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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (25976)	3/19/2005 12:38:26 AM
From: renovator	Respond to of 116555

When I was a kid growing up in a Rochester suburb Buffalo was the "Big City". It had steel mills, chemical plants, rubber plants, tall buildings and big league sports teams. We had medium heavy industry prized for the ability to promote a well off economy( there was even a book about Roch. titled Smugtown) like Kodak and Xerox which both started there along with Rochester Products, Delphi, Gleason Tool Works along with the legacy textile mills and clothiers like Hickey-Freeman. As the rust belt eroded Buffalo shrunk to less than half the size of Rochester which is now rapidly heading in the same direction. Through the 70's, 80's and 90's the mantra in Roch was--"We have the University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Brockport( my alma mater) along with several other good schools so we will always have a better workforce and keep good jobs from leaving while creating more new jobs!"--It even worked for a long time. The dire conditions facing Rochester and other higher tech towns now illustrate the folly of thinking this has anything to do with workforce qualifications. There are now many highly over-qualified underemployed in such towns all over the country. When the plant replacement cycle meant new facilities the choice for years benefited the Sunbelt which offered cheaper workers and huge incentives. Those jobs started going off-shore very soon after new plants were built because the workforce savings possible in Asia and South America were so big they overruled the previous plant replacement cycle. Unfortunately, a look Buffalo, Detroit or Pittsburgh will give you a peek at the likely future of Atlanta, Charlotte, Jacksonville, etc.