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What is happening to PA/USA?

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I wasn't sure which board this topic belongs in, so, move if it shouldn't be here.

My question is simple, but the answer may be complex.

The last time I flew up to Pgh, and then drove in other western PA towns like New Castle, Sharon and Erie, I was stunned by what I witnessed.

Western PA is in shambles. I have heard stories, but to actually drive through it was appalling: block after block of neighborhoods that looked like shacks and shanties.

I mean, plastic for windows, boarded up homes. No one seen on the streets for long stretches.

SO, I get it. The lack of decent paying jobs is the #1 cause, with drug use and gangs the other part of it. (There is currently an mad epidemic in this country with pain killers, that lead to heroin use, since the pills are more expensive).

My question is: How did we come to this?

How can it be fixed?

And please, spare me that it is all from liberals. Even democrats would not prefer this decay to happen.
 
POP said:
I wasn't sure which board this topic belongs in, so, move if it shouldn't be here.

My question is simple, but the answer may be complex.

The last time I flew up to Pgh, and then drove in other western PA towns like New Castle, Sharon and Erie, I was stunned by what I witnessed.

Western PA is in shambles. I have heard stories, but to actually drive through it was appalling: block after block of neighborhoods that looked like shacks and shanties.

I mean, plastic for windows, boarded up homes. No one seen on the streets for long stretches.

SO, I get it. The lack of decent paying jobs is the #1 cause, with drug use and gangs the other part of it. (There is currently an mad epidemic in this country with pain killers, that lead to heroin use, since the pills are more expensive).

My question is: How did we come to this?

How can it be fixed?

And please, spare me that it is all from liberals. Even democrats would not prefer this decay to happen.
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There are extremely nice parts of Western PA and extremely crappy parts. Mercer County has never been a hotbed of economic activity that I can recall. My parents lived up near Sharon 30 years ago and it was kind of run down then. Head to the South Hills, Shadyside, Fox Chapel, Sewickley, Cranberry...plenty of nice areas. Out in Peters Township where I moved from the economy is booming thanks to Marcellus Shale....the schools are great and they can't build houses fast enough.
 
oneforthebus said:
There are extremely nice parts of Western PA and extremely crappy parts. Mercer County has never been a hotbed of economic activity that I can recall. My parents lived up near Sharon 30 years ago and it was kind of run down then. Head to the South Hills, Shadyside, Fox Chapel, Sewickley, Cranberry...plenty of nice areas. Out in Peters Township where I moved from the economy is booming thanks to Marcellus Shale....the schools are great and they can't build houses fast enough.
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I never meant to imply that there were no nice areas left in Western PA. And, sure, there have been poor areas for many decades. But my point is, the % of terrible areas has grown dramatically AND the "bad areas" have gotten much worse. The total % of people living in poverty has grown exponentially. New Castle used to be mostly a decent town. Now it's a hell hole, almost in entirety. The violent crime rate has exploded the last decade. Why? Erie is in such bad shape, that elected officials are talking about just closing the 4 city schools and having those students get bussed to schools out of the city. In other words, the plan is to just give up. No one has the $ to pay what is needed to keep those schools open, and, almost no "teaching or learning" is taking place to begin with. The community near those schools is almost all broken families, dad's in jail, mom is on meth, you name it.

Marcellus Shale? Fracking? That **** is destroying our fresh water. That is certainly not a good thing. Fracking is destroying the environment.

http://www.dangersoffracking.com/
 
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In my opinion it started with the growing conglomeration of businesses.

Bigger businesses move massive amounts of jobs from one location to another. They bargain and negotiate with much stronger positions against ever hungrier states looking to keep employment up and will to sacrifice any/all tax revenue in the process (thus putting the burden of tax revenue on small business and the upper-middle class). Bad trade agreements further allowed those same super-corporations to move jobs overseas and again bargain for more and more beneficial tax agreements.

In a lot of ways what happened was typical market forces. After WWII, there was a massive amount of small and large business growth primarily in the USA, inside the US market. The 1970's and recession eliminated the weak and the strong rebounded into a growing world wide economy. The strong grew larger. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of China and emerging markets (Brazil, India, Russia, China) the big continued to get big. They started strangling out all competition except for the very special or very niche or the very unique. Even in emerging markets (computers, telecommunication, etc.) a few special companies exploded so fast with so much wealth they bought up every competitor in sight. Eventually they to (when profits level off) will ship jobs overseas to cheaper markets.

