Why are so many companies located in Chicago, IL?

An analytical paper about that poem nailed my A in comp in college!

I'm a child of the Chicago area, and have no regrets about growing up there. But I left 40 years ago, and I love smaller towns way too much to ever want to move back.

The problem with the White Volvo Mafia is that far too many of them bring the Eastern Bloc driving mentality with them. And if you think that's an exaggeration, you're not paying attention.

 

I hated poetry in high school, everyone else was all focused on the touchy feely poets and we had an assignment to deconstruct a poem from and about somewhere in America 1900 to the 1970s and match it with a contemporaneous painting. This was my choice. First choice was ogden nash, hopefully matched to a salvador Dali painting. but the teacher was not a fan, apperently comedy and absurdism had no place in her classroom. So i went with Sandberg and a grimy industrial cityscape. while everyone else was all agog over such drivel as Ginsberg or Plath. I did well, but it was definitely in stark contrast to the rest of the class.

I cant say im in love with the eastern bloc driving mentality, yes, i admit that is not for the better, but i dont beleive its any worse (on average) than most very american 4 wheeler drivers who got their licenses in the past 30 years.
We humans are decently tuned to wander the savanah and jungle afoot avoiding predators or hunting prey or berry bushes. Nothing in history or prehistory has prepared us to sustain breakneck speeds faster than a cheetah's top sprint in a metal box on wheels over highly unnatural terrain using minimal physical input and very loose rules that are somewhat unenforced. Maybe humans are just bad at driving generally speaking?

 

My point of view is that fairly rapid shift to extremely selfish behavioral norms is reflected in driving behaviors. