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One of the biggest problems in places like Dayton or anywhere is people too educated for our own good. ...
Sometimes Less education may be the answer.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent here, but my view is exactly the opposite. Dayton does not have enough of a white-collar, college/graduate-school culture; and it never did. The great inventors and businessmen, the entrepreneurs and community leaders, where mostly self-made men; sometimes brilliant, but rarely formally educated. Compare cities like Boston or San Francisco, which have strong and thriving academic traditions. Today's economy is in finance, medicine, law, biotech, electrical engineering. It's not in manufacturing or agriculture. As Spud1 eloquently journalized in his epistle, Dayton was wracked by racial tension, public-sector corruption and federal mismanagement. These are the proximate causes. But were not similar forces at work in Atlanta or Chicago? Yes those cities are thriving.
Dayton did admirably well in the first half of the 20th century - the epoch of mechanical things, of steam and internal combustion and giant whirring machines and assembly lines. It did poorly in the second half of the 20th century because it lacked the knowledge base to support the necessary transformation away from jobs where a high school degree was adequate, to jobs that require advanced knowledge.
So okay smartass, you tell us everything that is wrong and maybe you think you know how it started. So what? "What can you do to make my city a better place?"
I don't like being called names. And I have a good idea how the downspiral started. But the downspiral is irrelevant now. There a lot of fundamental differences between post-war America (arguably the era when the downspiral started) and 2010 America. I don't have time to run the statistical analysis, but I bet I can pull some good demographic evidence from this site proving how we live as a nation now is rapidly becoming very different from how we lived even 20 years ago.
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To be sure, others are trying.
There are groups working inside the city restoring neighborhoods, networking and generally trying to be a community. They dont want to hear the trash talk that I and others spew every now and then. They want to point to a bright and optimistic future for the city. They point here and they point there and say we are making inroads on this block and that block.
Then where are they supposed to point? I guess I can understand if you don't think change is coming fast enough, but that is life. I'm sure if you wanted to lose 50 pounds off your gut you wouldn't just take some magic pill and roll out of bed with it gone tomorrow. Same works with economic despair. You attack it, and you rejoice in the small victories. 5 pounds here, 5 pounds there. Eventually you are at your goal, and if you are a real fitness enthusiast, you even think about ways you can IMPROVE on your original goal. Like maybe you mix up your workout to build muscle mass.
Same happens with Dayton. No one can wave a magic wand and make Dayton View's demographics and income level comparative to what it was in 1950. You'd be insane to think that could happen. But it can happen incrementally, just like weight loss. And the end result can be really good - take a look at Webster Station, South Park, McPherson Town, the Fairgrounds district, and St. Anne's Hill. Lots of good solid neighborhoods which are making clear, positive strides towards a better Dayton.
So when you and others "spew trash talk every now and then" you are shooting yourself in the foot. Keep in mind this is your community. Your neighbors. Your government. And Your time and money.
If you don't like it, LEAVE! Go somewhere that makes you happy.
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In my opinion, what they are doing is throwing garden parties in a gulag. They are trapped by the the political and bureaucratic apparatus ensconced by federal dictate during that period at all levels of government. That apparatus is so invested and entrenched in the status quo that they will have to be ripped from their desks. It has been 45 years!
You are referring to 1969. I'm sure the grass is always greener in ______ year. Heck, I will probably be saying the same thing to some degree when I'm 65. But 1969 is gone and it ain't coming back. You can either make your life better now by living in this era OR ****** and moan that it is not some long-gone year. Suck it up.
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If ANYTHING they have done had WORKED it should be fixed by now. Hiroshima was up and going in less than 10 years, for crying out loud!
Can you imagine how bad the US image would have been if Hiroshima was NOT up and going in 10 years? But alas, that is a red herring issue way beyond the scope of this thread. I will admit my last pose here was too, but at least it was somewhat relevant given Dayton's blue-collar heritage. Hiroshima not so much.
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They can only be ripped from their desks by denying them the money to buy the votes that constitute their power. The problem is not taxes or schools or blacks or crime. The problem is the poverty peddlers. It is their life's work.
Until those peddlers are stopped, you are pissing into the wind for distance.
And dont look to your city commission. Not only do they not know what the problem is, they dont even suspect.
Facts?
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The set up for the collapse was indeed an arrogance that had been cooking for some time. Dayton city government had been fairly corrupt for some time and the unions were at their zenith after the war and wielded a heavy hand. The NCR strike in the late 50s pretty much convinced manufacturing to think about leaving town. Most everybody was gone over the next 20 years except GM. When a blue collar town doesn't get up at 5 am everyday trouble is soon to follow.
