mcnally
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response 50 of 55:
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Dec 6 08:00 UTC 2003 |
> From all that one gets the feeling that north mid-west has been the
> working core of strong industrialization in the US.Truth ?
Depending on what you mean by "mid-west"*, yes, the midwest and the
north mid-atlantic states (such as Pennsylvania and New York) historically
made up a large part of the industrialized part of the U.S. Just about all
of the states which border one or more of the Great Lakes have been home to
a fair amount of heavy industry. For some time now, however, manufacturing
has been moving south (when it hasn't been fleeing the country entirely)
towards less industrialized states with fewer worker protections and lower
wages, so things have been evening out and industry isn't so concentrated
in those parts of the country.
The meaning of the term "midwest" can vary a lot in the U.S. depending
on where the speaker is from. I always used to consider Michigan and
its neighboring states part of the midwest, as did everyone I knew in
Michigan. Then I moved out to the west coast and found out that to
people that far west, Michigan was part of "the east" and "midwest"
meant states like the Dakotas, Kansas, and Nebraska. Some people describe
the industrialized states of the Great Lakes region as "the Rust Belt."
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twenex
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response 51 of 55:
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Dec 6 10:15 UTC 2003 |
I forgot to mention the curious practice,
indulged in by southerners, of referring to the
counties around London as "the Home Counties". so
what are therest of the counties? The Foreign
Counties? Maybe the rest of the country should
secede and see how well the South gets on
witrhout aqll the manpower it getsd from people
moving to the South-East.
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scg
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response 53 of 55:
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Dec 7 00:34 UTC 2003 |
"Home Counties" sounds like the "Out West/Back East" thing in the US. I used
to hear people in MIchigan refer to the Western US as "Out West," which made
sense because the Western US was a long way away. In California, I hear
life-long California residents, and even life-long California residents whose
ancestors never lived in the Eastern US, refering to pretty much anythin East
of Nevada as "Back East."
Having lots of small cities clustered together rather than having a single
big city is a rather complicated issue. Smaller cities are nice in that they
allow the city government to focus on local neighborhood issues that would
get lost in a bigger city. On the other hand, the lack of a regional
government can create some tricky issues, and the motivations for splitting
an area off as its own city are often anything but good. In the case of the
Bay Area (which, not being in Michigan, maybe isn't relevant to this item),
with nine counties and who knows how many cities, anything involving regional
coordination seems to require the creation of a special district with its own
elected board. Furthermore, it means that while I have more say than I
otherwise would in what happens in my own immediate neighborhood (part of the
City of Berkeley), I get no vote at all three blocks away (City of Albany),
or in the downtown area where I used to spend most of my waking hours (City
and County of San Francisco). In the Detroit area, the situation is arguably
a lot worse. While most of the Bay Area cities tend to be pretty diverse,
stretching from poor areas near the Bay to rich suburban areas in the hills,
the Detroit suburban boundaries have been used extensively as a way to enforce
racial and economic segregation. Leaving the racial issues aside, separating
the tax base from the areas which most need the government services is rather
destructive.
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