I can see Northern Canada becoming an enormous boom area in 50 years, with the opening of the Northwest Passage for Asia <=> Europe trade, the need for resupply cities along that sea route, and the melting of the permafrost opening up parts of the tundra to agriculture or tar sands mining. Meanwhile, Florida and New Orleans may be underwater.
Although NYT told me Duluth, MN was the big climate change winner :) (fyi- I've been there; it's cold af)
Is that likely? I wasn't aware of any predicted reversal of desertification. It may render some tundra provinces verdant however.
People vote for things which are better for themselves and for social issues they identify with, but rarely for things which actually cost them something.
In the industrial revolutions of the 19th and early 20th centuries, though, nation states usually adopted the new technologies en masse, with the whole nation sharing in the gains. So you had rising nations like Britain, America, Prussia, and Japan which could challenge declining empires like Austria-Hungary, Russia, China, and the Ottomans.
This technological revolution is different, because you have specific parts of nations that are adapting to the new technologies and thriving, while other parts get left behind and see the power they had wilt away. There's relatively little historical precedent for this; the only ones I can think of might be the decline of the Roman empire (where the Eastern Mediterranean remained up-to-date and civilized, while the Northern European hinterlands disintegrated and broke up) and the American Civil War (where the industrial North conquered the agrarian South). And this pattern isn't just U.S-based: China also has a dramatic disparity in wealth & power between coastal cities and the inland hinterland, as well as one between the high-tech South (centered around Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta) and more politically powerful North (around Beijing).
I don't know exactly what it means, but I don't think it bodes well for either of the major global superpowers.
Am I missing something? That seems pretty obvious to me that the industries that wouldn't recover jobs from a recession are the ones already on their way out and the ones that would thrive are the ones that were starting to emerge during the same time period.
I was so disappointed by the food and music scene in Nashville. Literally every restaurant was some trendy clone of some vaguely hipster cracker barrel (one exception). The music I could find (with one exception) was just sad cover bands doing the same Counting Crows covers over and over again.
Redeeming restaurant: Princes hot chicken. Got that shit at a XXX and it melted my face. Wonderful.
Redeeming venue: High Watt/ Mercy lounge. I don't remember who I saw but it was great.
If you know better places to eat/ find good up-and-coming music in Nashville, please let me know. I want it to live up to what I think it could be.
But you're right, it's more than just what you see on the surface. No question about that.
1. Focuses mostly on Nashville
1. Cities that have a young urban population with job creation that isn't tied to old industries are thriving.
2. Nashville has no State Income tax, and most cities and states that have no State Income tax are doing well as remote work takes over and tech workers relocate to take advantage.
3. Mention building a convention center for $600MM but no real numbers on what that had to do with the cities expansion. Uncorrelated at best.
4. One major change was the overhaul in zoning regulations that allowed developers to build vertically to accommodate a growing population. Perhaps an parallel to what is happening in San Francisco.
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Summary: The economic turnaround from the recession has unevenly favored cities that are tied to non failing industries in decline. Seems pretty obvious.
It's not the 20 MSAs with the most jobs, it's the 20 MSAs with the most job growth, as a percentage, since 1990.
From the article>>"...40% of the new jobs generated during that time went to the top 20 places, along with a similar share of the additional wages. Those cities represent only about a quarter of the country’s population and are concentrated in the fast-growing southern and coastal states. None were in the northeast, and only two were in the “rust belt” interior - Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a rebounding Detroit."
New York City is the capital of Norther American commerce and because of that it really can't expand the way that <mid-tier former manufacturing city anywhere else in the country> can, which weakens the overall point about "slow growth" or "getting left behind". Growth doesn't mean the same thing everywhere.
1.) even with some declining cities, US cities are still some of the most powerful in the world. According to https://howmuch.net/articles/the-economic-size-of-metro-area... (2017) Bay Area economy is as large as the entire country of Nigeria, NY area is as largest as Canada, LA is as big as turkey! Even Portland is as big as Qatar! And with the global slowdown in 2018 and 2019, while US is the sole bright spot, the dominance will only be magnified.
2.) demographics is now shifting to where gen z is the biggest generation now. In 5-10 years they will be establishing families and moving to less crowded suburbs and smaller cities. Which means the mega cities will lose some growth and the secondary cities will gain.
no mention of NYC, Boston, nor do they appear on the infographic.
so it seems so called superstar cities aren't really defined as i would expect them to be.
Yea, the metric used here is rather convoluted, it's ranking cities by how much their share of total national employment increased. This is going to favor cities that experienced population growth and discount cities that are long since 'at capacity' like NY / Boston.
You have a bunch of struggling cities without any funding for basic services, that spend massive amounts in attempt to attract businesses without a way to recoup losses. Which causes a sort of nasty cycle where people move towards cities which have more resources.
Since the word 'taxes' is essentially a forbidden word, the only option is for these cities to receive federal assistance. Or else get left behind even further.
Most of Asia had that problem for decades, where only 1st tier cities had market for jobs above the "better than nothing" level.
It is either USA becoming more like Asia here, after few decades lag, or it is American second tier cities actually sliding back.
The analysis is.
NYC and SF, both big tech hubs, both have income taxes.
I don't know if NYC and SF are examples of good governance, or examples that show great cities can support lots of poor governance as long as they retain the things that make them great.
