  Lowell Board Administrator Username: Lowell Post Number: 3206 Registered: 10-2003 |
Livernoisyard made a good point on the future Detroit thread, “Another bout of intense military spending won't do much for Detroit in the future. Any such manufacturing would be done elsewhere as it currently is done now.” The glory days of Detroit’s heavy metal defense contracts that poured money into the D during WWII are long gone, but an article in Crains this week might portend a slight return of that direction. The cold war moved defense spending from heavy metal land systems to aeronautics and information services. In the process, Detroit went from being a big winner to a big loser in the taxes-paid-for-defense vs. income-earned-from-defense-con tracts equation. With the return of the rise of asymmetrical land war heavy metal is rebounding. IMO, this was one of the hidden factors of Detroit’s decline. Not only was money drained from our region but a lot of brain power, particularly electrical engineers, was diverted away from civilian products into the new defense posture – burdens not borne by Japanese and German automakers. | ||
Fortress_warren Member Username: Fortress_warren Post Number: 103 Registered: 10-2006 |
Is General Dynamics in the old Chrysler missile plant on Van Dyke between 16 and 17 mile? Big brick building on the west side of Van Dyke. California went through this defense retrenchment 15 years ago. They lost 200k jobs in So Cal, another 100k up north. Those were just the direct losses, probably three times that with all the people that depended on that money getting spent. Only time in history that Cali had a net out- migration. Kicked off a real estate slump that lasted seven years. On the brain drain issue, a friend used to race cars in England. He said the best and the brightest got hired to design the cars. The Brits couldn't afford the military programs, so that was the next best alternative. Too bad the Brit car industry was such a disaster, they could have worked there. | ||
Rustic Member Username: Rustic Post Number: 2892 Registered: 10-2003 |
Unfortunately for DET, changes in DoD contracts and the way the gvt does business has resulted in the private sector clustering of more and more of the highest skilled jobs (the elite of the elite "creative class" jobs) in these industries into the DC sprawl. The large defense contractors have increasingly brain-drained themselves away from their MFG and HQ sites to research and business centers in VA and MD. All of the ancillary support and spin off business from this stuff goes into that region ... good for DC(VA/MD), bad for StL, SEA, HOU, LA, SD, BOS etc. etc. Further, in spite of the costs more and more smaller companies are also locating in the region as that is where the skilled workers are. |
