Jeffery

Nate Silvers book 'Signal to Noise" (or something lke that) has a chapter on economic forecasting.

So sad. I used to take that highway, 741, home via Red Lion instead of the freeway to sort of unwind after the long drive from KY (exit at Monroe & past the prison to catch 741). The stretech Otterbein/Red Lion/Springboro was still classic SW Ohio/Between the Miamis rural countryside..rolling farmland with woodlots with long views west over the Great Miami valley opening up on occasion. Development was mostly limited to some large lot ribbon development. Not really suburban. Red Lion was the center of that route, with the antebellum Methodist Church anchoring the crossroads. Its been a long time but I drove by there on Sunday and noticed some construction work. so I guess this is whats going on...some major road project. Always thought that crossroads would be a good spot for some "New Urbanist" development to sort of reconstruct what might have once been there (recall there was one or two older buildings that burned, years ago). Instead we get a gas station.

This chart seems to indicate the run-up in composition (ie wages) for the upper 1% happened in the 1980s & 1990s then stagnated People say that but i don't believe it. Perhaps the social stablity part, which has a cost in terms of law enforcment and insurance....but the discussion around this kind of fallout is more about criminality and morality vs economic consequences.

Oh no!!!! I was wondering why I didnt see him on here much....this is so sad!

Here's a question: Does it really matter if we see this bifurcation in incomes and increase in structural "unemploymnet" (or fewer FT jobs), as long as productivity increases and economic growth continues?

^^ Yep. I was around in the 1970s and already then you could sense the good times (ie the postwar boom) was over. The 1974 recession was the "firebell in the night" (to borrow a phrase), but the early 1970s inflation also signalled something was up but (this was pre-oil embargo).

From The Atlantic "The middle class crisis -- and its resulting income inequality -- is the most important economic story of our time. There are a million ways to tell it, and here's another: an annotated slide show, culled from the amazing 2012 edition of the State of Working America from EPI... An annoted chart-by-chart guide to the "Middle Class Crisis" ..sample:

Low-Wage Jobs Don’t Just Harm Workers — They Harm Their Children ...at the link there is detail for the following bullet points. Low-wage work prevents parents from participating in their children’s development. Children of low-wage parents are often forced into the labor market early themselves. Children of low-wage parents are more likely to face educational difficulties. Children of low-wage parents are more at risk for health problems. >cue forlorn pix of ragged kids<

Is the Economy Creating a Lost Generation...and its effect on birth rates The most startling evidence of the broken escalator is the collapse in marriages and births. Marriage has been declining for years. Now, in a new study, the Pew Research Center finds that in 2011 the U.S. birth rate (births per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44) fell to its lowest level since at least 1920, the earliest year of reliable statistics. From 2007 to 2011, the U.S. birth rate dropped almost 9 percent. The total fertility rate — the estimated number of children born to adult women in their lifetime — has fallen four straight years to 1.9 (the replacement rate is 2.1). States with large economic setbacks suffered steeper birth rate drops... This has happened in the past. Anedote: My granparents were married and lived during hard and uncertain times....the Great Depression and WWII (the German and American grandparents), and they had small families...my dad had one sister and my ma was an only child.

.....here come the jobs! Oh..wait... Low Wage Sectors Drive Employment Growth Leisure and hospitality, health care and social assistance, retail and temporary jobs — all low wage sectors — have been responsible for over half (51%) of the private sector job growth the last year.

...and this has been torn down.

Heres' a link to a pix of those rowhouses shown in the Sanborn and Conservancy District maps. Caption says they were built in 1882 and was "Dayton's first Apartment House" Dayton's First Apartment House

^ Yeah, important to balance percentages with actual numbers. @@@ Meanwhile The Atlantic has an article about a lot of what we've discussed re the economy in general The End of Middle Class Growth: What It Means for the Future of Work, Family, and the Economy A bit of Paul Krugman, Robert Riech AND Charles Murray in this article. But for history-minded folks like myself, this article takes the trends back in time to WWII, looking at the postwar era.... ...The economy no longer reliably and consistently transmits productivity gains to workers. The result is that many millions of Americans, in particular less-skilled men, are leaving the workforce, a phenomenon the country has never seen before on the present scale....

