to spare. An analysis by the New York Times revealed a 17% increase in the number of school students receiving free and reduced lunches across the country between 2006/07 and now. In Rockdale County, east of Atlanta, 63% of students now have subsidised food – up from 46% four years ago. Between 2008 and 2011, the number of those living on food stamps, assistance to those who lack sufficient money to feed themselves and their families, soared by 50%, putting one American in seven in the programme. Catholic Charities recently revealed that requests for the working poor were up 80% over the second quarter, and up 59% for the middle class. ...welcome to The New Normal

Though the article does say the lack of mobility is more at the top and bottom...that the middle class is still pretty mobile... Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid. About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move down, according to Pew research. The “stickiness” appears at the top and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor families stay trapped. ....which might go along with the observations about the "disappearance of the middle class". I guesss we are dirgressing from the 'Recession" topic, though.....

^ ^ What makes you think the retirement system will be around for people currently in their middle ages? In their 40s? If you are talking about people currently in college (my neices age) , they seem more serious than lazy. Wasnt it this millenial generation that was active in Occupy Wall Street? Is that a bad thing? @@@@ Pertinent to the artcile in the Atlantic, about Level 1 and Level 2 workers in that article, perhaps...or the Level 1 & 2s and the management ensconced in the old HQ in Long Island City. Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs One reason for the mobility gap may be the depth of American poverty, which leaves poor children starting especially far behind. Another may be the unusually large premiums that American employers pay for college degrees. Since children generally follow their parents’ educational trajectory, that premium increases the importance of family background and stymies people with less schooling. At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints. Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes ....bolding relates to the discussion we have on and off about education and the cost of college. But the shocker is the US is less mobile than the UK, esp. considering the UK has went through a similar deindustrialization era as we did....they are the closest to the US for the Europeans...Denmark not so much.

The section of the article about the machinest is the kind of manufacturing that still happens in Dayton. Yet even this sector..in the Dayton area...is declining in employment. Could be from attrition. ....though I've read that the Asians (particularly Taiwan) are starting to target advanced machining as their next export market....

Hah..we should offer to buy them dinner and cover their bar tab and maybe they'll show!

What's been more evident if one is old enough, and comes from a blue-collar background (or if you are black), is that these kind of living wage jobs have started to disappear in the 1970s,...or even earlier.... so witnessing the destruction of a broad-based (vs narrow-based) prosperity for people of lower education leverls....not just lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc.....has been an ongoing life -experience. In the 1980s it started to affect middle managment. Now its affecting professionals, the IT sector, etc, etc. Heres a good book on the start of the end of the line, more from the blue-collar POV. Stayin' Alive ...and here's where it all ends. These guys talk about the "Edge Men', which is were you end up in your late middle age without work.. Someplace Like America ..and, finally, for the blacks, there are a few books. Ive already mentioned "The Orgins of the Urban Crisis", but more up-to-date is this one When Work Disappears ..though Wilson writes primarily about the African American community, and this book came out in the 1990s, perhaps the issue is expanding? Fascinating to watch, the great collapse of incomes in the US.... The generational thing is a nice spin on the issue, and I think it has already been posted here that if you enter the job market during a recession you will see a lifetime of lower earnings vis a vis people who enter the job market during prosperity....but we are in something other than a normal recession. The demographic consequences of hard & uncertain times are true as well, and I can attest to that from personal history...my US grandparents got married and started raising a family in the Great Depression...they had only two kids. My German granparents were married during the Nazi era, and had only one kid (born during WWII, which started in 1939 for Germany). So yeah we will see demogrpahic fallout from hard times. Finally...yeah, I too wonder how these oldesters cruising around the US in their big RVs, car in tow, can afford to do that. Must be nice.

It's not a sense of entitlement in as much as a sense of betrayal. bingo. The use of the term entitlement just gives a snarky moralist spin for the "Ive got mine, Jack" fingerpointers. Its just a rationalization

I think we do. We understand that if we are in our 50s and laid off we are most-likely unemployable and will be competing with our grandkids for those starbucks jobs, except it wont be starbucks (since they hire younger people) but maybe competing with our grandkids for jobs clerking at Home Depot.

Seriously...y'all should have a 10 year party. We are getting close! Or maybe just a 5000 member party. We can invite the 5000th member as the mystery guest.

Birth rates are still falling fast. Once this current generation gets through school, the labor pool will start shrinking. The kids being born over the next decade might be very lucky. They will not have much competition coming out of school. ...here's your book: Fewer

Dayton makes a top 10 list. Zagat, in the Huffington Post: Ten Coolest Coffee Shops in the US @ #8 is "Press" (slide 8 of 11). The only coffee shop in Ohio,Indiana, and KY to make the list, which includes the usual suspects (SF, Portland, Seattle, Brooklyn, etc) plus a few coffee shops in smaller places like Portland ME (not a suprise to me...a VERY under-the-radar cool spot) and Ashville NC.

...that could be the case! And the local Occupy movmeent might not be interested either. This is a bit esoteric and "reformist" for them. :laugh: Believe it or not Dayton is so apathetic and conservative that Occupy is nearly the only game in town. So its a good launching pad. Occupy is wide-ranging and theres so much going on around it that i'd expect to see spin-offs. This could be one. But i would be interested in hearing what other UO people have to say, or think, about this.

