Originally Posted by
bombermwc
Hang on Spartan, because Tinker has grown. One difference is in how its grown. A lot of the workforce there is becoming contract work rather than federal positions. So while the federal jobs numbers might look to have dropped, the number of warm bodies on base are not necessarily decreasing. Another side of that is the related workforce. There are the obvious ones like Boeing, but the lesser-known entities like Chromalloy (and countless others) make up a huge workforce as well. Just like the auto industry, there are a lot of side companies related to the main institution that are there because of the base and also offer a LOT of employment. That's not so much true in state government, but it does exist. Some companies heavily rely on state contracts for their business, and if that were to go away, those companies may not be able to survive. Of course those state jobs are going to be more reliable than federal in terms of the potential for Tinker to be closed one day...but the capital isn't going to close LOL.
The oil bust and savings and loan crash shows OKC how volatile our world was...and still is. Like Spartan said, if energy went bust again, OKC would have a hard time. As he also says, we've diversified a lot since then (with the crashes in mind), but we're still an energy dominated state. Just like I mentioned above, if Devon and Chesapeake went caput tomorrow, OKC (and the state) wouldn't just lose 10K office jobs, we'd lose 100K in all the drill companies, parts, transport, etc. that goes along with them. We would for sure crash to a significant extent. But without having a compounded banking crisis, I think OKC would stand a better chance of not falling into a 20 year slump like we did before.
In relation to Detroit, you also have to consider the White Flight to the suburbs, and the corruption in the city government. With a housing market so flooded, abandoning your home was more economically beneficial than anything else...how crazy is that!?! Even places like Wichita that saw a huge number of lost jobs over the last 15 years from aerospace hasn't seen that kind of craziness. Unfortunately, the city government spend decades operating in an us vs. them white/black world rather than focusing on setting up a city that would survive. Remember, this has been going on for decades...it's not a new problem for them and it's only recently become such national attention. Countless pop culture references can be found over the last 30 years on the fall (and attempted rebirth) of DTW. OKC managed to avoid a lot of the racial tension that DTW saw. Throw the UAW in the mix there, and you've got a big mess. Their "negotiating" simply forced automakers to build elsewhere and continue to downsize because it didn't make economic sense to produce vehicles in MI. Even in OKC where we were building the still-sold Trailblazer and Malibu, we lost a plant! That bankruptcy was the best thing that ever happened to GM to free them from the insanity the UAW created. I say all that simply to say that Detroit is a long and complex issue. There are so many factors in the mix there that lead to the current state. My heart tells me the citizens of OKC are smarter than that and wouldn't let things fall so badly.
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