The Current Magic Bullets

[Downstate Buffaloian]

Exactly!

We need to be realistic in terms of seeing our city as what it really is: a mostly poor, declining, economically suffering burnt out shell of a municipality. And now add 70 MURDERS A YEAR to the mix... There ARE some upscale and trendy parts of Buffalo, but face it folks THOSE AREAS ARE THE MINORITY... And even Elmwood, North Buffalo and the Delaware Districts are not immune to the effect of their neighborhoods surrounding poverty. When I lived on Elmwood I had my apartment and my car broken into within the same month... The crack heads were so desperate that they used to STEAL CHRISTMAS CARDS OUT OF OUR MAILBOX AND OPEN THEM TO SEE IF THERE WAS ANY MONEY IN THEM. Even the "upscale" areas are located within walking distance of really bad and really poverty and violence stricken neighborhoods... NO ONE CAN DENY THAT.

So first we need to say, "Hey! We are gonna do what we can to bring in some kind of businesses... Any kind of businesss... As a start." Even if we have to BEGIN with WALGREEENS and (I can't believe I'm saying this but) a freakin' WAL MART or SAM'S CLUB we need to do someting... In the world of choosing the lesser or two evils I'd rather see a WAL MART than a CASINO...

Also, being realistic means that we need to realize that the poor and disenfranchised are bringing the whole city down with them and that segment needs to be rehabilitated first.

STATISTICS SHOW THAT THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF THE ERIE COUNTY BUDGET GOES TO SOCIAL SERVICES. That shows that supporting the poverty stricken is making the rest of us poor. I lost my job with Erie County because of it.

And the POOR DON'T NEED QUAINT HISTORIC BUILDINGS AND TRENDY CAFES... THEY NEED FREAKIN' JOBS!

In terms of being methodic, we need to start from the bottom up... Immediately knock down the old burnt out buildings and crack houses... But back on out of town real estate flippers... We need to allow whatever business or development that wants to open here to open... Hotel, high rise, drug store, etc... JUST LET THEM OPEN! Because each thing that opens will bring in a tax base or a job...

I'm sorry if I went all Dennis Miller on you here, it's just that as a someone who is only in her early 30s, I have seen so much decline in our area and I hate to see how every year it gets worse and worse...

Achbek, I'm also in my early 30's and I've seen the area decline from a "real" city with a vibrant downtown and solid ethnic working class neighborhoods into a ghetto with a few pockets of old-money upper middle class. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say but the decline is permenant and there will never be a strong middle or well paid working class in the city again. The problem is not what is done in the local area but what our economic policy is on a national and international level.

Back in the early 1970's the elite decided that the middle class and unionized working class was making too much money and had too much leasure time on their hands and were becoming a threat to their power. Environmental laws and labor regulations were also stifling their profit margin. The rich in the 1945-1973 era struggled compared to the obscene amounts of wealth they had in the 1920's before the Great Depression and the New Deal. They decided that they could build their goods at a lower cost overseas and not have to worry about troublesome environmental regulations and labor unions. Thus starting in the 1970's they closed plants in the U.S. and opened them in places like Mexico, China, and the Phillipiines. At first this caused massive unemployment in the old industrial cities, however this eased as many of these unemployed people moved south. Why did they move south? because the Regan Revolution of the 1980's created a new economy based on sunbelt suburban sprawl and borrowed money defense spending (a majority of bases are in the sunbelt). The raw growth caused by people moving from the north to the south artificially created tons of service jobs. They didn't pay well but the cost of living in the sunbelt was so low that it didn't matter. The cost of consumer goods decreased signifcantly. So a person could afford a big screen TV and IPOD even if they lacked health insurance. The values of the society shifted from having a sole breadwinner with stable employment, high wages and good benefits to having multiple low-income earners with no benefits but have lots of consumer goods (it fit in well with feminism and the new materialism of the baby boomer generation) (Not coincidentally, this was also the time when the Democratic party's emphasis moved from representing the needs and interests of the working class to those of the socially liberal elite). Since profit margins increased greatly the number of wealthy people exploded and their influence on government greatly increased, all while median household income stagnated (even with more workers per household) Meanwhile more and more manufacturers left the industrial cities of the north leaving their citizens and governments increasingly bankrupt (they also left an industrial legacy of toxic waste that still haunts us today)

Some of the larger International Cities like New York, Chicago and Toronto benefitted greatly from this new setup as they are the command and control Centers of the new economy with plenty of international headquarters and wealthy citizens earning dividends in the booming stock market. Regional centers like Atlanta, Denver and Phoenix thrived because they received huge amounts of migrants fleeing the north (see sprawl economy above) and their rural hinterlands that were deindustrialized (think rural southern mill towns).

