We’ve written quite a bit about the decline of America’s once proud manufacturing industry which is now but a shadow of its former self and long ago ceded its place in the public’s heart and mind to the service industry, as US citizens are far more concerned with whether they can get a $6 latte than with whether the economy provides enough breadwinner jobs to keep the majority of the population from having to… well, serve $6 lattes for a living.
And if it was already bad, it’s getting worse.
n fact, as we noted just days ago, the last time manufacturing was this bad in the US, Ben Bernanke introduced QE3.
Make no mistake, the decline of American industry isn’t something that can be reversed.
In other words, no populist presidential candidate promising to “make the country great again” is going to turn this around – and it won’t be for lack of effort. It’s just economics. The jobs aren’t coming back from China and the “made in America” stamp is a relic a bygone era. The American economy is now a bartender and waiter creation machine and it’s come at the expense of the still declining manufacturing sector.
Needless to say, this has gutted America’s Rust Belt, which is now nothing more than a now desolate reminder of a golden era in America’s history that has long since passed and as RealtyTrac reports, “among 147 metropolitan statistical areas with at least 100,000 residential properties, those with the highest share of vacant properties were [unsurprisingly] Flint, Michigan (7.5 percent), Detroit (5.3 percent), Youngstown, Ohio (4.4 percent), Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas (3.8 percent), and Atlantic City, New Jersey (3.7 percent).”
Port Arthur has never been a bastion of stability and the decline of Atlantic City has been well documented, but the malaise in Flint, Detroit, and Youngstown clearly reflects the decline in American industry and suggests the pain (exacerbated by China’s acute overcapacity problem) is only beginning.
Below, find a graphic from RealtyTrac which documents the struggle:
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Blame China?
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1WPgPt8 Tyler Durden