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I took the plunge and subscribed to a 12 week trial subscription to the Economist ($29).
Nothing really new from my perspective in the article series. For me, it’s useful in part just to see which authors and publications are cited in the articles and thereby validate that I am reading the leading commentators on the Midwest and therefore have a good understanding of the prevailing narratives.
What bothers me is that the prevailing narratives (including those rehashed in some form in this article series) are all still dominated by decline.
These narratives don’t match my experiences. I live in a city that continuously amazes me by the limitless optimism and ambition of many of the residents. Even in the face of the horrible disparities and conditions in parts of inner city Milwaukee. I’ve met hundreds of people who place no limits on what they can accomplish in this corner of the Midwest, be it a latino manufacturing executive donating $60 million for a school that will serve 2000 students, real estate developers trying to outcompete one another with ambitious projects (for example, we are supposed to break ground in the next few weeks on the world’s tallest mass timber tower, and this fall on a 44-story apartment tower designed by a local Asian American architectural firm), or two amazing nuns I have worked with on projects in inner city Milwaukee (Sr Edna Lonergan at St Anne’s Center for Intergenerational Care, and Sr MacCanon Brown on a homeless shelter project). There are no limits in my Midwest. So – somehow the decline narratives still fail to capture the spirit of the region.
Narratives are important. One of the best books on a Midwest city was “Nature’s Metropolis- Chicago and the Grest West” by William Cronon. Cronon isn’t just your average historian, but one who is a MacArthur Genius Award winner. His most compelling work for me was a 1992 article on the nature of historical narratives (A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative) which won a prize in 1993 from the Organization of American Historians as the most innovative article published in a history journal during the preceding two years. So genius material on the nature and significance of “narratives.” Bottom line – narratives matter . They are “fundamental to the ways humans organize our experience….we inhabit an endless storied world…. good history does not knowingly lie…I would assert the virtues of narrative as our best and most compelling tool for searching out meaning in a conflicted and contradictory world ”
So, narratives matter, and the updated Midwest decline narratives presented in the Economist article still fail to capture essential aspects of the midwest that I experience day to day.
The classical liberalism of the Economist has its value, but it blinds the publication to the ways that culture and politics work. Still, Economist articles can be a useful introduction to larger issues. In the end, the Midwest’s manufacturing operations were sacrificed to Asia and Mexico for political reasons; It was the weakest link politically and lost out to the interests of Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley. Trump’s election was a belated kick in the teeth to those interests by midwesterners.The Midwest, whatever and wherever we imagine it to be, will only grow again when domestic and international politics restructure trade in ways that support investment in the Midwest again.
Matt, you’ve bought the conventional talking points. But please note that it’s manufacturing EMPLOYMENT that’s down in the Midwest, not manufacturing output. Technology and automation have ended more jobs than trade with China, and that is an inexorable march that started at the beginning of the Industrial Age.
Technology tends to drive scale in one direction or the other (depending on industry and process). Some technology makes the optimal production unit smaller (see laser printers displacing print and copy shops); manufacturing automation tends to make the efficient production unit larger but not always. Steel minimill (electric remelt processing) technology made steel mills smaller; instead of two or three big integrated coal fired steel mills in Gary, Indiana now also has a handful of Steel Dynamics and Nucor electric-furnace mills, one of which is in exurban Indianapolis.
I won’t argue the point that the minimally educated displaced factory workers came out for Trump in the industrial heartland in 2016, They probably provided the 80,000 or so combined votes that put him over the top in PA, MI, and WI. A lot of those folks will vote for him again, but I don’t think they will be the deciders in 2020.
So, the Midwest put itself out of business. It’s responsible for it’s own failings. I wish I were smart like you. Why oh why am i so ‘conventional’? Can you help me to see the real truth that you can see?
That’s just it…the Midwest is NOT “out of business”. Just have far fewer manufacturing jobs for semi-skilled labor. What part of that isn’t clear?
Are you quoting me?
Hi Matt. I agree with your comments regarding the Midwest and its manufacturing economy being sacrificed for the benefit of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, but I’ve never met or read an urbanist who really understood the politics of how this occurred, initially in the 1980s as a result of Reagan’s strong dollar policy and war on inflation. The strong dollar was a key to defeating the Soviet empire. A decade of declining interest rates led to immense profits for Wall Street and served as the foundation for the financialization of the economy. The Midwest was as you say sacrificed for global politics and powerful financial interests.
The opening of China provided enormous opportunities for corporations, exporters, and some table scraps for Amerocan workers. Had an interesting conversation with an executive at Johnson Controls who helped build their battery division (now divested) in China. He explained that the demand for invest.investment capital to meet the opportunity in the China market basically starved investment in US production facilities even though these too were good investment options. So even when there weren’t over efforts to close American factories and transfer production to China, for a decade or more it still sucked all capital that many companies had available for investment.