I don't really know how to prevent it. Every emerging labor market has an advantage over the previous one. U.S. over Europe. Japan over U.S. China over Japan. India/SE Asia over China. Eventually Africa will get it's chance (although their tribal issues and small countries might prevent it on a large scale).

While I'm not sure you can "stop" this, I do think government could be doing a better job of slowing it down. Free trade really needs to mean free trade. And if not, our government needs to play hardball with "cheap" labor to try and level the playing field (come down harder on child labor and slave labor for instance). Government in our country and Europe should be doing a better job of preventing huge mergers of super-large corporations. We could do more to help small business compete with big business and prevent nefarious tactics to squash competition. We could do better on immigration (legal only) and it's role in income gaps. We could do a better job on education and not make "college" the only escape. Trade skills are just as valuable these days. We could do a better job of creating work ethic as a society. We should be improving our health as a nation (productivity could come from longer, healthier lives) and encourage people to work fewer hours but longer into their 60's and 70's.

It's a difficult process but something we've done really poorly at as a country in my opinion.
 
I've lived in Erie almost my whole life, and it is a complete and utter shithole now. I want so badly to move, towards the end of the year, I'm looking for new jobs, preferably around Raleigh NC. And yes, the biggest reason Erie sucks so bad now is because of decades of failed democrat policies.
 
The answer is we made it harder for heavy industries like steel to do business in the USA than was profitable. No jobs mean no money which means decay because anyone with the will to work moved to where the jobs are.
 
bmoritz said:
I've lived in Erie almost my whole life, and it is a complete and utter shithole now. I want so badly to move, towards the end of the year, I'm looking for new jobs, preferably around Raleigh NC. And yes, the biggest reason Erie sucks so bad now is because of decades of failed democrat policies.
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Moving to a more vibrant area, with much nicer weather than Erie will bring rays of sunshine to your life. You will not regret it. I never did for a single minute. Erie is bad and getting worse, with no end in sight.
 
I'm just curious how it's the fault of the democrats when our district has had a republican congressman for something like 30 of the last 32 years.
 
POP said:
I wasn't sure which board this topic belongs in, so, move if it shouldn't be here.

My question is simple, but the answer may be complex.

The last time I flew up to Pgh, and then drove in other western PA towns like New Castle, Sharon and Erie, I was stunned by what I witnessed.

Western PA is in shambles. I have heard stories, but to actually drive through it was appalling: block after block of neighborhoods that looked like shacks and shanties.

I mean, plastic for windows, boarded up homes. No one seen on the streets for long stretches.

SO, I get it. The lack of decent paying jobs is the #1 cause, with drug use and gangs the other part of it. (There is currently an mad epidemic in this country with pain killers, that lead to heroin use, since the pills are more expensive).

My question is: How did we come to this?

How can it be fixed?

And please, spare me that it is all from liberals. Even democrats would not prefer this decay to happen.
Click to expand...

Basically we have passed the point where there are more houses than there are people to live in them. As steel mill after steel mill closed down or scaled back, younger people were forced to leave and older people either had enough seniority to hang on or retire. Now 30 years down the road, those folks are dying off and their kids and succeeding generations are growing up in other places. Although local politicians for the most part have their hearts in the right places, the bulk of the problem (in my opinion) lies in Harrisburg and Washington, D.C. Although with our rails and rivers Western PA is well-suited to make large amounts of large heavy things that require large amounts of large heavy raw materials to produce, those are exactly the sorts of jobs that have been chased out of the country. If we are forced to compete with other states for the same type of jobs, we will usually come out on the losing end because PA is simply not a very business-friendly state. Our corporate income tax is the second-highest in the nation and the legislature will never pass right-to-work. We have been 49th out of 50 states in job growth since way back when Fast Eddie was governor. To compete with the Sunbelt's weather climate we have to have a better business climate and the dolts in Harrisburg don't have a clue, seriously I mean 99% of the Democrats and 75% of the Republicans. Six of the top eight states in job and population growth have no state income tax and all are right-to-work states. Neither of those things will ever happen here, hell we can't even buy beer and wine in grocery stores because 1300 unionized state store employees have cowed the entire state legislature. I live in the same town where I grew up, I graduated from high school in 1978 in a class of 207, these days the same school graduates less than 50 kids a year. This is why I went back to school at the age of 53 to be a funeral director in order that I would have a more marketable skill so I can move to Florida, something I should have done 30 years ago when a lot of other people did. My small business, two franchises of a national service-type company (one in Beaver County, one in Lawrence County) has been for sale for four years with exactly zero offers. At this point it's just fun to keep lowering the price and still get no takers. Drugs are everywhere, it's not peculiar to here, I think it's worse in places where there are less jobs. Article today in The Newspaper That Shall Not Be Named about pill mills in Kentucky. At the funeral home I work at now we bury one overdose case every two or three weeks. Today's edition of my local paper the Beaver County Times has an article about population loss (you need a paid subscription to read their stuff) where they quote the president of the CoC as saying we need population growth to generate job growth. That might be partly true but I think he has it backwards, you need a demand for labor to get people to move here (or stay here). As it stands now I don't see a future here and plan on moving to Florida in a year or so.