In the 1990's wages started to creep up in the service sector. So, in order to correct this little problem the government (backed by the interests big business) decided to stop defending our southern border. These illegal immigrants flooded the market and lowered wages in the service and construction sectors. They also increased the price of real estate which helped longtime homeowners but made it difficult for traditional native born middle-class nuclear families to own a home in some of these booming areas (unless they were willing to live in close proxmity to these new immigrants which often have 4 or more incomes in extended families in order to afford a home in these areas, and these immigrants decreased the quality of the schools and raised the taxes for English as a second language programs).

This all went along well until the mid 00's until we reached a point where the sprawl as growth machine has broken down. Housing prices in these booming areas has reached a point where they are starting to decline. Homeowners can no longer count on constantly raising housing prices to supplement their incomes by borrowing from their home equity loans. The prices continue to decline now matter how many new immigrants move to that city. Cheap energy is gone making all those McMansions expensive to heat and too far away to commute to economically. America is now dependant on foriegn goods and foriegn sources of energy and is now so indebted to China and Japan all in a fruitless attempt to maintain prosperity in the face of deindustrialization.

Places like Buffalo or Flint Michigan, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Dayton, OH, Detroit, Pittsburgh are not needed in the global economy. Manufacturing will not come back. No other industry will provide the value added jobs that Buffalo once had. The only hope is growth in professional jobs and headquarters jobs l(ike at HSBC and M&T) in fields such as finance, law, engineering, graphic arts, marketing, etc. The only hope for working class people is to get some of the spin off service jobs created by the salaries of these professionals. That is why I am so in favor of making more of the city like Elmwood Avenue. People in these professions tend to like hip urban environments and those that like the suburbs like cosmopolitan suburbs like Amherst. They don't want rundown areas (Riverside, East Side, etc.) or bland declining traditional suburbs like Cheektowaga.

I agree that Buffalo is a horrible situation. However, you must see that this is really a national economic problem. It only stands to get worse if energy costs skyrocket and the southern sprawl cities become unsustainable and join the rustbelt in decline. That will leave only a few select cities in North America such the New York Toronto and Chicago that will have stable economies. This is the course the elite have layed out for the country. If you honestly think that the multi-millionaires (that live within a few miles of where I live on Long Island, so I know what they think) really care about this country and cities like Buffalo then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'm willing to sell you. They are globally oriented and pretty much think that outside a few pockets that this country should be left to rot.

[leftWNYbecauseofBS]

WOW, 8 men in a room running the world! LOL



Achbek, I'm also in my early 30's and I've seen the area decline from a "real" city with a vibrant downtown and solid ethnic working class neighborhoods into a ghetto with a few pockets of old-money upper middle class. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say but the decline is permanent and there will never be a strong middle or well paid working class in the city again. The problem is not what is done in the local area but what our economic policy is on a national and international level.

As long as the Taylor law is in place, there will be less "middle class" jobs in Union States. This does not mean that middle class employment can not be found. What needs to be said is there will no longer be the mass employers like Bethlehem in the area. Companies simply will never grow this big if they have a choice. Companies will spin off divisions rather then grow to an all encompassing corporation. There are several reasons for this. To pain an example, why would a company want to increase it's burden and grow a marketing department when it can contract an smaller marketing firm for less money and get a better product.

Back in the early 1970's the elite decided that the middle class and unionized working class was making too much money and had too much leisure time on their hands and were becoming a threat to their power.
I don't believe in conspiracies so your elite theory is a little funny. In the 70's what companies found is they could get the same product for less money and at times better quality when outsourcing. They also could bypass the union system in the US which by this time had evolved from a tool to protect the worker to a bully in the economy. At the end of the day, companies were sick of paying a man $30 an hour WITH A PENSION to do a job that could be done for $2. Not saying that $2 is right but with the unions gaining such excessive power, companies had no choice.