Yeah, this wouldn't be that grand. It's written like a big thing, but it would be pretty small-scale, really. You said 10 people. I can't imagine more than 10 people working on this at any one time...that would be the very upper limit. It would be pretty much task-oriented. The idea is to act as a resource for grassroots organizers and community groups, and a way of connecting up the direct-action bias of of Occupy to neighborhood orgs and activists as a way to stir the pot. The think tank aspect would be a way of putting numbers & graphics behind the issues selected...really the kind of stuff I posted here on UO, but maybe pitched differently.

As you all know I am involved with that Occupy movement. My involvement has taken an interesting turn as it is beginning to involve urban policy/urban regeneragation issues. Among the people Im starting to work with is a neighborhood group near Miami Valley Hosptial, a local union (SIEU), the mayor of Dayton, the UC Community Design Center, etc. What I am going to propose is a working group be set up to work urban policy things. Here is the proposal statement. I'd like to soclity your alls feedback on this. Note that I wrote it to be fairly broad so the working group could address a host of issues and not be limited to one thing, like foreclosures. PROPOSAL: Stand-up a Neighborhoods Working Group Purpose Address urban policy issues in the Dayton region, with a focus on spatial justice. “Urban Policy Issues” is to be broadly construed to include topics such as urban sprawl, rural conservation, questionable use of TIF, transit and transportation, as well as conventional urban regeneration issues such as deterioration, abandonment, vacant properties, absentee ownership, neighborhood conservation and preservation, etc, Concept of Operations Think Tank: The group would also conduct idea generation/brainstorming for advocacy and actions. The group would conduct research around issues. Research would provide a data-driven foundation for advocacy strategies and direct actions. As part of this effort the group would require the resources of the OD Technical and IT working groups to develop databases, websites, etc. There may be a requirement for the Arts & Culture committee to assist in the preparation of graphics and layout. Advocacy: The group would engage with neighborhood and citizen groups, as well as individual citizens, to advocate for their issues. The group would also present internally generated issues for Occupy Dayton to act on as the primary advocate, independent of specific neighborhood group engagement. Networking: The group would connect neighborhood groups with outside resources such as the UC Community Design Center, OSU Knowlton Schools’ sustainable neighborhood program, and perhaps other outside resources, to provide assistance. The group would also facilitate networking between individuals and organizations interested in spatial justice issues. Action: The group would propose actions of various types supporting from advocacy. These could be conventional methods such as letter writing, public speaking, and lobbying, and direct actions such as protests, vigils, and other creative ways of highlighting issues. The resources of the Direct Action committee and Arts & Culture committee would be required to “design” the direct action, ranging from the tactics to visuals, music, etc. The Media committee would be needed to document and publicize the action. Participation: Participants would not be limited to the Occupy movement, but could include individuals or organizations interested in a specific urban policy issue. Participation would be on an ad-hoc basis, depending on the issue. Participants could stay active over the course of one or two issues and then depart. ...note the participation section is worded to make this group open. My idea is to get people involved who dont support Occupy but are interested in urban affairs. Which could mean you all. Would anyone here at UO want to participate? If you live in the area this could be real-time participation. Or it could be virtual participation via this forum, as a crowdsourcing effort or virtual brainstorming session. Looking for feeback here.

:clap: Happy New Year! :wave:

I signed up at first as "Jeff"...... April 28, 2004, 05:06:54 PM To think Ive been posting here for 7 years! Wow. Doesnt seem that long

I know it's not Erieview. I was just curious what used to there. I was using this divider.... @@@ ...to seperate my unrelated thoughts in the same post.

Also from Brookings, the nine deficiencies in the housing market/industry.... 1.The biggest deficiency is the lack of households willing and able to buy homes 2.A combination of falling home prices, losses of jobs by millions of Americans, and low-quality home mortgages sold to home buyers led many home owning households to default on their mortgage payments. 3.The federal government has tried several times to enable foreclosed home owners to remain in their homes, but its efforts have been limited because both banks and other mortgage lenders have fought taking any “haircuts” in their loan amounts to make that possible. 4.The deduction of mortgage interest payments from the taxable incomes of home owners is a large government subsidy that provides most of its benefits to the wealthy owners of costly homes. 5.Control over what types of homes are permitted within each community is completely exercised by that community’s local government, but many suburban governments are pressured by homeowners to exclude housing affordable to lower-income households. 6.In each year, homebuilders construct as many new units as they can sell during that year. But doing so in prosperous periods requires selling into housing demands oriented towards the future. 7.Many thousands of individuals and low-income households are essentially homeless. 8.The measures of home prices used by the housing industry and major media distort what really happens to home prices. (this one is for you, RR) 9.Bankers and other parties who normally provide loans to potential homebuyers have adopted stringent requirements for persons trying to qualify for home loans.

Brookings has a demographic wrap-up @ its urban policy page. Relevant to this discussion: Americans Lost Ground on Income and Poverty in the 2000s The 2000s marked the first census decade on record in which real median household income declined. The typical household earned $50,046 in 2010, down 8.9 percent from 2000. And the share of people living in poverty hit 15.3 percent, the highest level since 1993. The negative trends surely reflect the deep recession affecting the country in the late 2000s, but also the limited progress experienced by average households and the poor during the years in which the overall economy grew. and The United States i Growing More Slowly The 2000s marked the slowest decade of population growth in the United States in 70 years, slightly under the rate from the 1980s. The country grew by 9.7 percent, adding 27.3 million people from 2000 to 2010. The pullback from rapid 13.2 percent growth in the 1990s reflects slower U.S. economic growth across the decade, reduced immigration, and the aging of baby boomers out of their prime child-bearing years.