The extent to which mortgage fraud and securitized investments destabilized or even essentially destroyed inner city neighborhoods in the Midwest is well documented (particularly in Cleveland). In the 53206 area code in Milwaukee a study in 2006 found 60 subprime lenders operating in the neighborhood. By 2015, 30% of residences in this zip code had foreclosure filings.
Trumps war on trade partners and immigrants have been the latest blows to Wisconsin’s foreign trade and dairy industry dependent economy.
The decline narratives mostly depict the Midwest as a victim of it’s own incompetence, inability to innovate, etc. But in my opinion, there should be a recognition that the challenges are also in part due to national and global politics and deliberate choices, crimes by Wall Street, etc.
Thanks for your comments, David. This dynamic literally got Trump elected. It’s enormously important. Many in this region perceive criticism of Trump as criticism of their region, their economic interests, and even their right to pursue their interests politically. We have to acknowledge it if we want to have a realistic view of Midwestern cities. When Midwestern cities CAN find a way to access larger capital, product, and services markets they can do well. Columbus, Indy, and Chicago have shown that midwestern cities can do well if they can get over themselves.
@Matt – I’d agree that working class voters with economic anxiety, which are over-represented in the Midwest compared to other regions, are who pushed Trump into office.
However, Chicago is one of the most anti-Trump places that you’ll find and its voting patterns are much more in line with the coasts than the rest of the Midwest. Pretty much every Midwestern metro area that has performed relatively well over the past several decades (e.g. Chicago, Columbus, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Madison, etc.) has done so precisely because they shifted *away* from manufacturing or never even really depended upon manufacturing in the first place. I understand the desire of working class people that voted for Trump to return to a world where there is a critical mass of high wage jobs for people without a college degree, but that world simply doesn’t exist anymore and, in turn, the cities that have performed well (regardless of location) recognized that fact long ago.
Plus, Trump’s electoral strategy of 2016 demographically can’t work the same way in 2020 (where the proportion of non-college educated white voters has gone down everywhere, including the Midwest). The irony is that if Trump loses in November, it will likely be because he drove away the suburban college educated voters (which are increasing in numbers) that had long been the core of the Republican Party and are turned off precisely by his rhetoric that he uses to attract those working class voters.
It’s not so much ironic as inevitable that Trump would drive away enough moderate suburban (former) Republicans to tip the suburbs against him. His base has never been much more than 40% of the electorate.
The recent (this week) business about the suburban dream appears to be a play to win back “property value” voters with dogwhistle racist comments. Unfortunately in today’s climate that may well turn away as many folks as it might attract.
Why would someone who rejects the very idea of looking at economies as metropolitan units want to participate in a forum expressly created for that purpose?
Who are you directing this comment to? (It seems a non-sequitur.)
Yes, that’s because Chicago has maintained access to capital that other metros in the Midwest don’t have, whatever is done with that capital..be it real estate, business services, or manufacturing. That’s my point. The frustration of losing access to markets has caused Trumpism. If that changes, Trumpism dies. St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, and other smaller metros in the midwest have not done well. We can’t cherry pick to make our points. It all counts.
As David has pointed out at length here and elsewhere, Milwaukee and Wisconsin have a number of world-class manufacturers. Likewise Indiana; these are the two most manufacturing-dependent states in the US. Our manufacturers haven’t “lost access to markets” with globalization. They have gained access. Allen Bradley/Rockwell Automation and Cummins Engine are two good examples.
They just don’t need legions of lightly educated workers to make their products any longer.
Thus, both the “world-class industrial and manufacturing” and the “disaffected low-education Trump voter bloc” stories can be simultaneously true throughout the Midwest. One has only a limited amount to do with the other.
And Milwaukee, Indy, Columbus, MSP, and Grand Rapids aren’t Chicago and yet all are growing and thriving, which seems counter to your “access to capital” argument. Places don’t have “access to capital”. Businesses have access to capital, and it’s gained by being a growing and well-run business. For example, Cummins Engine does not rely on the capital from 50,000 residents and local banks in Columbus, Indiana.
Is Milwaukee a new client of yours? I’m not making an argument. I’m simply describing how economies work? Are you suggesting that capitalism isn’t based on access to capital? That’s a fascinating implication. I’d love to hear more about it.
You are grossly mischaracterizing my comments. Please stop.
I said that places don’t have (and thus don’t govern) the access to capital of an enterprise.
Why do you say/believe that “Chicago” has access to capital that other (some, but clearly not all) Midwest metros lack? Please explain.
I don’t understand your comments. Chicago has far greater access to capital than cities a quarter of its size. that’s why it’s four times larger. Capital is what drives capitalism.
I’ll spell it out again: cities do not have “access to capital”.
Enterprises have access to capital markets, if they have a profitable (or potentially profitable) line of business.
A city may provide access to capital for enterprises, by virtue of hosting banks and investment funds, but that is most definitely not a function of a particular city; it is a function of the agglomeration of people and capital in cities generally.
But the key distinction is, the enterprises capitalized by a city’s banks and investment funds are not necessarily located in that city…otherwise, everything would be in NYC and its environs.