Environmental laws and labor regulations were also stifling their profit margin. The rich in the 1945-1973 era struggled compared to the obscene amounts of wealth they had in the 1920's before the Great Depression and the New Deal. They decided that they could build their goods at a lower cost overseas and not have to worry about troublesome environmental regulations and labor unions. Thus starting in the 1970's they closed plants in the U.S. and opened them in places like Mexico, China, and the Phillipiines. At first this caused massive unemployment in the old industrial cities, however this eased as many of these unemployed people moved south.
TRUE


Why did they move south? because the Regan Revolution of the 1980's created a new economy based on sunbelt suburban sprawl and borrowed money defense spending (a majority of bases are in the sunbelt).

BS! I SAID BS! They moved to avoid working in union states. This sunbelt spraw only happened in RIGHT TO WORK STATES. That is the one common factor. "Regan Revolution" is just a worker term for saying we demanded too much and it came back to bite us in the ass.

The raw growth caused by people moving from the north to the south artificially created tons of service jobs. They didn't pay well but the cost of living in the sunbelt was so low that it didn't matter.
They paid well enough. They did not need to make near the amount needed because of better state economies, less public sector burden (STATE UNIONS) and lower taxes.


The cost of consumer goods decreased significantly. So a person could afford a big screen TV and IPOD even if they lacked health insurance.
No matter what you want to think, Health Insurance is a perk. Secondly, you can insure a family of 4 for under $200 a month. The problem is our generations feeling of entitlement. People no longer want to work for anything. This means kids working in school because they know how hard it is going to be. This means people saving up BEFORE starting a family.
People today, no matter what they make, think having a computer, designer clothing, cable TV are rights. If you do not agree, just visit any house that is subsidized by government assistance. They all have cable, computers and are wearing clothing that comes from the mall. 50 years ago, you wore clothing to not be naked. Today you wear clothing as a symbol of status. I have no problem with this cultural phenomenon unless my taxes are artificially supporting your perceived status.



The values of the society shifted from having a sole breadwinner with stable employment, high wages and good benefits to having multiple low-income earners with no benefits but have lots of consumer goods (it fit in well with feminism and the new materialism of the baby boomer generation) (Not coincidentally, this was also the time when the Democratic party's emphasis moved from representing the needs and interests of the working class to those of the socially liberal elite).
MORE BS! All that happened is people wanted more and thus needed more money. Just factor in a family's cost of living. Cost of electronics and the services they need (cable bill/Internet access), cost of clothing/footwear (designer v. functiional) the list goes on. Simply put, we became a materialistic society. This is why people need more money to live. You line is just some spoon feed BS. To prove my point, write down your monthly bills. Mortgage, Utilities, Food and Car. Now compare they types of housing people wanted 50 years ago and today. Compare the amount of electricity needed in a home 50 years ago compared to that today. Compare the "upgrades" on food and cars that are existent today. 50 years ago, people did not have two phone bills (cell and home), they did not have a cable bill (for some over $100), they did not have electronics to buy like we do now. They were not buying DVDs and video games.
People want more and have to work to make the money for it. For you to blame feminism

Since profit margins increased greatly the number of wealthy people exploded and their influence on government greatly increased, all while median household income stagnated (even with more workers per household) Meanwhile more and more manufacturers left the industrial cities of the north leaving their citizens and governments increasingly bankrupt (they also left an industrial legacy of toxic waste that still haunts us today)

MORE SPOONE FED BS

Some of the larger International Cities like New York, Chicago and Toronto benefitted greatly from this new setup as they are the command and control Centers of the new economy with plenty of international headquarters and wealthy citizens earning dividends in the booming stock market. Regional centers like Atlanta, Denver and Phoenix thrived because they received huge amounts of migrants fleeing the north (see sprawl economy above) and their rural hinterlands that were deindustrialized (think rural southern mill towns).