Personally, I'd keep an eye out for easy scapegoats like immigration and other cultural issues to spark conflict. I'd also pay attention to economic churn rather than physical conflict. I have a hard time imagining our apathetic population going to war with each other in our day and age, but I can easily picture technology folks blacklisting 'undesirable' customers and blocking access to services, and rural folks putting obstacles in place for access to natural resources they largely control.
I don't think our population is that apathetic, and I don't think a return to 60s & 70s levels of political violence is really that farfetched. It's what was normal just one generation ago! Small scale groups could conduct random bombings, lone wolf types can carry out assassinations, etc.- this was my parents' generation in a nutshell.
The US has political radicalism (including but not limited to religious fanatics), a violent population relative to other developed countries, obviously lots of weapons (over 300 million firearms!), a very high level of military training/combat experience/institutional military knowledge from 80+ years of wars, loosely organized 'militia' groups, tons and tons of rural areas to hide in, a sympathetic population in those rural areas, etc. We literally check every single box that countries with insurgencies check. I expect a return to small-scale political violence in my lifetime (with gun control, not immigrants, as the flashpoint). Look at a group like Oath Keepers as a great example of who's potentially the most dangerous.
Honestly, my biggest fear are not insurgents but far right-leaning police & military personnel. That's how countries move from insurgencies into coups
Shenzhen is sort of a good example since isn't actually that high tech. There is for sure innovation but it is mostly existing, and sometime even old, technology. It is both culturally and matter of fact disconnected from the West. Much more so than other centers in the region. It is economic factors that make manufacturing there possible more so than technological ones. You might even argue that USSR were more cutting edge, but of course US companies manufacturing there would have been mostly unthinkable.
The power outside of centers mostly weren't taken away by technology, but by trade, mergers and mortgages. Of course technology has a role, but I am not so sure much of it couldn't have happened by fax. I really think the movie wallstreet is more of an answer to what is happening than the social network is.
This is probably gonna get me killed, but I would have qualms with starting or moving a business to a city where reproductive rights are under continual attack. The situation is inhumane.
There's literally nothing that would motivate me to move to a place like that despite extremely low cost of living.
First off, a caveat... I haven't lived in that area in about 15 years.
If you're downtown, and want a good music venue, The Station Inn is always a good choice. It's crazy to me that it's now a very swank, brand new neighborhood. Used to be a bunch of grimy old warehouses that had been converted into music venues. However, the Station Inn remains and is unchanged. Go there.
Similarly, the Exit/In is still the icon it's always been. If you're not into bluegrass (station inn) go to the Exit/In.
Those are just the famous places. There's plenty of good music if you just move away from Broadway. The area around Vanderbilt used to actually have a lot of neat little dives (The End was always fun, but I haven't been there in years). East Nashville has somehow become both expensive and pretentious (I can't describe how crazy that statement is to me...), but there are a lot of good bars to see local bands at there.
Prince's is really great, but try the random gas station hot chicken as well. Plenty of good places other than Prince's and Hattie B's. They won't be on Google Maps, though. Look for signs on storefronts. Expect cash only, to go only, leg quarters in styrofoam containers. Eat slowly.
A lot of the places I'd point you to for food are gone now... However, Nashville Biscuit House is still there and assuming it's still what it used to be, I'd highly recommended it.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/pension... (PDF)
The similarity (referenced by the Wikipedia article) to technical debt was what I'd been thinking. More generally, markets and social-political systems have trouble recognising long-term risks and liabilities generally.
Both are forms of debt.
See also Adam Smith's growing vs. declining nations discussion in Wealth of Nations.
https://www.independent.com/2019/01/10/greening-sahara/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170608073356.h...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/climate-change-is-making-deser...
Apparently the Kalahari is too.
Public sector collective bargaining is fundamentally different from private sector. Benefits can't get too generous in the private sector because the bargaining is zero sum and the companies are rational- they can get absurdly generous in the public sector because the payers (politicians) are spending taxpayers' money and not their own. There's little incentive to think about the future
Second you think private sector pension planning is better. It is not. Pension funding reduces earnings (and bonuses) and companies will use overly optimistic pension fund growth projections to reduce current contributions, resulting in underfunded private sector pension plans. A great example of how this is handled is Patriot Coal (pension obligation spinoff of Peabody) and Magnum Coal (similar spinoff of Arch, acquired by Patriot). Those were spun off basically insolvent, with all pension obligations, and when the declared bankruptcy the retirees took haircuts and the remaining obligations were socialized with the PBGC (which I suggest you look into if you are interested in public and private defined benefit plan administration analysis).
What typically happens is that either national government baols out the fund, retirees get squeezed, or both. The true beneficiaries are past taxpayers who benefitted from government service delivery based on promised pension benefits to employees, but who skipped on paying the bill at the time.
Oddly, you hear far less about private sector failures in this regard. In part because defined-benefit plans are largely extinct, but the abysmal failure of individualised defined-contribution (401k / IRA) programmes is just the same problem undrr a different flag. But private sector has been dodging this far more than public.
There's more to this, yes. Some of it is government corruption and graft. Mancur Olsen's "The Logic of Collective Action', describing both pensioners' and taxpayers' (mostly a small group of highly-motivated wealthy) very self-interested lobbying to maximise commitments whilst skirting payments is far more instructive.
One can imagine a better world in which pension programs are effectively time-independent w.r.t financing (neutral for growth or shrinking), and more financing comes from sources that are likely agnostic to growth or reduction (like Land Value Tax), but the politics here... are not trivial.