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wdolson -> RE: Hurricane Harvey (8/28/2017 9:19:04 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: wdolson
If Harvey goes back out to the Gulf as is now predicted, it could come back on land revitalized. Houston could end up as devastated as New Orleans from Katrina. My SO was saying today that New Orleans has a core of people who deeply love the city and wanted to restore it, but few feel that way about Houston. I'm sure there are people who love Houston, but there isn't the passion about the place New Orlanders hold for their city.
Houston exists for commerce, if the place is too badly damaged to do commerce, the merchants will pick up and go someplace where they can do business.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
Aye. But, again where they differ is the presence of concentrated world-class industries and transportation centers in Houston. It will be-up to a point-worthwhile for them to repair their home base of operations in North America and support the community's efforts to do the same.
With all due respect to New Orleanders, their city (particularly the 9th and 5th wards) is still a complete mess economically, structurally, infrastructurally, etc. The passionate core is insufficient to revitalize a major metropolitan area. Houston's oft-besmirched industrial might has some significant advantages that New Orleans never has had and never will.
Yes, there are still parts of New Orleans that is a mess. Good old fashioned Louisiana corruption hasn't helped any.
A lot depends on how much the industries of Houston want to bring back the city. Some industries like the refining can't realistically move, but a lot of the white collar industries could be done anywhere. Houston has been home to the world's oil industry for over 100 years, but few people in it like living in Houston. I've known a fair number of people in the oil industry (including my sister) and all of them felt that having to move to Houston was like being sent to Siberia in the old USSR.
The white collar oil jobs is a huge part of Houston's economy. Starting salary for a Geologist right out of school is around $130K, an establish geo-professional can make $300K a year before bonuses. My friend who was here last week retired two years ago and what finally got him to pull the rip cord was when he looked over his financials and realized he could live indefinitely on his investments, even though the $300K a year was enticing, it wasn't worth the politics and other BS anymore.
If the oil business moves a lot of their offices, the top end of Houston's economy will collapse.
I give it 50/50 odds they will. A large percentage of the workers would be happy to live somewhere else, the requirement everything be concentrated in one geographic location has been gone for a generation, and if the different companies had their offices further apart there would be less poaching of talent.
The refineries are kind of stuck where they are and a lot of the other industrial plants too, though many of them might be out of service for a long time to come. Latest news is chemicals stored at the industrial plants are leaking into the air and water. People exposed to them are getting sick.
This is a very weird hurricane, just about the perfect storm to do the maximum damage to the region with the highest GDP in the hurricane zone. Hurricanes will occasionally go back out to sea, but I have never seen one backtrack and go back out to sea pretty much along the track it came in on. Conditions over the continent were just about perfect to hold the hurricane near the shore. The tropical depression off Florida also helped steer Harvey in where it hit.
Economically, this is going to be a big hit to the American economy. I'm glad I drive an electric car now, no worries about gas prices and my cost of "fuel" is unaffected.
Bill
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