In the 1990's wages started to creep up in the service sector. So, in order to correct this little problem the government (backed by the interests big business) decided to stop defending our southern border. These illegal immigrants flooded the market and lowered wages in the service and construction sectors. They also increased the price of real estate which helped longtime homeowners but made it difficult for traditional native born middle-class nuclear families to own a home in some of these booming areas (unless they were willing to live in close proxmity to these new immigrants which often have 4 or more incomes in extended families in order to afford a home in these areas, and these immigrants decreased the quality of the schools and raised the taxes for English as a second language programs).

This all went along well until the mid 00's until we reached a point where the sprawl as growth machine has broken down. Housing prices in these booming areas has reached a point where they are starting to decline. Homeowners can no longer count on constantly raising housing prices to supplement their incomes by borrowing from their home equity loans. The prices continue to decline now matter how many new immigrants move to that city. Cheap energy is gone making all those McMansions expensive to heat and too far away to commute to economically. America is now dependant on foriegn goods and foriegn sources of energy and is now so indebted to China and Japan all in a fruitless attempt to maintain prosperity in the face of deindustrialization.

Places like Buffalo or Flint Michigan, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Dayton, OH, Detroit, Pittsburgh are not needed in the global economy. Manufacturing will not come back. No other industry will provide the value added jobs that Buffalo once had. The only hope is growth in professional jobs and headquarters jobs l(ike at HSBC and M&T) in fields such as finance, law, engineering, graphic arts, marketing, etc. The only hope for working class people is to get some of the spin off service jobs created by the salaries of these professionals. That is why I am so in favor of making more of the city like Elmwood Avenue. People in these professions tend to like hip urban environments and those that like the suburbs like cosmopolitan suburbs like Amherst. They don't want rundown areas (Riverside, East Side, etc.) or bland declining traditional suburbs like Cheektowaga.

I agree that Buffalo is a horrible situation. However, you must see that this is really a national economic problem. It only stands to get worse if energy costs skyrocket and the southern sprawl cities become unsustainable and join the rustbelt in decline. That will leave only a few select cities in North America such the New York Toronto and Chicago that will have stable economies. This is the course the elite have layed out for the country. If you honestly think that the multi-millionaires (that live within a few miles of where I live on Long Island, so I know what they think) really care about this country and cities like Buffalo then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'm willing to sell you. They are globally oriented and pretty much think that outside a few pockets that this country should be left to rot.

I just stopped replying to half of you message because it was taking too long and your too much of a nutjob.

[Linda_D]

Achbek, I'm also in my early 30's and I've seen the area decline from a "real" city with a vibrant downtown and solid ethnic working class neighborhoods into a ghetto with a few pockets of old-money upper middle class. Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say but the decline is permenant and there will never be a strong middle or well paid working class in the city again. The problem is not what is done in the local area but what our economic policy is on a national and international level.

Back in the early 1970's the elite decided that the middle class and unionized working class was making too much money and had too much leasure time on their hands and were becoming a threat to their power. Environmental laws and labor regulations were also stifling their profit margin. The rich in the 1945-1973 era struggled compared to the obscene amounts of wealth they had in the 1920's before the Great Depression and the New Deal. They decided that they could build their goods at a lower cost overseas and not have to worry about troublesome environmental regulations and labor unions. Thus starting in the 1970's they closed plants in the U.S. and opened them in places like Mexico, China, and the Phillipiines. At first this caused massive unemployment in the old industrial cities, however this eased as many of these unemployed people moved south. Why did they move south? because the Regan Revolution of the 1980's created a new economy based on sunbelt suburban sprawl and borrowed money defense spending (a majority of bases are in the sunbelt). The raw growth caused by people moving from the north to the south artificially created tons of service jobs. They didn't pay well but the cost of living in the sunbelt was so low that it didn't matter. The cost of consumer goods decreased signifcantly. So a person could afford a big screen TV and IPOD even if they lacked health insurance. The values of the society shifted from having a sole breadwinner with stable employment, high wages and good benefits to having multiple low-income earners with no benefits but have lots of consumer goods (it fit in well with feminism and the new materialism of the baby boomer generation) (Not coincidentally, this was also the time when the Democratic party's emphasis moved from representing the needs and interests of the working class to those of the socially liberal elite). Since profit margins increased greatly the number of wealthy people exploded and their influence on government greatly increased, all while median household income stagnated (even with more workers per household) Meanwhile more and more manufacturers left the industrial cities of the north leaving their citizens and governments increasingly bankrupt (they also left an industrial legacy of toxic waste that still haunts us today)

