10/23/2016
Refugee Resettlement Watch noted another batch of targets a couple days ago including one unlucky city: New refugee seeding site: Youngstown, Ohio. That community is particularly unsuitable to be burdened by needy and/or hostile foreigners: it was plunged into a local depression by the closing of the major steel mill in 1977 and never recovered.Because of its persistent economic misery, Youngstown was a major subject of the Atlantic magazine cover story of July/August 2015 about automation: A World without Work. The beginning of the lengthy, far-ranging piece was memorable for its description of how the once prosperous city was plunged into poverty:
1. Youngstown, U.S.A.But despite so much suffering and economic damage, the diversifier bunch has decided that Youngstown should take some refugees to do its part. The Catholic diocese is advocating the idea as a fine do-gooder project despite the added stress on the local community.The end of work is still just a futuristic concept for most of the United States, but it is something like a moment in history for Youngstown, Ohio, one its residents can cite with precision: September 19, 1977.
For much of the 20th century, Youngstown’s steel mills delivered such great prosperity that the city was a model of the American dream, boasting a median income and a homeownership rate that were among the nation’s highest. But as manufacturing shifted abroad after World War II, Youngstown steel suffered, and on that gray September afternoon in 1977, Youngstown Sheet and Tube announced the shuttering of its Campbell Works mill. Within five years, the city lost 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in manufacturing wages. The effect was so severe that a term was coined to describe the fallout: regional depression.
Youngstown was transformed not only by an economic disruption but also by a psychological and cultural breakdown. Depression, spousal abuse, and suicide all became much more prevalent; the caseload of the area’s mental-health center tripled within a decade. The city built four prisons in the mid-1990s — a rare growth industry. One of the few downtown construction projects of that period was a museum dedicated to the defunct steel industry.
This winter, I traveled to Ohio to consider what would happen if technology permanently replaced a great deal of human work. I wasn’t seeking a tour of our automated future. I went because Youngstown has become a national metaphor for the decline of labor, a place where the middle class of the 20th century has become a museum exhibit.
“Youngstown’s story is America’s story, because it shows that when jobs go away, the cultural cohesion of a place is destroyed,” says John Russo, a professor of labor studies at Youngstown State University. “The cultural breakdown matters even more than the economic breakdown.”
For diversity-promoting elites, Americans always come last.
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