Name: Janesville
ISBN: 9781501102233

Janesville

"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 years immersed in Janesville, Wisconsin where the nation's oldest operating General Motors plant shut down in the midst of the Great Recession, two days before Christmas of 2008. Now, with intelligence, sympathy, and insight into what connects and divides people in an era of economic upheaval, she makes one of America's biggest political issues human. Her reporting takes the reader deep into the lives of autoworkers, educators, bankers, politicians, and job re-trainers to show why it's so hard in the twenty-first century to recreate a healthy, prosperous working class. For this is not just a Janesville story or a Midwestern story. It's an American story"

What Hacker News says

ColdgamrDec 2018

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 and expand your political horizons a bit (if you're liberal), then this is a good read. Full disclosure, I haven't finished yet, but mostly done and it has at least helped me understand his thinking a bit more.

Children of Blood and Bone: Really good and gripping. Listened to the audiobook of this one and it keeps you on your toes.

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bob_theslob646Dec 2017

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1123581321Jul 2017

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...

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elicashJan 2019

> 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 people who lose their job never really recover and the people who try to switch industries end up on average the worst off.

We should be honest about the role we play. Even if it's a net positive, it's not a net positive for every person. For many people it can be devastating. (This actually bolsters your second point and helps make the case for a strong safety net.)

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elicashDec 2018

> Legislatures have a much better chance of voting for a carbon tax than the people, and they should prioritize this over other green initiatives.

Without public support I just have trouble seeing that happen. I don't think we disagree that much though.

> It's disrespectful to suggest that this isn't a problem because we can just retrain 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.

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jhbadgerMay 2017

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 supposedly how you are supposed to treat factory closings. But it turns out that when you compare the salaries of the workers who went back to school (tech school or university) versus the ones who just found other employment, the ones who went to school actually ended up earning less on average. Yes, income isn't everything about education, it is supposed to make you a better person and so forth, but such unintuitive results really make you think.

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