Some of the larger International Cities like New York, Chicago and Toronto benefitted greatly from this new setup as they are the command and control Centers of the new economy with plenty of international headquarters and wealthy citizens earning dividends in the booming stock market. Regional centers like Atlanta, Denver and Phoenix thrived because they received huge amounts of migrants fleeing the north (see sprawl economy above) and their rural hinterlands that were deindustrialized (think rural southern mill towns).

In the 1990's wages started to creep up in the service sector. So, in order to correct this little problem the government (backed by the interests big business) decided to stop defending our southern border. These illegal immigrants flooded the market and lowered wages in the service and construction sectors. They also increased the price of real estate which helped longtime homeowners but made it difficult for traditional native born middle-class nuclear families to own a home in some of these booming areas (unless they were willing to live in close proxmity to these new immigrants which often have 4 or more incomes in extended families in order to afford a home in these areas, and these immigrants decreased the quality of the schools and raised the taxes for English as a second language programs).

This all went along well until the mid 00's until we reached a point where the sprawl as growth machine has broken down. Housing prices in these booming areas has reached a point where they are starting to decline. Homeowners can no longer count on constantly raising housing prices to supplement their incomes by borrowing from their home equity loans. The prices continue to decline now matter how many new immigrants move to that city. Cheap energy is gone making all those McMansions expensive to heat and too far away to commute to economically. America is now dependant on foriegn goods and foriegn sources of energy and is now so indebted to China and Japan all in a fruitless attempt to maintain prosperity in the face of deindustrialization.

Places like Buffalo or Flint Michigan, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Dayton, OH, Detroit, Pittsburgh are not needed in the global economy. Manufacturing will not come back. No other industry will provide the value added jobs that Buffalo once had. The only hope is growth in professional jobs and headquarters jobs l(ike at HSBC and M&T) in fields such as finance, law, engineering, graphic arts, marketing, etc. The only hope for working class people is to get some of the spin off service jobs created by the salaries of these professionals. That is why I am so in favor of making more of the city like Elmwood Avenue. People in these professions tend to like hip urban environments and those that like the suburbs like cosmopolitan suburbs like Amherst. They don't want rundown areas (Riverside, East Side, etc.) or bland declining traditional suburbs like Cheektowaga.

I agree that Buffalo is a horrible situation. However, you must see that this is really a national economic problem. It only stands to get worse if energy costs skyrocket and the southern sprawl cities become unsustainable and join the rustbelt in decline. That will leave only a few select cities in North America such the New York Toronto and Chicago that will have stable economies. This is the course the elite have layed out for the country. If you honestly think that the multi-millionaires (that live within a few miles of where I live on Long Island, so I know what they think) really care about this country and cities like Buffalo then I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'm willing to sell you. They are globally oriented and pretty much think that outside a few pockets that this country should be left to rot.

Excellent post, Downstate! Buffalo's decline is mirrored in older cities from New England to the Midwest. It's also mirrored in older southern industrial cities like Birmingham, Alabama. The malaise also spreads out to smaller cities and towns and rural areas, and that doesn't matter whether it's Upstate NY or rural western Georgia or the Nebraska Sand Hills.

[biker]

That seals it for me.

I thought Downstate's stuff sounded like canned lefty pablum.

But if Linda thinks it's terrific, that's proof-postive it's canned lefty pablum.

[biker]

If you do not agree, just visit any house that is subsidized by government assistance. They all have cable, computers and are wearing clothing that comes from the mall. 50 years ago, you wore clothing to not be naked.

You were close.

Their expectations are not that high.

My tenants on welfare appear to be happy if they have cable TV, a phone and the food/shelter stuff. I never once saw a computer.

Not being a clothes horse myself, I can't speak to their attire.

