Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
If you want to have a city full of blue collar workers earning a decent union wage, you need one of two things: industry, or government.<\/p>\n
Since the 1980\u2019s, Saint Paul has lost the Ford plant, West Publishing, Schmidt Brewery, Hamm\u2019s Brewery, Whirlpool and 3M, good solid companies with well-paid union workers, every one. They should have been the DFL\u2019s solidest supporters and the City should have fought to keep them.<\/p>\n
But it seems we\u2019re opting for less industry and more government instead. Downtown is full of government offices in former retail space. Good for the occupancy rate but government workers evacuate downtown at 4:30 so nobody shops downtown any more. Town Square died and now we\u2019ve lost Macy\u2019s. Moving the ball park to the riverfront might bring in the tailgate crowd and high-speed rail from Chicago will bring in the welfare crowd but neither they nor hipsters in converted Lowertown warehouse lofts promise to rejuvenate the city\u2019s core.<\/p>\n
Saint Paul is becoming more like Detroit every day.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Actually, downtown Detroit seens to on the mend; companies are moving to downtown Detroit, drawn by tax incentives and inexpensive office space. \u00a0Some companies are offering massive subsidies to workers who buy condos downtown (up to $20,000 toward down payment, or equivalent rental assistance). \u00a0People actually live and work in downtown Detroit, and do things there at night. \u00a0And I haven’t checked the stats, but I wouldn’t doubt that the crime stats in downtown Detroit (but not outside downtown) are competitive with downtown Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
Which is not to say that Minneapolis or Saint Paul are quite in Detroit’s league – they’re not. \u00a0Minneapolis is merely headed the wrong way. \u00a0And Saint Paul is moving more toward the “Flint” territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: If you want to have a city full of blue collar workers earning a decent union wage, you need one of two things: industry, or government. Since the 1980\u2019s, Saint Paul has lost the Ford plant, West Publishing, Schmidt Brewery, Hamm\u2019s Brewery, Whirlpool and 3M, good solid companies with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42718"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42731,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42718\/revisions\/42731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}