[PRCo] Re: New York Times Streetcar Article

[Schneider Fred]

Damn, I pushed send accidentally.  Let's copy and paste and start over.

Except that in terms of unemployment and employment, Harrisburg is as  
good as any place.   The areas east and south of the mountains in  
Pennsylvania (and outside of Philadelphia County) have since the  
1960s had a better economic picture than the national averages.  They  
still do.   Seasonally-adjusted unemployment in Harrisburg-Carlisle  
was 4.4 percent in June, the USA rate was 5.5.  Perhaps the Inquirer  
just wanted to make someplace else seem worse than Philadelphia?

Certainly the city of Harrisburg has its bad neighborhoods.   Inner  
Susquehanna Township is not too great.  Parts of Steelton leave  
something to be desired.   But remember my earlier point that capital  
cities have always been a magnet for people who could find work  
elsewhere, particularly minority races and ethnicities.

Hartford's rate was 5.7 on an unadjusted basis in June -- identical  
to the national rate.

Charleston WV in June had an unemployment rate of 4.8% unadjusted  
seasonally, which was well under the national 5.5% rate.   If memory  
serves, there were a lot of chemical jobs in Charleston at one  
time.   I suspect that area has a large elderly population and a lot  
of people who are no longer in the labor force.

Of 49 major labor market areas in the United States ... those with a  
population of a million people or more ... Richmond tied with Seattle  
and Baltimore for 7th lowest unemployment in June 2008.  The  
seasonally adjusted rate was 4.5 percent.

The Philadelphia MSA (Camden, Burlington, Gloucester, Philadelphia,  
Montgomery, Bucks, Chester, Delaware counties), which the Inquirer  
was bragging about, came in 19th position.   Pittsburgh is actually  
stronger these days than Philadelphia, largely because the elderly  
are not looking for work.

One of our strong suits, Rich, has been health services, principally  
because it was exportable.  It brought Euros, Pounds, Yen and other  
strong currencies into the United States.   If the dollar continues  
to weaken, the hospitals could be in a strong competitive position.    
But over the last few weeks the dollar has rallied from 63 cents to  
the Euro to 68 cents and this could hurt people looking for medical  
care in the U.S.

I will agree that all business have a finite term.   I often thought  
it was one generation.   The founder knew what he wanted to  
produce.   He knew his market.   He understood his product.   His  
successor often neither understood it or bought the firm simply to  
liquidate it to eliminate competition.   If nothing else, changes in  
a business cycle force a firm to either change or go out of  
business.    Coal was the big thing in the 19th and early 20th  
century.   Then Ed. Drake drilled a well at Titusville and introduced  
us to a new liquid fossil fuel and now we are running out of that.    
You want another example ... for years we got our news by word of  
mouth or smoke signals, then came newspapers and magazines, then in  
1920 KDKA went on the air and we eventually we had news by radio.    
In the early 1950s Pittsburghers started getting the miracle of  
television ... I think the first nearby station might have been in  
Johnstown.   I remember the first televised national Republican  
convention when Eisenhower was nominated in 1952.   Today I have BBC  
World News and Deutschewelle bookmarked on my computer.   Even some  
of the major manufactured goods like linoleum only lasted about 35  
years.   So if the commodities we produce have a finite production  
life, so should the work force that produces them and the towns in  
which they live.  The only difference is that since the industrial  
revolution, cities have become so huge that we no longer have ghost  
towns like we did with extractive economies.

But my point remains that for many years government was the expanding  
employer in capital cities that tended to provided enough new jobs  
that it kept unemployment lower in the capitals than many other  
cities in those states.   And, as you can see, even the worst cases  
you cited Rich, are not all that bad.

And some capitals are astounding.   I remember little Wyoming had as  
many people in it as Lancaster County, Pennsylvania when I first went  
there in the early 1970s ... something over 300,000.   Today Wyoming  
is closer to 500,000.   But the capital, Cheyenne has gone from  
41,000 people to 53,000.  Most cities get smaller!

Even so I continually marveled at how my counterparts in the smaller  
states got more work done with fewer people than we did in  
Pennsylvania because they were not arguing over petty things.   Some  
of the smaller states like Wyoming or Nevada or Montana or Utah could  
take their excess staff resources and use them to bid on outsourced  
jobs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington DC.  The  
bigger states like California, Texas, New York and Pennsylvania were  
having enough trouble just getting their huge staffs to do their own  
work.   For several years I was the director of an occupational  
statistics program in Pennsylvania intended by the bureaucrats in  
Washington to solve all the school problems and make all the kids get  
better jobs in the future.   Bull shit.   The lady who was my  
counterpart in Nevada was very frank.   She said we only have two  
labor market areas ... Reno and Las Vegas.   The rest of the state  
doesn't count.   I figure I can work myself out of a job in six  
months and go on to something else.   Fabulous.




On Aug 19, 2008, at 6:11 PM, Richard Allman wrote:

> what about our great state capital city? Unless I'm missing  
> something, it's
> still a dump. A few years ago the Inquirer ran an article entitled  
> something
> like "Harrisburg:Is this any place to have a state capital?" and  
> subtitled
> "not  even a nice place to visit" (as oppposed to places that are  
> nowhere to
> live but nice enough to visit.) Then a litany of what ailed.  
> Haven't been in
> the city since Fred Schneider's retirement do, but his departure  
> cannot
> possibly have helped matters! Then there's Hartford, Conn, a ontime  
> very
> pleasant , vibrant place which is now downright scary-I was there a  
> couple
> years ago and it's really hit the skids. As one involved in  
> healthcare,
> trust me it takes more than hospitals to sustain a region. Richmond  
> VA has
> seen better times as well. And Charleton, W Va-did it ever flourish?
>
> RICH
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Derrick J Brashear" <shadow at dementia.org>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 3:25 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: New York Times Streetcar Article
>
>
>> On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Joshua Dunfield wrote:
>>
>>> On 2008-08-17, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>>  The only state capital that comes to my mind that is having
>>>>  real economic problems is Trenton NJ, which for years had a  
>>>> sign on
>>>>  the bridge over the Delaware River that read, TRENTON MAKES, THE
>>>>  WORLD TAKES.
>>>
>>> The sign's still there; you can see it from the R7/Amtrak.
>>
>> DRJTC (I think, rather than DRPA) owns the bridge, and it's
>> "toll-supported" unlike the adjacent US1 highway bridge.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>