One thing that makes Brookville and Mnt Olivet interesting is they are sort of a "bluegrass state" take on a hill town. They sit atop ridges and the land drops away from the main streets. In fact the movie theatre in, I think, Brookville, took advantage of this slope to give good sitelines for the seats... (mentioned in Ed McLanahan's "The Natural Man", which was set in a fictionalized Brookville).

Wow...looks like some nice restorations. This is Grand Rapids oldest neighborhood? Really? Mostly later 19th and early 20th century things. But really, the quality of these are great! Very nice! GR is another place I need to see.

This is rather good news if it happens: Cleveland grocer may open store in downtown Dayton ...the grocer is Constantinos! Who you all may recall from the Warehouse Distirct. The city is pitching the old Greyhound site.

When I took my folks to Springfield (on a road triip north of Cincy to visit Wittenberg College), we came in from Yellow Springs through that low key entrance to the city from the south. Where you dont expect much of a town since there is minimal suburbia. Then, you pop out on the main e-w streets and that C-C plant just dominates the view, catching the late afternoon sun in all its red brick glory. My Dad exclaimed "Holy Cow, look at the size of that plant!" ....he was pretty suprised. I explained to my folks Ohio is filled with small factory cities like Springfield with big plants like this (Mansfield had Westinghouse, for example).

On edit..speaking of Detroit....just got this book...at the library and its next to the keyboard waiting to be checked out: Detroit City is the Place to Be ...subtitled..."The Afterlife of the American Metropolis"

I need to make that long planned road trip to Toledo to see if its as sucky as Dayton. I suspect suburban Dayton is probably pretty affluent compared to Toodle-ee-do because of all that defense spending, but I want to see if the "old city" is equally sucky. I WAS in Toledo once years ago, and noted there was no "Oregon", but Dayton didnt have anything like Lagrange Avenue either (which was still somewhat Polish then) or that Barrio on S. Broadway. Time for a return trip....

So, C-Dawg, have you been to Portland? I'm sort of curious about this place. From what I've read it sounds sort of odd...the "cool areas" are actually east, on those flatlands across the river from downtown? The place sounds superficially sort of blah compared to Seattle, which has those lakes and bays and hills to give it interest. @@@ I think "cheap and old with character" is what sells Louisville to that young creative set. I recall talking to this young lady who relocated to Louisville from Austin, and she was telling me that was what sold her on Louisville...that Austin didnt have the same old housing stock, that it was more suburban (she made it it sound like Sacramento, a bit...sprawling sunbelt place without much older stuff). That Louisville had the cool hipster thing but was ALSO cheap and had great old houses to live in.

wasnt there a media flurry a few years ago about something called the "Peter Pan Syndrome"....

Oh no...Fridays is nostalgia for me! TGIF opened in Louisville back in 1977 or 1978, somewhere around then....and it was one of those new hip yuppie places..back then they had their menus on real school copybooks. The place has deteriorated over the years, but that early TGIFridays experience was good...interesting food in a fun environment. Im wondering if Yellow Springs draws a lot of potential trade? Is there even a coffee house in Springfield?

Indianapolis, Lexington, and Pittsburgh all make the Bloomberg Businessweek list. So the "Ohio Valley" is well-represented. That Cincy and Pbgh are on the list speaks well for this part of the US. I see they also pick up Milwaukee, which is one of the "sleeper cities"...cool interesting places that people dont know much about.

Springfield is pretty poor, so I figure the demographics cant support a Fridays. Applebees should do good. That Saxbe coffee shop will be a good spot to wait for the bus after going to the UD library. ...and I havnt heard of Sweet Dots. On Alex Bell, huh?

Dayton is going to be hit by the coming defense cuts. Defense spending (which is also refelceted in the Professional, Science, and Technology sector as well as "goverment"), and the med sector, are what is keeping this economy alive.