[PRCo] Re: Fw: North side details

[Edward H. Lybarger]

Fred is correct that it depends on age.  My contacts have been with people
in their working years, and they universally said that their lives are
better now.  The other universal comment deals with the fact that they are
now permitted freedom of thought...something Americans can have a hard time
understanding because they've never been exposed to anything else.  These
folks have no fond memories!

-----Original Message-----
From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
[mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of Fred
Schneider
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 8:09 PM
To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Fw: North side details


Continued off topic warning!

I somewhat disagree with my learned colleague Edward that communism was not
fondly remembered throughout most of its coverage area.  Your fondness or
hatred
for the former state run economy has a lot to do with your age.  If you are
64
years old and you have had difficulty finding a decent job since the
economic
shift in the early 1990s, you probably will not like capitalism. You went
through most of your life with a guaranteed make believe job and make
believe
wages, and, while you had  not been rewarded with great riches, you did have
a
modicum of comfort.  You would have had an apartment at state regulated
rates
(can you imagine $50 month today).  You had free health care.  You took off
most
Friday afternoons.  And you waited in lines to buy bread.  I'm recalling two
shop workers for the street railway in Naumberg in the Deutsche
Demokratische
Republik back about 1991.  Two years later I passed through the city again
and
wanted to give them pictures of themselves in front of a streetcar.  They no
longer worked for the city.  Policies had changed.  They no longer had play
jobs
for play money.  The trolleys were not running.  They had been replaced with
two
Mercedes Benz buses, which could be fixed on demand by the local
Daimler-Chrysler dealer.  There was no shop force.  And these were men in
their
50s that were suddenly out of work.  If you had seen the East in 1980 or
1990
with all the factories going full blast (and smoke everywhere), and then you
saw
it in 1995 with three-fourths of the factories closed, you can understand
how
the old timers felt.  Communism, for them, was a security blanket.   (As a
peripheral comment:  There was a great rush to throw out all the old stuff
in
the early 1990s, but many of the favored commodities (including a cola drink
which I thought tasted like it should have come off the back of a medicine
wagon) have come back by public request.

If you are 40, you were probably able to adapt and are comfortable with the
change. Maybe you even moved to the west.  You are now probably making far
more
than you ever had before.  You now have a Fiat or a Volkswagen. Maybe you
even
drive a Beamer.   You drive to a brand new supermarket in the burbs to buy
your
groceries.  The name may be different but the concept is the same as K-Mart.
In fact I actually remember seeing a new Wal*Mart just a few blocks from
downtown Jena.  There are all sorts of new jobs, which, of course, require
new
skills.  (I'm painting a picture of East Germany.  Russia is much more
dismal.)

If you are in the 20-30 range, you have no idea what communism so asking if
they
like it is irrelevant.  You can only go on what your parents told you.
It's
been 15 years now and asking a teenager or twenty-something is like asking a
teenager in this country about Lee Harvey Oswald or the meltdown at Three
Mile
Island or how to use a rotary dial phone.

Fifteen years ago I found a track maintenance worker in East Germany who was
very down on communism.  In his case, he was old enough to remember the
world
before 1945.  And maybe he remembered what Grandma told him about the world
before 1914.   If he is still around today, perhaps his pension covers
expenses
and perhaps it doesn't ... not being sufficient is an acute problem in
Russia.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Harold:

Regarding welfare housing in Europe ... it exists.  For example, the British
call them council homes after the city or county council.   There are a lot
of
large blocks of council apartments on the southwestern light rail line in
Sheffield, England, and that is what forced them to reevaluate proof of
payment
fares.  The kids took the ticket vending machines home to empty the coins in
comfort.   There are similar public housing programs everywhere.  Maybe,
however, they do a better job than we do of maintaining the older
infrastructure.  Maybe because I've never been inside an English council
home or
a similar structure elsewhere.  I've been in many European homes but they
were
not people on welfare. (That is not a jab.)

There was a nice college text book written by an urban history prof at
Franklin
and Marshall College here in Lancaster, and it used this city for the point
of
discussion.  One of the issues he found important was tearing down their
slum
housing without first thinking through where are we going to move these
people.
Does that not remind us of tearing down the Lower Hill and moving the people
to
Homewood?   Does it happen in Europe?  Yes, but I cannot believe it happens
to
the same degree that it does here or there would not be so many homes going
back
2, 3, 4, 5, 6 centuries.   There is another aspect to redeveloping European
cities ... The U. S.  and the British helped to redevelop a lot of them
after
World War II because we left a lot of empty spaces in cities like Hannover,
Mannheim, Dresden and Berlin.  And the Germans wiped out one-third of the
housing in London.  Different kind of urban renewal?

