On my current road trip, my wife and I have been to Detroit, Birmingham, Ann Arbor and Coldwater, Michigan. In Birmingham we stayed with my uncle. He has some power in the automotive industry. I thought it a duty to tell him that I do not think American executives have been putting America first. He came back with some good culturist points. We agreed about the impact of international competition. Where he and I greatly disagreed was his putting so much of the blame on what unions have done to our work ethic.
We have been down sizing at an amazing rate. Detroit is an example of that which I speak. The industry has been slaughtered. One corporation went from 250,000 to 85,000 jobs within the last four years. Detroit's downtown has many, many closed businesses. That means that people like my uncle have to move to suburbs like Birmingham. The entire city of Detroit has been stranded. He told me that a lot of the jobs have gone to the South of the U.S. where unionization isn't as entrenched.
Not having the statistics to contend his assertion, I spoke generically about the merits of localism and the peril of globaism. Globalism not only bodes ill for those fired. Abandoned executive mansions circle downtown Detroit. While we were there a blackout that lasted five hours impacted our suburb. No American can get off of the grid and remove themselves from their fellow Americans. A big house, without power, surrounded by impoverished ex-employees does not strike me as ideal.
Ann Arbor appears to be a model for success. In Ann Arbor we went to Zingerman's famous deli. Their food is sublime. The passion for their staff for their specialties inspired me. University of Michigan has created a learning culture that has brought people from all over the world and seems to have created research centers that are supporting themselves. There is, as my uncle would say, opportunity in America if people would only have a progressive and disciplined culture. This is true, but not all people will create small businesses and staff research facilities.
We came to Coldwater because Frances Kellor, the head of the 20th century Americanization movement, grew up here. As a classic sociologist Kellor looked at society holistically. One half of her program to Americanize the immigrant involved getting native born Americans out of the blaming mode and into the helping mode. Workers need to ask themselves if their implementation of our traditional Protestant work ethic is falling behind that of China. But Kellor's Americanization told those in power that blaming is too easy. Americanization put pressure on all sectors of society to recognize that the West is a team that must compete with others. Where ever you travel in our Western nation you learn the culturist truth that we are all, rich and poor, in it together.
3 comments:
You describe an age-old struggle where capitalists are opposed to labor without which no profit can be made, and those with means as opposed to those without. The fact is that if industrial managers were leaders, they would take good care of their employees and if employees felt that they were part of the industrial family (rather than as detached from it), then no labor unions would be necessary. And so the two stubborn sides have created our present-day situation where the only manufacturing we do involved heavy construction equipment and some home appliances. We may have already gone so far down the road that we are stuck with a service-based economy; more the shame because as foreign workers benefit from US manufacturing in their countries, our people are left out “in the cold.”
I spoke with a man today who offered up the tired old shoe about the distance between wealthy and poor. I maintain that the problem with income disparity begins and ends with our pathetic education system, which in the name of equality, refuses to offer vocational/technical training to those with no interest in pursuing post-secondary education. I also believe that the refusal to provide real world training discriminates against minorities who would otherwise go on to achieve great success (and wealth) in the crafts and trades. But whether schools are meeting the real needs of at risk students, the fact is that individuals choose not to learn – and it is no surprise that the uneducated are also the poor with limited opportunities. Wealthy people, on the other hand, are typically those who valued education and who work 100 or more hours a week to achieve their successes. Are they to be blamed and penalized for their personal industry and drive? A socialist would answer in the affirmative . . . but what they fail to understand is that no one is entitled to success – one must earn it. We must hold people accountable for their decisions, for making choices. We can already see how, in not allowing students to make choices about their vocational track, school systems only create a much worse social condition. The hole is getting deeper . . . and if we do not correct this problem (and soon), there may be no way to maintain our country’s greatness in the future.
mustang, I couldn't agree with you more. Germany has a school situation where people who don't, or can't, go to university go another path..that path is found surprisingly young, through testing, and those who don't pass into higher learning are not regarded as cretins like they are here "you're not going to UNIVERSITY?", they just choose a practicum in a trade, a good trade...they're treated with respect and they have certification which is so difficult to get that there is much pride in this 'lesser work', this work with one's hands. Great stuff, and it's worked well.
Thanks for the posts, sorry my travel has delayed my reply.
I agree with you both on vocational education. While travelling we saw many old blacksmith shops. My wife toured an Amish home and saw how they made everything for themselves. It is not just vocational, but a spirit of independence that came from the proximity of everyday life in such knowledge.
Most of the vocational programs we have are, however, really terrible. Woodshop doesn't teach enough. A very large part of the problem stems from licencing. If electricians were allowed to teach; if plumbers were allowed to teach; if small businessmen were allowed to teach; we'd have engaging classes. Credentialling ensures that courses are book-based and only that nerds like me can teach in high school.
The independence that comes from making your own, the independence from society that the Amish have shown, hurts us when it gets too strong. Businessmen and workers need a recognition of dependence. As we sell eachother out, our economy has been usurped by the much more nationalist and culturist Asian nations. If we do not hang together, we'll surely hang separately.
Lizabeth Cohen's Making of the New Deal, does a good job of showing how corporations cultivated the type of industrial leadership Mustang writes of in the 1920s.
It is not clear to me if white flight from busing or deindustrialization sapped Mid-West cities the most. But a balancing of antisocial atitudes and individualism with a healthy sense of unity, nationalism, and culturism seems to be a part of the solution.
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