swal75 said:
I'm just curious how it's the fault of the democrats when our district has had a republican congressman for something like 30 of the last 32 years.
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He's only one guy, plus all of the Republicans in the legislature from eastern PA are essentially Democrats.
 
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so I can move to Florida, something I should have done 30 years ago when a lot of other people did
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You rust belt downers are depressing but Burgundy did make me feel a little better....that's when I left, about 35 years ago.
 
I'm from New York and Florida but have visited various parts of the state. Philly, Pittsburgh, Erie, and the middle of the state.

From my eyes, here's what wrong:

The infrastructure is in bad shape but they ( Politicians ) won't fix it and most of it is ugly and rusty looking. In fact, most of the houses and plumbing is very old.

On a per-capita basis, Pennsylvania's per-capita GSP of $47,274 (in chained 2009 dollars) ranks 26th among the 50 states. Terrible considering they are the 6th largest state via population in the union.
Jobs are an issue, and part of the reason for the fall is the blue collar factory and manufacturing jobs have moved overseas.

Taxes are too high. Pennsylvania has the 10th highest tax burden in the United States.[111] Residents pay a total of $83.7 billion in state and local taxes with a per capita average of $6,640 annually.

There are really only two major cities, Philly and Pitt. 7 of the top 10 cities have less than 100,000 people, making it tough to bring in larger companies to be HQ'd here


Solution: Vote for Trump, he'll bring many of the blue colar jobs back, lower taxes, is pro-business, and won't pander to Philadelphia like Politics, which could be sucking the lion's share of funds allocated away from the rest of the state.
 
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Billy Joel's Allentown song sums it up best.

Well we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they're killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line
Well our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore
Met our mothers in the USO
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow
And we're living here in Allentown

But the restlessness was handed down
And it's getting very hard to stay

Well we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved
So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke
And chromium steel
And we're waiting here in Allentown

But they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away

Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face

Well I'm living here in Allentown
And it's hard to keep a good man down
But I won't be getting up today

And it's getting very hard to stay
And we're living here in Allentown
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Anyone who thinks we're ever going to return to the "good old days" where everyone worked in factories is delusional. The sooner we accept that the sooner we can figure out how to prepare people for the jobs of the future. Tech and healthcare are the growth industries in PA now.
 
I don't know about Erie, New Castle and Sharon, but things are not bad in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.

There is no shortage of new and even luxury houses that have been built in the suburbs. Even if the older houses had been maintained, they wouldn't be worth anywhere near what the newer houses are worth. Regardless, East Liberty and Lawrenceville are going through urban revivals and property values have increased significantly. Supposedly, Etna is the next hipster hot spot. Also, the North shore, Homestead and Southside waterfronts have all been recently developed.

These things don't happen when things are bad.
 
It's gotten so bad in Erie, the city superintendent is threatening to close all four of the city high schools. All that will accomplish is to push the problem out into the county to schools like McDowell, Fairview, and Harbor Creek (where I'm from). In essence, it's forced urban expansion.
 
bmoritz said:
It's gotten so bad in Erie, the city superintendent is threatening to close all four of the city high schools. All that will accomplish is to push the problem out into the county to schools like McDowell, Fairview, and Harbor Creek (where I'm from). In essence, it's forced urban expansion.
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That's just radical. So, tell me where the $ will go from land tax that is/was going to the four city schools. Will that $ now go to the schools these kids are going to?

Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that $ is at risk of being pocketed by the city, while not going to pay for schools? Govts do NOT ever return taxes once they have established tax $ even after whatever the tax was created for no longer exists.

We still pay taxes on phone bills that was to pay for computers going into schools. Now what is that tax paying for? More bull ****.
 
POP said:
And please, spare me that it is all from liberals. Even democrats would not prefer this decay to happen.
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The evidence that is Detroit and Baltimore, after decades of Democratic rule, doesn't support this notion. Or the economic situation in California.

Maybe they wouldn't prefer this. But they seem unable to properly govern if these cities and states are evidence.
 
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