The New Economy's Biggest Product - An Enduring Underclass?

[hatrack]

EAST LIVERPOOL, OHIO – "The United States of America, circa 2004, offers a fairly straightforward economic proposition. The nation's change from being a maker of things to a seller of things rests on the simple assumption that the consumer is king. And because everyone's a consumer, everyone wins. Cheap imports and competition force producers and retailers to keep prices low, inflation stays down, and everyone can buy a little more - maybe even a lot more.
Viewed from upper-middle-class America, this isn't such a bad deal. Computer help or air-reservation calls may occasionally go through a Bombay call center where someone claiming to be named "Brad" offers heavily accented advice, but overall the gripes are minimal.

Viewed from the Ohio Valley, though, America's economic restructuring seems less like an "everybody wins" proposition than a zero-sum game. Here in the rolling hills that straddle Appalachia and steel country, the picturesque landscape is dotted with towns like East Liverpool, places where vacant storefronts dominate what's left of the downtown and many of the remaining businesses are bars or drive-through liquor stores. They're towns full of boarded-up buildings, empty streets, and people short on options.

Five days a week, Luellen Bozek works at the Homer Laughlin China Company plant, which makes Fiestaware. She's secretary of the local Glass, Molders and Potters Union, and would like to retire soon, but can't because her husband was forced out of his job at the nearby Weirton, W.Va., steel mill two years ago. "They took his pension and his healthcare away when the union renegotiated," she says. " had to leave. The jobs are gone," Mrs. Bozek adds, referring to the once plentiful factory work. "There's Wal-Mart and the supermarket. That's about it. There are some new hotels and lodges going up, but they don't pay. Round here, there really isn't anything that's going to pay well and you're not going to find benefits."

EDIT

These questions aren't meant to inspire a round of folk songs or odes to dying Rust Belt towns. Change comes in economics just as sure as it comes in anything else. And we've been through these transitions before. The industrialization of the early 1900s led workers into factories, where, with time, wages climbed and benefits improved, setting the stage for the economic growth of the 20th century. Some say the current transition is no different. They may be right, but 20 years into the transition, the jobs that allow people to lead comfortable lives and create better futures for the next generation have yet to appear. And if they don't soon, America's new economy may have one substantial unintended consequence: a large and permanent underclass."

EDIT

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0427/p09s01-codc.html