Ed was 100% correct, however, in his comment about the Europeans taking
their
money.  The governments have many social programs that have to be funded in
some
manner.  You can tax the employer, or the visitor, or the resident, but you
have
to take from someone to pay for public programs.  And the Europeans have
many
more programs than we do, therefore it costs a lot more.  Socialized
medicine
(or call it a national health service if you wish) is common everywhere.  I
can
cite, as just one more example, that German women who give birth are
entitled to
a percentage of their income (I think the initial percentage is 100%) for
one
year and it may be two, and a lower percentage for one more year, with
automatic
rights to their job afterward. But that is only the start.  Giving the
government more than 50% of your income in taxes is not unusual.   It would
be
interesting to have a large spread sheet comparing our social programs with
theirs.  I don't have that.   I'm not sure how Germany pays for their
obligatory
vacation program (I think it is five weeks for everyone), but someone pays
...
if government doesn't, then it has to be covered by reduced wages.  After
all,
we live in a world wide competitive market and they can't give away
vacations
and compete.    I am going to stop short of being critical of their programs
...
there just happens to be a lot within the European life style that I
appreciate
(and don't take that to mean I don't like it here).  This can easily
degenerate
into a Republican versus Democratic issue and I don't want that.

And regarding your friend's horror stories about the projects on
Pittsburgh's
north side ... and attempting to project that to Europe.  There is crime
everywhere.  You and I have had these arguments before.  In the U. S. it is
normal for the victim to know when it happened ... the purse was ripped off
by a
guy on a running down the street, or the 7-11 clerk found himself looking
down
the barrel of gun, or the person walking down a quiet street was ambushed to
two
guys bearing knives.  I've never read about that in Europe.  Having your
pocket
picket is normal ... you simply do not carry more money in your wallet than
you
are willing to loose. Maybe you want to carry a decoy wallet and put the
real
stuff in a chest pouch.  I've had my pocket picked several times .... it
goes
with being distracted while taking pictures ... it also goes with being an
American in poor countries.  But I only once felt threatened and I solved
that
by escaping through a McDonalds.  And I guess, with the proliferation of
drugs,
we can expect that level of comfort to change too.

fws

"Edward H. Lybarger" wrote:

> The European governments interfere with OTHER aspects of the citizens'
> lives, notably their pocketbooks, but they have left the bulk of the
failed
> social engineering to the US of A.  Communism, of course, was the
exception,
> and it is not fondly remembered throughout most of its coverage area.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org]On Behalf Of Ken &
> Tracie
> Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 12:05 PM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Cc: Scott Greig; Robert Schwerer; paulwey at freecongress.org; Gregory
> Forster; FRANK GRILLO; Eugene Kittredge; Michael Loth
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Fw: North side details
>
> Off Topic Warning!
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Harold G." <transitmgr2 at earthlink.net>
>
> > Most European cities have not had this urge to redevelop.  Thank God.
>
> The day of the average urban dwelling U.S. citizen being guaranteed
> reasonable stability in a given neighborhood for even one generation is
long
> over.
>
> Do Europeans have the same issues with violent, poverty stricken "victim
> class" people being moved into working class and middle class
neighborhoods
> by well intended but misguided social programs? Programs which give the
> former the opportunity to prey on the latter, forcing the latter to flee
to
> outlying areas in order to recapture the security and quality of life they
> are accustomed to?
>
> I have friends who grew up on Pittsburgh's North Side. Some told me the
> horror stories about "the projects" built below their neighborhood during
> the late 1950s and early 1960s. It started out okay, but by the late
1960s,
> the officials responsible for the housing programs began losing control
over
> this housing project. At first, the crime was confined within the housing
> complex, but it spread into the surrounding  old, established areas.
>
> Only the most politically connected and wealthy can establish themselves
in
> a nice neighborhood and have some control over what the local, state or
> federal governments dump upon them!
>
> I am amazed that so many mass transit supporters and environmentalists
align
> themselves politically with people whose social programs destroy good
> quality, high density urban living. The very thing which would be
conducive
> to rail transit development. And such development would also protect
> outlying rural areas from urban sprawl.
>
> Try to displace the criminal element and rebuild these "war zones" and you
> are accused of "gentrification." Kick longtime, established homeowners out
> to give their land to either deep pocketed commercial developers or public
> housing projects and it's called "urban renewal."
>
> K.
>
> P.S.- Please do not read anything racist into this! The last neighborhood
we
> had to flee was next to a Section Eight apartment complex full of WHITE
> single parent households....households full of out of control children who
> vandalized and burglarized the longtime homeowners nearby. We were lucky.
> They never bothered us (READ TWO LARGE DOGS!) We got out just in time.