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Binghamton, New York was recently voted number 5 on the list of most depressing cities in the country. It is also where I have lived for over forty years. This article is not meant to refute the unpleasant ranking of the town. Nor is it going to rub in the sum of reasons that make the whole of the town's unenviable place on the list. It is meant to explain the reasons behind being number 5 and more importantly explain why Binghamton represents a lot of American cities. In fact it in many ways is an exemplar of many of the problems of America; which is still number 1 country-wise – but the clock is ticking.
How did Binghamton, once known as the "Parlor City" due to the commodiousness of life in the area, fall to such an ignominious fate? Was it a natural catastrophe, an accident of geography or just plain bad luck? Actually it was none of the above. It was a result of the changes in the economic and political evolution of this country and the world. That is not to say it was inevitable, but with 20/20 hindsight, predictable.
Let's take a quick nickel tour of history. About a century ago or so, cigar making was major industry in Binghamton. In those days, cigars were like cars to today; rich men smoked better, often imported cigars and poor men smoked cheaper American made cigars. The poor always far outnumbering the rich, Binghamton made cigars were widely smoked. But in the move from the bucolic farm and small business based life of the nineteen century to the more citified life of industrial employment, something was lost. That something was the leisure time working men had to smoke cigars. That's why the rich, who still had leisure time to spare, were always shown smoking cigars. True the quicker, cheaper to smoke and more addictive cigarette replaced the cigar for the working man in America; but alas domestic cigar consumption took a nose dive and Binghamton lost an industry.
If the story ended there, it would have been just another case of the buggy whip phenomenon; where something comes along that obsoletes a product and a whole industry sadly dies because it is no longer needed. But fortunately after cigars left, Binghamton's best times were still ahead. The Endicott and Johnson families had a shoe manufacturing business in the area and business began booming.
The two good things about shoes if you are a shoe manufacturer are; one – they wear out and need be replaced and two – as people get richer, they buy more shoes. As American workers and their families prospered; these two shoe facts collaborated to make the Endicott-Johnson shoe empire grow larger and more prosperous for almost a century. An extra bonus for Binghamton was that EJ as it was known, was an exceptional example of a company that had the well being of its workers and their community at its core of priorities. The EJ Company created parks, public swimming pools, other community recreational venues and several free children's carousels all over Binghamton and its adjoining towns of Endicott and Johnson City (named for the area benefactors). In fact the area then became known as the "Carousel City". More people were wearing more shoes through most of the Twentieth Century and life was good in Binghamton.
A second industry, even more important and potent than shoes was also growing in the Binghamton area. A small company that made time clocks for factories was purchased by a Mr. Thomas Watson and transformed into another company know by its initials; IBM. Yep IBM the eventual computer giant was started and headquartered in the Binghamton area during its early days. And for most of the Twentieth Century, "Big Blue", as it was affectionately known, had a large and prosperous presence, with several production and R & D facilities in the area. Industrial and high-tech manufacturing were the twin cylinders that powered Binghamton's economy and made Binghamton the surrounding Southern Tier of New York, known as the "Valley of Opportunity", with its rolling green hills, rivers, lakes, clean air and safe friendly towns, a wonderful place to live.
But unfortunately the world wasn't when frozen Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in 1969 and life in Binghamton reached its zenith. The next step in the world's march of progress would start Binghamton's downward slide. That step was "Globalization" and the slide was not Binghamton's alone; it happened all across America. Globalization's often positively touted benefits for Americans didn't create the promised prosperity. It actually lead America and its workforce to the loss of over ten million high paying jobs, stagnant wages, a steadily growing trade deficit and the outsourcing of whole industries, like retail high-tech electronics and shoe manufacturing. It made Binghamton and scores of other cities, towns and areas into a hollow shell of the vibrant, productive places they were just a generation ago.
American companies being allowed to fall prey to the lure of cheaper labor creating higher profits, damaged or destroyed the manufacturing base of this country which had created the huge success Binghamton and much of the rest of America enjoyed for most of the Twentieth Century. The promise of the creation of markets in the developing world for American goods was proved to be a lie, by the 35 consecutive years of growing negative foreign trade balances. Some economists warned about this when trade with China was opened 35 years ago by pointing out that; cheap foreign goods depended on a foreign work force that worked for virtual slave wages and thus could never afford American products. But the warnings went unheeded because of the money fueled influence of those making greater profits by bribing politicians to trade American jobs for foreign debt. These companies purchased legislation that allowed them to write off foreign expenses against American profits and avoid paying any U.S. income taxes. The shortfall created by the multinationals ducking their fair share of contribution to the American economy created the need for great percentage of income taxation being shouldered by American workers plus the borrowing of billions from China.
Almost all shoes are now made in Asia, particularly China, and so are what used to be IBM personal computers. Binghamton became the 5th most depressed and depressing city in American not from lack of a skilled motivated work force, not because the communities and the companies that used to be here didn't have a cooperative and mutually supportive relationship, not due to the absence of good public schools or first class higher education, a strong and vibrant cultural atmosphere, or onerous taxation (IBM is still headquartered in New York State). Binghamton and the all the other American places that have become depressed became so because they were deserted by the businesses that had made those areas and, in turn, this country great.
The "service sector" was touted as what would replace the manufacturing which we had outsourced as the engine of the Twenty First Century America economy. But this "service sector" was nothing more than financial institutions which, in a few short years, first corrupted our country's banking rules, tax and trade policy to favor the multinational global corporations. And then designed complex global instruments and derivatives designed to transfer the accumulated wealth of American pension plans and individuals into their multibillion dollar salaries and bonuses.
It's not a coincidence that a vast majority of American workers did best when the American companies that employed them worked with and for this country and its citizens. It was when American companies were allowed to operate without any financial responsibility to the nation that supports and protects them; that the Binghamtons of this nation and the people who live there, came upon hard times. We were deserted, by the businesses whose success American workers helped create and the government that is sworn to be of, for and by the people. That was how and why Binghamton became depressed and depressing.