BTW, I think it is no accident that as soon as Virginia Kettering died GM turned off the last light they had in town. Chase Bank (Winters) kept a branch open on S. Dixie for her and as soon as she died they closed it. Boss Kettering's shadow was long many years after he was gone.
GM Moraine closed during the bailout process because it was not protected by the UAW. It was one of a small handful of IUE-CWA covered plants, and they did not have a say in the bailout process. The UAW did, being the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. Now all GM plants in the US are covered by the UAW.
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The huge influx of blacks during WWII and right after stressed the town and they all ended up corralled west of the river. I will not say racism did not exist because it did. The existing workforce in Dayton was not the most enlightened group and had not been for some time. Remember Vallandingham.
Then came Light Bulb Johnson and all the ridiculous civil rights overreach. The RTA came into existence because the feds harrassed the local bus companies out of business. City Hall was a political machine put at cross purposes with itself when the crap hit the fan. The democrat residents of the democrat town were tearing the place up. Even if they could have effectively reacted to the mayhem the DOJ was holding a gun to their heads. Joe Wine resigned his city commission seat to try manage the de facto forced integration of Dayton View through the Dayton View Stabilization Project funded with federal money. He really thought it could be effective. Through no intent he only made things worse.
Model Cities proved the military arm of the insurgency and constantly kept things stirred up.
The schools in Dayton View responded by starting a program called "Multiple Motivation." It was a rube goldberg contraption designed to improve black student performance. It died off within a few years.
Then the white upper middle class split, period. Neighborhood leadership was gone overnight. The place pancaked. By the time busing came along it had been all over for a few years.
When Dayton View was lost the rest of the city was a foregone conclusion. The east side went down scratching and clawing but down it went. The west side was trash by 1960. Riverdale eventually slipped under in the early 80s. During those years all flavors of programs were instituted to help. Those programs are still there.
That sounds like historically bad policy. Good to know it, but I doubt it is happening now. Before you try to refute my statement, I would like linked evidence. If you can prove me wrong, kudos. Then it will be proven your "trash-talk" is currently relevant and from there maybe it should be better publicized in the media to expose these problems for corrective action. If you cannot, then you are just hurting yourself.
An off the wall idea, but I'd have to agree. There is a giant skills gap occurring right now - for people that don't finish high school for a variety of reasons within and beyond their control (early pregnancy, bad family circumstances, bad choices in teenage years, etc.) that are intelligent and have a good work ethic but lack a piece of paper to prove it is true. Same is true for a lot of high school graduates who do not go to vocational school and do not complete college as well. A lot of good people out there that don't have much potential beyond 30% above minimum wage because they don't have the money or time to pay for a piece of paper to "prove their worth".
How to solve it, I don't know. I'm in college now, and it seems like increasingly a master's degree is the new bachelor's degree, a bachelor's degree is the new associate degree, and so on. Currently I'm pursuing an engineering degree because of that - at least it is a field which has good job opportunities in the midwest and has stayed relatively stable as far as educational credentials are concerned over the past 50+ years. I completed a business degree prior, but even then I'm finding most of the entry-level jobs for my degree were done by people with just a high school education as late as the 1970's and 1980's.... thus the reason why I'm seeking the additional paper.
It's really a sad system. Pay a lot of money, drain a lot of years, get a piece of paper. It doesn't allow for easy experimentation or creativity. But then again, corporations want a standard, predictable product, especially in their employees. Our nation as a whole might be a lot better without all the obstacles of education (after all, did Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, or the Wright Brothers need it?) but any Fortune 500 will say that is not the case.
All wrong, dear.
In 1953 or so I was told by "management" that the job I was interested in needed a college degree. The truth of the matter was that at least one person then in mid-level management had no such thing. The additional truth of the matter was that they had enough applicants for jobs in low level positions that had degrees that they could hire someone apparently a little "heavier" (and older) which "documented" status could be "displayed" as a reason for dealing with their company. If they didn't have the applicants, that wouldn't have been the case.
It's a management practice, and it didn't matter that the people weren't permanent and moved on as soon as possible to presumed greener pastures -- they were only filling that one slot for the present. The people were viewed as "temps" without it really being so as they were long-term temps; again, it's a management practice. Maybe three years later I was told so-and-so "had TWO degrees." The practice did not save the company, and it is not the only company that has such management. A master's degree was a notch above the norm by 1955.
In 1957 I got a job that put me in the world of an engineering college. It was known back then that engineering degrees have a life span of about ten years. After that advances have made the knowledge "old." And, if you need evidence, there is a person who posts on this board who rarely ceases to moan about how "he" has been treated.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the intent here, but my view is exactly the opposite. Dayton does not have enough of a white-collar, college/graduate-school culture; and it never did. The great inventors and businessmen, the entrepreneurs and community leaders, where mostly self-made men; sometimes brilliant, but rarely formally educated. Compare cities like Boston or San Francisco, which have strong and thriving academic traditions. Today's economy is in finance, medicine, law, biotech, electrical engineering. It's not in manufacturing or agriculture. As Spud1 eloquently journalized in his epistle, Dayton was wracked by racial tension, public-sector corruption and federal mismanagement. These are the proximate causes. But were not similar forces at work in Atlanta or Chicago? Yes those cities are thriving.
