Word: heartlands
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Carl Sandburg's description of Chicago at the beginning of the century was every bit as accurate for the rest of the Midwest. With its raw energy and perpetual motion, the nation's heartland was synonymous with prosperous cities. Over the years, Chicago became identified with hogs, Toledo with glass, Detroit with automobiles, Akron with rubber. Youngstown with steel, Peoria with Caterpillar tractors.Today, however, in the cities that once were flagships of the region, unemployment has risen higher than in any other area of the U.S. Hit first and hardest by the recession, the Midwest...
...claim, has essentially gone on strike. In the face of mounting political and economic uncertainty since 1971, companies have decided that they simply won't use their cash to create jobs as long as they see high union wages and local taxes threatening their profits in the American Industrial Heartland. Instead, corporations either try to play one state off another in a game of tax-abatement chicken, or they pack up their factories and move to the Third World. Or they merge; Bluestone and Harrison note that two-thirds of all "new" investment spending by U.S. corporations since 1972 actually...
...labor force, unemployment reached the highest level since 1941, and business failures surged to more than 24,000, higher than in any year since 1932. Nowhere in the country was the misery of economic downturn more acute than in the factory towns of the nation's industrial heartland. As consumers lost confidence in promises of economic recovery, household spending stalled out, shaking the already depressed auto industry. In a slide since 1979, new-car sales skidded to a 21-year low of about 5.7 million units, while unemployment surged to 23% of the auto industry's 1.1 million...
...Milwaukee, and the spicy enchiladas pack a punch. Crowds fill the gaily colored restaurant every noon and night. Such enthusiasm for Mexican dining was once largely confined to the Southwest, but now Chi-Chi's and other aggressive chains are sweeping through the heartland like modern conquistadors. With moderate prices and robust fare, they are capturing an ever growing chunk of the American dining-out dollar. Mexican-style eateries gulped down a hearty $3 billion in revenues last year, or nearly 4% of total U.S. restaurant sales. They bit off only $1 billion as recently as 1977, by contrast...
Nebraska, an acoustic bypass through the American heartland, sounds a little like a Library of Congress field recording made out behind some shutdown auto plant. Springsteen recorded these songs at home, on a four-track Teac tape deck, and meant them to be demos for material he could do with the E Street Band. But the songs seemed to stand best on their own, unadorned, and that is the way they appear in the album, with just a minimum of technical refinement. Beginning with the title track, a bone chiller about Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate, the ten songs...