[Downstate Buffaloian]

Excellent post, Downstate! Buffalo's decline is mirrored in older cities from New England to the Midwest. It's also mirrored in older southern industrial cities like Birmingham, Alabama. The malaise also spreads out to smaller cities and towns and rural areas, and that doesn't matter whether it's Upstate NY or rural western Georgia or the Nebraska Sand Hills.

I am glad somebody gets it! This problem is more than just Buffalo, travel around the country outside of the major metropolitan areas you will see what I'm saying is true.

[Downstate Buffaloian]

That seals it for me.

I thought Downstate's stuff sounded like canned lefty pablum.

But if Linda thinks it's terrific, that's proof-postive it's canned lefty pablum.

You know if you knew the political spectrum a little better you would see that my opinions are a little closer to true conservatism than today's liberals. The Neo-cons you support put the interests of big business ahead of the country. Read Pat Bucchanan's "State of Emergency" and you will see a true conservative who gets it. I don't agree with him on everything but his opinions on our international economy and illegal immigration are right on.

Please go back to listening to Rush, Hannity and the other frauds that sucker you into voting against your interests.

[biker]

This is not a "problem", it is natural economic evolution.

The days of paying high school graduates $50k a year plus luxurious benefits for unskilled labor are over.

That they ever existed at all was an accident of history. A horrible accident, called WWII.

Those wages and benefits were not created by the New Deal. They were created by the US Army Air Force destroying virtually every factory in Europe and Asia during WWII. If you wanted to buy anything manufactured in 1946 anywhere in the world, you bought American.

As these areas rebuilt themselves, they provided for themselves. Then they became exporters.

This doesn't need any super secret conspiracy by a Trilateral Commission or the Knights Templar. It's a natural evolution.

You ought to change to a different set of comic books.

[Downstate Buffaloian]

I just stopped replying to half of you message because it was taking too long and your too much of a nutjob.

Nutjob? We'll if it means I have the gonads to speak what I see as the truth than I'm a Nutjob. I'm not deterred.

You people keep talking about people on Welfare. I'm not really talking about them or whether government should give or not give them benefits. I am talking about the majority of working and middle class people in Western New York. They have not benefited from the decisions that government and business has made over the last 40 years. That is just a fact.

[Downstate Buffaloian]

The days of paying high school graduates $50k a year plus luxurious benefits for unskilled labor are over.

This doesn't need any super secret conspiracy by a Trilateral Commission or the Knights Templar. It's a natural evolution.

.

I bet most college graduates don't even make $50K in Buffalo nowadays. Is that a good thing?

So if you believe that the new economy is a good thing then don't complain about its bad effects. If Buffalo is a S_IThole because all those uneducated lazy people that made 50K per year are gone then don't complain about the kids that are vandalizing your neighborhood becuase the aren't being supervised because their parents have to work 4 jobs to make ends meet.

By the way its not the Trilateral Commission or the Knights Templar, its the 33rd degree Masons

[biker]

You will never hear anything as sophisticated as my geopolitical analysis on Rush or Hannity.

Most people are too blind/dumb to recognize the obvious.

My Commie history professor was shocked--shocked!--to hear that the allies bombed factories in Holland, France, Denmark and Norway in addition to those in Germany and Italy.

[biker]

By the way its not the Trilateral Commission or the Knights Templar, its the 33rd degree Masons

Do they have to kill you now for revealing their secret?

[biker]

I bet most college graduates don't even make $50K in Buffalo nowadays. Is that a good thing?

So if you believe that the new economy is a good thing then don't complain about its bad effects. If Buffalo is a S_IThole because all those uneducated lazy people that made 50K per year are gone then don't complain about the kids that are vandalizing your neighborhood becuase the aren't being supervised because their parents have to work 4 jobs to make ends meet.

By the way its not the Trilateral Commission or the Knights Templar, its the 33rd degree Masons

Where did I say they were lazy?

[Downstate Buffaloian]

You will never hear anything as sophisticated as my geopolitical analysis on Rush or Hannity.

Rush and Hannity are entertainment, to think otherwise means that you are under their spell.

[therising]

Do they have to kill you now for revealing their secret?

I'll tell you the secret!

We'll meet somewhere, come alone.

Yes, they do, by the way.