There has been quite a bit of journalistic reporting on how
segments of the American public have been short-changed as a result of the new
global economy. Recently, this blog
shared the writer’s development of a unit of study suitable for an American
government course. The topic of the unit
was foreign trade and the effect that trade has had on job availability in the
US. In way of understanding the current
conditions of affected localities, a look at a case study helps.
Robert Putnam
offers such a case study. In his recent
book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, he provides
a short historical overview of what has happened to his childhood town, Port
Clinton, Ohio. He graduated from Port
Clinton High School in 1959. In a word,
conditions in that town are very different today than back when Professor
Putnam received that diploma. This
posting outlines these changes as Putnam reports them.
For the
subsequent decade after his graduation, those who remained in Port Clinton
could expect, especially among the male graduates, finding well-paying jobs,
getting married, and leading lower-middle class lives. This was to come to an end. “… Port Clinton turns out to be a poster
child for the changes that have swept across America in the last several
decades.”[1]
This is a small
town, currently it has a population of about 6,000. In previous years, those that coincided with
Putnam’s graduation, the town’s economy was dependent on manufacturing, mostly,
and, to a lesser degree, mining. Then,
the big Standard Products factory began cutting back. It originally hired about 1,000 factory
workers. These were, to that point, steady,
well-paying jobs. During the seventies
the number of jobs was reduced in half and the cuts kept on coming until 1993
when the factory closed its doors for good.
Today the
plant site is noted for EPA posters warning people to stay clear due to hazardous
materials. In addition, there is no
longer an Army base and gypsum mines. In
1965, manufacturing provided 55% of jobs in Port Clinton’s county, Ottawa
County. In 1995, it accounted for 25% of
the jobs and since then that amount has fallen further. With this backdrop, the town’s economy missed
enjoying the subsequent good times the nation has experienced – it’s economic
numbers have fallen below national averages – and the hard times have been
harder.
Currently, the
area’s real wages are 25% below national averages. The average Ottawa worker, in real terms, is
paid 16% less than his/her predecessor of the early 1970s. And, of course, population has decreased in
these years. It fell 17% in the twenty
years following the nineties. For those
who still live there, chances are they have longer and longer commutes since
locally the jobs are not there. Probably
most noted for those who return to visit is the empty store fronts in the
central business district.
When a local
community experiences this type of shocks, they will also experience an array
of consequences in many different social domains. For example, since the 1980s, the area has
been hit by a 300% increase in juvenile delinquency rates. As already indicated, there is a population
drain, but more specifically, that drain is predominately among the
thirty-something age cohorts. Its
depletion just about doubled through those years. Single-parent households jumped from 10% of
all households in 1970 to 20% in 2010.
Other rates
that increased dramatically have been in divorce rates, unwed births, and child
poverty. But what is hiding these
realities in Port Clinton is another and an opposite trend. While lesser educated workers have
experienced the above woes, the global economy has created an economy with an enhanced,
new upper, well-educated class.
And for them, Port Clinton offers
beautiful areas for establishing their homesteads. The views of Lake Erie provide gorgeous
vistas. These professionals, who make
their livings in offices located in Columbus or Cleveland, can commute to Port
Clinton away from their urban worksites.
So, what one finds in Port Clinton, a town that was nearly equitable
when it came to wealth and income distribution, is now a population with a
heavily skewed distribution – a population with a relatively few, extensively
well-off inhabitants and a majority with significantly low incomes.
The story of Port Clinton is
replicated all along the formally manufacturing areas of the country. A lot of those areas are in the
Mid-west. States like Ohio, Indiana,
Michigan, Illinois, and the rest.
Socially and economically, these developments are having a very real
effect on the politics of the nation.
Further degrees of mal-distribution of wealth and income threaten to
seriously disrupt the domestic tranquility of the nation. For its own sake, the nation’s attention
needs to be focused on these realities.
[1] Robert Putnam, Our
Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New
York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2015), 20.
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