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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

> Yet in the short term, significant transformations have often also produced lower wages for many, hollowed out regional economies, and deepened inequality.

"Short term" being rather loosely used? Most industrial regions have never recovered. Look at Gary Indiana, Detroit and surrounding towns, Toledo, other regions that were dependant on manufacturing or mining. Most have been stagnating for decades; few have found a path back to a thriving economy.

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It's a multifactorial problem. The decline of heavy manufacturing was one cause of economic stagnation in Detroit. But the failed progressive social policies and lack of effective law enforcement didn't help either. Businesses are hesitant to expand in areas where they can't find reliable employees and where their property isn't secure.

Those places aren’t isolated though. Many of their residents (and especially their children) have left and found opportunities in other parts of the country.

Economists tend to prefer policies that help people, not places. Gary, Indiana just doesn’t have any geographical advantages that make it competitive.

I think, if anything, the mistake was to allow people in those places to believe there would be an eventual turnaround by trying to prop up uncompetitive manufacturing industries.

Gary, Indiana.

Large parts of Northern England.

Large parts of Scotland.

Walloonia in Belgium.

Northern France.

There are LOTS of regions where the people living there have never recovered after deindustrialization. We cannot expect millions of people to just uproot, it's not realistic.

This is true. Pretty much everyone I was friends with at school in the north of england left, most of us now in or around London. But we were the ones who went to university. Most who didn't stayed put.

Why is it not realistic? The USA is largely populated by millions of immigrants and the descendants of immigrants who just uprooted. My grandparents uprooted themselves from what's now Croatia in the 1930s and never returned. I'm sure it was tough for them but when times are hard you do what's necessary.

That said, there's a lot we could do to revitalize Gary if anyone in a position of power cared to try.

The US and the other new world countries were populated by kicking out the locals over centuries in a time when land and housing were cheap and demand for unqualified labor was huge. None of those conditions apply anymore.

Gary has a port on Lake Michigan, is right next to Chicago and its rail and transit hubs, is well-connected to the interstate highway system, has an airport... it's hard for me to understand how it doesn't have geographical advantages.

Gary has a huge geographical advantage in being located on the Great Lakes. This really cuts the cost of transport for bulk materials. And it gives them a reliable source of fresh water. It could be a great site for a nuclear power plant. Regardless of how AI economic policy shakes out, we're going to need a lot more electrical power.

What about the people who cannot leave?

Not saying these places will universally recover, or even any of them will. There are plenty of secular trends pushing industry to other places. I do think decades is rightly considered short term for city history, though. At various periods in Paris, it's been laid to siege by viking hordes, had its population cut in half by Black Plaque, been occupied by Nazis, the student protests of the 1960s. Still seems to have done all right over the long run of centuries. Doesn't do much for individuals with bounded lifespans and I know that's mostly what we care about as individuals, but the world and arc of history are a lot bigger than us. None of us will ever know what becomes of Detroit in the 22nd century (unless there are 5 year-olds reading this thread), but there are plenty of reasons it may end up a booming metropolis that makes something other than automobiles and the greatest R&B ever put to wax.

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