|
Trump's dream of blue-collar jobs? In Kokomo, success calls for more
[CS Monitor] JUNE 9, 2017 KOKOMO, IND.--In Kokomo, Ind., soon after Highway 931 bends away from due north, two long, low factories stretch for more than a quarter-mile.On the right is General Motors, a shell of its former self; on the left, a Fiat-Chrysler transmission plant, going full tilt. With five facilities in the area, Fiat-Chrysler employs twice as many people as it did in the depths of the Great Recession. It churns out more transmissions here than anyone anywhere else in the world. In some ways, this factory city in America’s most manufacturing-dependent state is living the Donald Trump dream. Jobs are plentiful. Foreign immigration is extremely low. In the presidential election, the county went 2 to 1 for Mr. Trump, better than red-state Indiana as a whole. But for a conservative region, Kokomo and surrounding Howard County are committing a kind of economic heresy. While the president touts more manufacturing jobs as one of the central pieces of his overall economic plan, the county is diversifying away from them. The city's mayor, a Democrat, has transformed the downtown to make it a livable, walkable place for professionals. And despite the partisan strife in Washington, local Republicans ‐ at least, many of those who live or work in the city ‐ have come around to back the strategy, which turns traditional economic development on its head. Posted by: Besoeker 2017-06-12 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=490231 |