[PRCo] Re: New York Times Streetcar Article

[Schneider Fred]

Pardon the expansion on the subject....

No, John, but Fred drives through much of Harrisburg.   You do not  
have to ride the 8 and 13 buses to know what Derry St. and Paxton St.  
and those neighborhoods look like.   I got through them  
frequently.    And no, I have not walked up to the Broad Street  
Market this month.   But I drove up to the Polyclinic Hospital last  
month to visit a friend.   Does that count?

Unfortunately, no one has good answers to solve urban problems.   We  
simply continue to try to move away from them.  Part of it is jobs.

It all goes back to that old argument about training old workers for  
new jobs.   You cannot train people to ditches with a pick and spade  
today and expect them to find work.  They need to adapt to  
contemporary jobs or roll over and play dead.  I just punched   
"demand occupations" into Google.  Twenty or thirty years ago that  
used to pull up a long list of clerical and factory jobs that were  
hard to fill.  Today the top 50 demand occupations nationwide appear  
to be largely college based.   Only three of them required mostly  
high school diplomas or less ... restaurant managers, electricians,  
plumbers.   I would have trouble believing that a good electrician or  
plumber has only received a high school diploma and not a lot of  
corporate sponsored training too.   The other 47 occupations largely  
required junior college or four-year degrees or even higher.   No  
offense meant, but the era of sleeping on the night shift at  
Homestead Works of U. S. Steel is over.   Long Gone.

Data that is as good as any is probably in the U. S. Occupational  
Outlook Handbook.   The flaw with such information is that it can  
only be based on what has happened.   We always expect to be told  
what will happen as if someone in the gov'm't had a big crystal  
ball.   Frankly, if you ask a business corporation what their plans  
are for the future, the manager either doesn't know or he sure as  
hell isn't going to let the cat out of the bag and tell you so his  
competitors might find out.   So all you can do is look at what has  
happened and try to make adjustments based on what you know.   I got  
into some large arguments over state occupational projections when  
they wanted to greatly increase staff in grocery stores in one round  
of projections I had been asked to edit.   I explained that you can't  
do what happened in the past because the past represented a  
conversion from full time help to a lot of part-time low-wage  
workers.   There are no more full-time people to replace.   So the  
number of grocery clerks isn't going to continue to rise.  So the  
next question was, "We've decided we will have this many workers, so  
if you don't want them as grocery clerks, then where do you want  
them?"   How about more unemployed?  We can't do that.   Isn't  
politically proper.  But it turned out that is what did happen.

So if you look at the data in the URL below you will see that photo  
processors will drop drastically in the coming years.   Yeah.   
Right.  Where are they going to drop from?   For example, there is  
only one laboratory left in the entire U. S. A. and Canada that  
processes Kodachrome and that is Dwayne's in Parsons, Kansas.  I  
think they also have the European market now.   But because we lost  
thousands of photo lab technicians due to the digital revolution over  
the last survey period, it has to happen again.    Then the data will  
be revised after Washington finds out there were none left to drop.    
So look at the data with a grain of salt.   At least it is good data  
about what just happened in the recent past.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/oco2003.htm

I guess I'm still a strong believer in putting corporate people  
instead of politicians on school boards; and forcing school people to  
listen to them instead of to parents and kids about what is relevant  
in our lives.   I'm still a strong believer in history, geography,  
English, more than ever in foreign languages, computer skills, math  
and sciences.   There are only so many jobs out there for people who  
can only flip hamburgers, hold flags at construction sites, or stock  
store shelves and they do not pay well.




On Aug 20, 2008, at 11:28 AM, John Swindler wrote:

