Clayton Hauck 3/22/24 Clayton Hauck 3/22/24

2024 03 22

Having spent a good deal of time in small rural Illinois towns recently, in towns that feel largely forgotten to time, hollowed out and missing a majority of their people, towns with cemetery populations larger than that of their living, it was quite eye opening when I stumbled across a statistic recently. Of America’s wealthiest large cities by median household income, in the year 1949, you would never guess which names topped the list when driving their streets today. Sure, if you’re a student of US history, you can probably guess some of the names, but even still they were quite shocking to me. Before the Rust Belt was a place, the Steel Belt was a place and it was home to prosperous and growing cities which built much of the world’s most valuable products. Before these factories were outsourced and moved overseas, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America, in the top spot on this list. Subsequently, Detroit’s population (once 1.8 million) declined by well more than half (to a just over 600,000 today) leaving much of the city empty and abandoned. My parents both grew up in Milwaukee, which was at the time the third wealthiest city in the country by these metrics, and out of ten combined siblings only one remains there today.

Everything dies, even cities. But unexpected upsides occur as a result of hard times. There’s such a large supply of cheap houses in many of these towns, it’s not hard to imagine an influx of young people from across the country desperate to get a taste of the Remains of the American Dream. We’ve already seen Detroit rebound rather remarkably from its recent rock bottom. Last weekend I had fancy cocktails in both Ottawa and Rochelle, Illinois, both in beautifully-restored buildings on their charming old Main Streets.

These trends played out over decades and were caused by a wide range of reasons, however, when viewed in such stark contrast of then vs. now, it seems hard to believe Cleveland was once the second wealthiest city in America in my dad’s lifetime! While this is super fascinating in it’s own right and a subject that can be examined with endless depth, what gets me even more interested is exploring how these trends might play out in the future. Demography is destiny, they say, and a large number of developed countries around the world are now losing population. If we correlate what happened to America’s Midwest to the rest of the world, will Japan become the next Ohio? Will Seoul soon look Pittsburgh-esque? Or will the Rust Belt rise again and overtake China as the next global mega power?

I’m off to buy some property in Peoria…

-Clayton

*The 606 Trail during sunset. It was formerly an industrial freight line and today largely serves a purpose of leisure. Chicago, Illinois. February, 2024. © Clayton Hauck*

Having spent a good deal of time in small rural Illinois towns recently, in towns that feel largely forgotten to time, hollowed out and missing a majority of their people, towns with cemetery populations larger than that of their living, it was quite eye opening when I stumbled across a statistic recently. Of America’s wealthiest large cities by median household income, in the year 1949, you would never guess which names topped the list when driving their streets today. Sure, if you’re a student of US history, you can probably guess some of the names, but even still they were quite shocking to me. Before the Rust Belt was a place, the Steel Belt was a place and it was home to prosperous and growing cities which built much of the world’s most valuable products. Before these factories were outsourced and moved overseas, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America, in the top spot on this list. Subsequently, Detroit’s population (once 1.8 million) declined by about two-thirds (to a just over 600,000 today) leaving much of the city empty and abandoned. My parents both grew up in Milwaukee, which was at the time they kids the third wealthiest city in the country by these metrics, but out of ten combined siblings only one remains there today.

honestly wild pic.twitter.com/2ueqPdbItJ
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) March 19, 2024

Everything dies, even cities. But unexpected upsides occur as a result of hard times and cities are capable of surviving far longer than individual humans. There’s such a large supply of cheap houses in many of these towns, it’s not hard to imagine an influx of young people from across the country desperate to get a taste of the Remains of the American Dream. We’ve already seen Detroit rebound rather remarkably from its recent rock bottom. Last weekend I had fancy cocktails in both Ottawa and Rochelle, Illinois, both in beautifully-restored buildings on their charming old Main Streets.

These trends played out over decades and were caused by a wide variety of reasons, however, when viewed in such stark contrast of then vs. now, it seems hard to believe Cleveland was once the second wealthiest city in America in my parents’ lifetime! While this is super fascinating in it’s own right and a subject that can be examined with endless depth, what gets me even more interested is exploring how these trends might play out in the future. Demography is destiny, they say, and a large number of developed countries around the world are now losing population, just as America’s Rust Belt has in recent history. If we correlate what happened to the Rust Belt to the rest of the world, will Japan become the next Ohio? Will Seoul soon look Pittsburgh-esque? Or will the Rust Belt rise again and overtake China as the next global mega power?

I’m off to buy some property in Peoria…

-Clayton

Clayton Hauck 2/16/24 Clayton Hauck 2/16/24

2024 02 16

I don’t have kids, I have a daily photo blog…

Also, nobody seems to be having kids these days, which I think goes a long way in explaining why things have gotten so weird. Without kids, people have time to stew on things, discuss vibes in comment sections and on Reddit. Without kids, people turn civil unrest into a hobby and start voting for whoever fans the flames of chaos. Kids are hectic and require massive amounts of attention and, in that, they are also a stabilizing force for society.

But I don’t have a farm to plow and child labor laws are pretty tough these days, so putting little Jimmy to work at the photo studio might be frowned upon, so what does a kid get me other than yet another unpaid-full-time job? Am I being selfish not having kids while my friends who do have children to, you know, keep humanity moving forward, are stuck raising theirs? Honestly, yeah I think we, the childless folks, are being a bit selfish. But are we also being selfish in exploding the global population from a few billion people one hundred years ago to eight billion people today? Also, yes! Elon yells about demographics because it’s going to fuck the rich and powerful more than anyone once population growth reverses course and there are fewer people to buy the trinkets being pumped out in Chinese factories (also losing population, so increasingly made by robots).

The takeaway? Shit will continue to be weird for as long as we’re alive. Not having kids is both selfish and thoughtful from an environmental perspective.

They are pretty damn cute, though. I think I might have a few.