The death of Cleveland- America’s heartland as a ghost town

[Liberal_in_LA]

The death of Cleveland- America’s heartland as a ghost town
By Paul Wallis.

As the foreclosure wars drag on, the reality has become a brutal testimony to the financial catastrophes the US is currently enduring. The sheer devastation is nowhere more visible than in Cleveland, once the heart of the heartland.

The diminishing of America is now a social psychological problem as well as an economic problem. The traditional views of the nation are being replaced by an ugly, uncompromising economic reality in which the American Dream is now a non-issue. Even more startling, the “service economy” which replaced the industrial economy is also vulnerable to offshoring.

One economist, Alan Blinder, is concerned that 28 to 42 million service jobs are able to be shifted offshore, and is looking at a re-categorization of jobs into those which can be done anywhere and those which can’t. A customer service job, for instance, can be done from anywhere on Earth, while the job of a doctor can’t. The short message, however, is that things can get a lot worse.


Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/299206#ixzz13gUaGnBg

Empty Cleveland mall - once was one of nation's largest


Award winning photo essay on Cleveland
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1738458_1585584,00.html