Dayton did admirably well in the first half of the 20th century - the epoch of mechanical things, of steam and internal combustion and giant whirring machines and assembly lines. It did poorly in the second half of the 20th century because it lacked the knowledge base to support the necessary transformation away from jobs where a high school degree was adequate, to jobs that require advanced knowledge.
Not exactly. More like people in power were lacking sufficient vision, which certainly was true elsewhere as well.
The two classic cases were the failure of the Dayton media to duly note the Wright Brothers' flight
and NCR's failure to expand into electric typewriters.
Not exactly. More like people in power were lacking sufficient vision, which certainly was true elsewhere as well.
The two classic cases were the failure of the Dayton media to duly note the Wright Brothers' flight
and NCR's failure to expand into electric typewriters.
Good Lord. Don't tell me. Your first job was manning a team on the canal, right?
I couldnt get the smiley face thingy to work on the last one. But it was in my heart.
That's okay. I came back to see that I had a typographical error ("same" instead of "say," now corrected) in there.
Where, if I may ask, in Dayton View did you live? I worked for a little while around 1970 at St. Agnes school, before the nun was murdered. She was a nice person, and it irks me when I think of it that there are not even passing references to Sr. Donna while there has been a big issue made out of Dorothy Stang. If one's a martyr, the other one sure is, too, and that was right around home....
Location: A voice of truth, shouted down by fools.
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Reputation: 937
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Originally Posted by Spud1
Sorry OHKID, that was rude of me. Old habit of mine to lash out at the first sniff of passive aggression. I did not call you anything. Read it again.
I will not play the wiki game.
This rant has been the venting of my view of history. Discount it if you choose as many others have over the years.
Dayton was my home and I watched my home get destroyed. It did not have to happen. Notorious Kelly has a point. You could do no worse than has been done if you turned a garbageman loose on the project who had skipped the indoctrination given the experts.
I just think you should look at the problem through a longer lens.
Maybe next week somebody will come along and blame it all on an old indian curse...
OHKID's rant that included the offending words was soliloquy, not referencing anyone else but himself. (I thought, anyway.) Glad you guys mutually discussed it.
I have a few comments.
++++ to OHKID's commentary that an associate's degree is the new high school degree, a four year degree is the new associate's, a master's is the new bachelor's, etc.
The point that our resident bedbug hobbyist and canal tender missed in her usual condescending diatribe is that you're not talking about the functionality of those degrees, you're describing the credential effect of having each one. IE: having an associate's or four year degree is almost worthless for gaining employment today, but it opens some doors - it's a new lowest common denominator.
I do agree that Dayton's collapse is due to lack of vision from its leaders.
As far as the need around Dayton for smart people... not so much. I never did well around Dayton with an engineering degree - even when it was brand spanking fresh - (get that, Carpathian?) Dayton in its heyday was a subtly anti-intellectual blue collar mecca. The laborer was always king here. The bimbo who pulled overtime and bought a boat was always regarded higher here than the engineer or programmer.
Go Google anything Harlan Ellison wrote about Dayton when he visited here in the 70s. He's always a really pissed-off guy but he ran head first into the entrenched don't rock the boat vibe of Dayton.
I think Dayton's very nature doomed it. An organization (or a location) like Dayton that discourages and shows contempt for diversity and out of the box thinking is ultimately doomed because it can't innovate.
++++ to OHKID's commentary that an associate's degree is the new high school degree, a four year degree is the new associate's, a master's is the new bachelor's, etc.
The point that our resident bedbug hobbyist and canal tender missed in her usual condescending diatribe is that you're not talking about the functionality of those degrees, you're describing the credential effect of having each one. IE: having an associate's or four year degree is almost worthless for gaining employment today, but it opens some doors - it's a new lowest common denominator.
This (below) is in English. It only takes someone with the intent to read to comprehend it.
Quote Me:
The additional truth of the matter was that they had enough applicants for jobs in low level positions that had degrees that they could hire someone apparently a little "heavier" (and older) which "documented" status could be "displayed" as a reason for dealing with their company.
It's there in plain English, chum. You'll have to try again.
Location: A voice of truth, shouted down by fools.
1,086 posts, read 2,701,705 times
Reputation: 937
Like I give a rat's a--. Your postings are 100% ego trip, about you. Please go away. You're awful.
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