"Holy S**t, What a Nightmare This Turned Into": How Austerity Destroyed Our Small Towns

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/story/154506/%22holy_s**t%2C_what_a_nightmare_this_turned_into%22%3A_how_austerity_destroyed_our_small_towns_/


“When I graduated from Muncie Central High School, you could go just about anyplace and get a job—a decent job,” says Dennis Tyler. Tyler has represented Muncie’s Delaware County in the Indiana State House since 2007, and this past November he became the first Democratic mayor of Muncie in two decades. Before embarking on a political career, Tyler, who is sixty-nine, spent more than forty years in the fire department. For most of that time, he worked out of a firehouse just a mile and a half from where he grew up on Muncie’s Southside. “You could go to Borg Warner, and if you didn’t like Borg Warner you could leave and go to Chevrolet; if you didn’t like Chevrolet you could leave and go to Delco; if you didn’t like Delco you could leave and go to Acme-Lee, or dozens and dozens of other little places that were spinning off mom-and-pop tool-and-die shops.”

“At one point,” he recalls proudly, “the Southside of Muncie was almost completely built by people working in them factories.” Working people may have built south Muncie, but it was a pair of sociologists that put the city on the map. Ever since Robert and Helen Lynd christened Muncie Middletown in 1929, journalists, academics, and presidential hopefuls have flocked to this blue-collar city in eastern Indiana, for a look into the petri dish of American life or simply some Joe-the-Plumber-style street cred.

Last summer, with the nattering of congressional debt-ceiling debates and reports of ballooning corporate profits making headlines, I went in search of what Middletown has become today. Once as wholesome a symbol of the American Dream as the family breadwinner and apple pie, the very idea of Middletown now seemed a pale shadow of present realities, as the stark prose of unemployment statistics and eviction notices inscribed a very different kind of story onto the lives of millions of Americans.

Which are the Middletowns of our new era of precarious living? Is it Muncie, whose denuded industrial landscape tells a familiar story of Rust Belt decline? Or is it the new industrial landscapes of Smyrna and Spring Hill, Tennessee, where jobs that look a lot like those the residents of Muncie once had have become posts for a downwardly mobile working class? Or is it Sun Belt boom-cities like Nashville, where the promise of postindustrial transcendence has created its own reserve army of low-wage service employment, condemning many to lives of permanent poverty and vulnerability? Or is it some byzantine conurbation of them all, a commons of the American Nightmare—a Middletown of the 99 percent?

[marmar]

1. Rome is burning.

nt

[midnight]

10. It sure is, but the only people the fire fighters are allowed to help are the bankers....

[jwirr]

2. This of course started long ago. I think the name of the book is "When Work Disappears" and I do not

Last edited Tue Mar 13, 2012, 12:23 PM - Edit history (1)

remember the author but he talked about when factories left the inner cities and connected it to the rush of jobs to the south and then from there to other countries. It is not a pretty picture and something needs to be done or as many on DU say we are going to be a third world country. Everyone but the rich.

[Alcibiades]

3. Is this it?

http://www.amazon.com/When-Work-Disappears-World-Urban/dp/0679724176

[jwirr]

6. Yes, I donated it to the public library and couldn't remember. Thank you.

[saras]

4. America wanted to be middle-class instead of working class. You got what you wanted.

The world only needs enough middle-class people to control the working class for the upper class. The rest of the ex-middle class population isn't tough enough to qualify as working-class in the modern world, they're just surplus population.

What America seems to be asking for is to become a working-class country again, but not to admit it. Good luck.

[TBF]

5. Excellent post here -

I would make it even more specific by saying Americans were sold an "American dream" if you will - by Reagan et al. "ownership" and all that ... this was very clever marketing by the folks who benefit most (top 1/10th of the top 1%). Folks loved that dream and bought that it was attainable for everyone (which of course it is not - by design only the few at the top benefit to that degree with capitalism). They went along with the union bashing and now they are living more of a nightmare.

Growing up in a very small town I saw folks graduate from high school in the 60s & 70s and go on to farming, working in a factory, or running a small family business. Most of that is gone now. The small businesses driven out by the big box stores, factories driven out by the corporate farming, and factories moving overseas. Now I see my young cousins, nieces and nephews working in service jobs for much less money - and swinging in and out of unemployment. It's not pretty. The best chance the service workers have is to unionize, which is why FAUX news will bash unions 24/7.

Unfortunately I don't see any of this getting better any time soon.

[lastlib]

7. I figured out what Bush meant by an "ownership society":

He actually said "own-a-ship society"--it's an exclusive club where all the members own a yacht.

And they're all one-percenters; none of us regular folks need apply.

[Igel]

9. The damage started before Reagan.

Carter was already jabbering about how wonderful the "post-industrial economy" would be.

De-industrialization started in earnest under Nixon and was already happening under Johnson. It just kept on spreading, and with China/Taiwan's increase in manufacturing and things like the WTO it could gain speed. This isn't political. It's economic. The US economy is bigger than and is driven by forces larger than the trivial, petty politicians in the '70s and '80s and even '90s. The government just didn't have enough control at the time for politics to be that awesomely important. Probably still doesn't.

Still, in America we produce a far amount in dollar terms. It's just higher tech and requires far few people and far more machinery.

My "town" died in the mid-late '70s when industry dried up. China grabbed the low-tech/mass-quantity part of the local industry's production. Japan and Germany grabbed the high-tech/boutique part of the local industry's production.

[TBF]

13. Thank you -

I was born in the mid 60s and the product of a union family - the factories were moving away in the late 70s - early 80s. Not surprised to hear that it started much earlier.

[pansypoo53219]

8. as we move past industrialization to computer to the age of internets, we need less labor.

we need LESS people. what do you do with excess people? how many starbucks at a less than living wage can we have now that cheap credit is a myth?

soylent green time. OR we have a make work program or we must turn back time and use actual labor again. WAGE support. and we have to kill the idea that rich people deserve all their money.

[Doctor_J]

12. you make entrepenuerialism a viable option again

national health care, living wage laws, and some import tariffs. there are plenty of saleable goods & ideas, but no one can take a chance and cut the cord from their meager job

[Doctor_J]

11. And Beck tells me that Commie Muslims are to blame

and I believe him.

I feel sorry for such people until I realize how ignorant they have let themselves become