Janesville
by Amy Goldstein · first published 2017
6mentions
3recommended by
5HN commenters
2017–2019first – last mentioned
60% recommend40% neutral
"A Washington Post reporter's intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors' assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin--Paul Ryan's hometown--and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class. This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its factory stills--but it's not the familiar tale. Most observers record the immediate shock of vanished jobs, but few stay around long enough to notice what happens next, when a community with a can-do spirit tries to pick itself up. Pulitzer Prize winner Amy Goldstein has spent ye
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
For anyone actually interested in learning how hard southern Wisconsin has worked to get manufacturing back after the GM plant closure, I recommend Janesville: an American Story. Suffice to say that many, many people both R and D want these jobs in Paul Ryan's district and willingness to offer incentives is fully bipartisan. https://www.amazon.com/Janesville-American-Story-Amy-Goldste...
on “Foxconn to Build $10B Factory in U.S” ↗…Investors and Authors by Meb Faber (editor), Jason Zweig (contributor), Patrick O’Shaughnessy (contributor), Morgan Housel (contributor), Corey Hoffstein (contributor), Barry Ritholtz (contributor) > Janesville Amy Goldstein > The Man Who Could Be King John Miller > My Own Liberator Dikgang Moseneke > Hillbilly Elegy J.D. Vance > Small Great Things Jodi Picoult > Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind…
on “Annual survey of book recommendations” ↗Janesville: An American Story. This is about Paul Ryan's hometown and how it flourished until the Great Recession and what happened after. If you want to try to truly understand the thought process of Paul Ryan…
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2018?” ↗I'm from Wisconsin and am currently reading "Janesville: An American Story", which is about the city of Janesville, WI and what happened when the GM auto plant closed in 2008. A lot of subsidies went to retraining the unemployed factory workers because that's…
on “Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t” ↗…them to build windmills. I certainly would agree that the people who lose jobs would mostly not be the same people who would be trained to take the new jobs that would be created. I remember reading Janesville and being pretty clearly convinced that skills training programs to people who lose their jobs are often counter-productive. That said, I do still think overall for the economy it'd be a positive.
on “Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal Is a Winning Climate Strategy” ↗> We will find new industries which replace the old jobs Reading the book Janesville, I'm very pessimistic on the effects of programs aimed at retraining people for new careers once jobs in a town are lost. I'm convinced for the next generation that it's a net benefit, yes, but that many…
on “Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers” ↗