Oldguy Reminisces – Part I

I mentioned in the last post that I’m a city boy. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan in the fifties and sixties. At that time Detroit was hoppin’ and poppin’ – it was the Motor City, Motown. It was the fifth largest city in the US, and Michigan was the fifth richest state in the union with Detroit leading the way. I was raised in the middle of a middle class, working class swath of the city where my friends fathers had jobs like produce manager, car salesman, insurance salesman, policemen, and low to mid-level managers for companies like Chrysler and Westinghouse. Most of their mothers did not work, their fathers could supply a middle class life style on a single paycheck. I didn’t know anyone whose fathers were unemployed.

My father worked for the city, a civil service job. When I was in school, his job was head operator at a power plant. Yeah, the city provided its own power for street lights and public buildings. The job didn’t pay as much as something comparable in the “private” economy, but it was a secure job and coming out of the Great Depression that fact was very desirable to him.

After turning sixteen, I always had a job. If it was pumping gas and doing oil changes at the corner Shell station when I was in high school, or working at the Ford Motor Company or a small machine shop in the neighborhood making parts for Chrysler, it was always possible to find a job. Of course, I was white, so I’m sure that helped. Maybe in the future I can get into the racial situation in the city (it wasn’t good, finally exploding in 1967).

I bring all this up to illustrate how far we’ve come from those times. Look at Detroit now. It’s lost forty percent of its population and is now considered the poorest city in America. Michigan has fallen to twenty fifth in wealth among states. I lay this at the feet of three men: Roger Moore at General Motors, Henry Ford II at Ford, and Lee Iacocca at Chrysler. It was they who made the decisions to move the manufacturing out of Detroit and Michigan to foreign countries and cut the American worker and his family off at the knees. If you want to look at what this neoconservative economic model that has been dominant for nearly thirty years is doing to this country, just look at Detroit. That’s where it is heading.

The rich don’t give a shit, and for some reason they are given the power to make the great decisions that affect everyone, including future generations. This is nothing short of aristocracy. If you’re rich and want a hyper class system in which the materially wealthy are privileged, then this is the way to continue to go. But if you’re like most of us and believe that people need good jobs to provide for their families, and have democracy in government, then we need to turn this back around. We need to stop buying into the rich man’s propaganda and the businessization of life. Thank goodness it seems the pendulum is at least slowing down, and may be about to swing back. Unfortunately a lot of damage has been done and there is probably some serious pain coming up. I hope you’re able to ride it out.