>
> Hi Rich
>
> Fred doesn't ride the rt. 8 nor rt. 13 buses on occasion to see  
> what is happening to Harrisburg outside the downtown area.  Nor  
> does he have occasion to walk up to the Broad st. Market to see how  
> that residential area has been cleared.  If nothing else, at least  
> many of the empty houses have been leveled.
>
> The downtown area is getting some more construction on Market St  
> and up by the Keystone Building.  But this sort of thing has been  
> going on every so often since the 1970s, and probably earlier.   
> State government has provided white collar jobs - its the blue  
> collar jobs that have evaporated, as Fred notes.  The sidewalks  
> still get rolled up at 5:15 in Harrisburg.  It seems like a  
> deserted town when I catch the later 5:35 bus.
>
> Ascending?  It varys, just like so many other US towns.
>
> John
>
>
>
>> From: fwschneider at comcast.net> Subject: [PRCo] Re: New York Times  
>> Streetcar Article> Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:37:38 -0400> To:  
>> pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org> > Rich,> > I need to take you to  
>> Passage of India restaurant and introduce you > to Lena and Vishnu  
>> Shenoy, the owners.> > http://www.passagetoindiapa.com/> > There  
>> is also several great Italian places downtown.> > Harrisburg was  
>> probably at its worst in the 1970s and 1980s. It's > star is  
>> ascending. The worst blow, just like Pittsburgh, was when >  
>> Bethlehem Steel faltered in Steelton in the 1980s. There is a >  
>> replacement steel company but it does not employ nearly the number  
>> of > people that Bethlehem had.> > Please also notice that when I  
>> am throwing out employment data, I'm > tossing around metropolitan  
>> statistical area data and not cities. > By definition an MSA is  
>> either a city of 50,000 people or more or a > city with a  
>> prescribed population density (that last clause was > inserted in  
>> 1990 or 2000 when we w!
>  ould have lost places like > Harrisburg that were shrinking under  
> 50,000 and we reduced the core > city to a 10,000 to 50,000 range).  
> The county surrounding the core > city is automatically included.  
> Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is > automatically included because  
> Lancaster City is over 50,000. > Philadelphia County is  
> automatically included with Philadelphia City, > in that case  
> because they are co-terminus. Beyond that, a requisite > number of  
> people from surrounding counties must commute into the core >  
> county for work to add them to the MSA. We have since tweaked the >  
> commuting patterns from 15% to 25% in recent years. We look first >  
> for the largest county with 25% and add it. Then we look for the >  
> next county that has 25% or more of its population commuting to  
> work > in the first two counties. Then we hunt for a county that  
> has 25% > or more of its people working in the first three  
> counties, and so on > until we run out of counties that qualify.> >  
> Some states pub!
>  lish county and city data. Pennsylvania does. But > those data or not
> readily available on line so I don't look for it to > make  
> comparisons with other capitals. So I can only look at Albany > or  
> Cheyenne or Philadelphia or Richmond as MSAs and not as cities. >  
> By the same token, I can not easily look at Williamsburg, Virginia  
> as > a city. I have to look at it as part of Norfolk - Newport News  
> - > Hampton.> > Is that fair? That depends on who you talk to. I  
> remember one > character from the Chamber of Commerce in Port  
> Jervis PA who argued > with me that he could not understand why his  
> city was included in the > Middletown NY MSA / New York City CMSA.  
> The lunacy or logic of it > simply escaped his brain. But the fool  
> attended the conferences in > Washington when OMB reclassified Pike  
> County PA into that area. He > understood. He just believed his  
> county was more important by > itself. He simply wasn't willing to  
> admit that 65% of the workers > in his area actually crossed the  
> Delaware River and went into New > Jersey and New York states to work!
>   and there was no way you were > going to convince him. If you  
> want a lot of heavy reading, the link > below goes to the Federal  
> Register. You can read all about it. But > I don't expect anyone to  
> do it.> > http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/ 
> metroareas122700.pdf> > But at least now you know why Allegheny,  
> Butler, Washington, Beaver, > Fayette and Westmoreland counties are  
> all part of the Pittsburgh MSA > or labor market.> > On Aug 20,  
> 2008, at 10:03 AM, Derrick J Brashear wrote:> > > On Tue, 19 Aug  
> 2008, 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> >> >  
> Harrisburg seems not bad to me; It certainly has more ethnic food,  
> for> > instance, than other larger cit!
>  ies I've been to. There are > > recreational> > opportunities. The  
> big
>  thing for me would have been that because of > > its> > size, a  
> dearth of the sort of touring musical acts coming that I'd > > like  
> to> > see. But that's an issue in Pittsburgh too.> >> > In some  
> respects "it depends where in the city you are"> >> >> >
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