I hope you’re up to those economic and demographic challenges you recognize, Nicole. Challenging someone to experience all you say the city has to offer is clearly not the same as being able to attract them to it. But then again, I think I alluded to this when mentioning Detroit’s attitude of economic nationalism as a serious response to the downfall of an industry that eventually found itself making products that only Americans would buy.

I am proud to say that I am from Detroit. And I am a product of Jewish Detroit.

I commented to Alex about this a few weeks back. Detroit’s demise has been long and coming. I’m not sure there’s much to learn from it other than what not to do. The lessons are potentially complex and many, but my take on it is to never assume that our exports will be permanently valuable. Global companies that seem to hold up well value quality to a much greater degree than do American companies. They also seem to invest more into their labor. To some extent the issue is cultural. America’s instinctive and reactionary sense of economic nationalism will always be at odds with the capitalism it claims to value at least as much.

And if infrastructure is finally something we intend to take seriously, then I’ll endorse the theme. Detroit’s “row after row of shopping centers with partial occupancy” is both a testament to the typical sprawl and the fact that the auto industry must have done its best to make sure that public transportation never had a chance in the city.

To the extent that Detroit’s lessons are to be taken seriously by the rest of the country, I’d advise the following:

1. If you seriously want growth, plan for it – in all its aspects. Not every employee and his family want nothing more than a lawn and a decent school. Learn about New Urbanism.

2. Economic nationalism is no substitute for a brand you can stand behind.

3. Just because Americans love wasteful and crappy products, don’t assume the rest of the world does. For the most part, they don’t. If you intend to market to them, then that’s a problem.

4. Location, location, location. It’s hard to build a quality product or service unless you run your business in a place where the sort of quality of labor you’ll need is available. If that fails, train them, invest in them, and make them feel that they have something invested in you in return. Or else you’ll get the labor that you deserve.

5. Every major city needs its own, distinct industry. If the latter dies, so will the city.

I am not yet sure of whether or not the country as a whole is learning Detroit’s lessons. Some parts of it are. Some parts of it surely are not.

The GDP is the sum of all goods and services rendered within the borders of the country. Getting a little bit more specific, we are refering to the amount of new things that are produced/rendered. A new pair of red shoes are in the GDP and that nice new mezuzah case are in the GDP. However, if you took the computer mouse you bought five years ago to the market to sell it, it wouldn’t be counted. Why? Because it wasn’t produced this year.

The stock market is like the computer mouse. The shares of stock already existed from many years ago. Of course, IPOs happen and companies may make secondary offerings, but the shares already in circulation aren’t new.

The stock market generates a lot of noise because if you pick the right stocks you can get rich very quickly. But in terms of economic development and growth, it’s no different from a shop for aftermarket electronics.

Instead of starting this apocalyptic whine they should rather get involved in real domestic issues.

Ben-David: This has nothing to do with being in the rust belt. This has hit the service industry. These are not the complaints of laid off auto workers, these are the complaints of everyone from the auto plants all the way up through attorney’s and doctors whose clients and patients just stop coming in.

Deep sigh. What have we done?

A recession is 2 or more consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.

There has not yet been even ONE month of negative growth – the US economy is still growing, just more slowly.

Detroit and other large rust-belt cities are reaping the bitter fruits of heavy beaurocracy, chokehold public service unions, and welfare-state social policy.

Cities that have turned away from these left/liberal policies are doing fine.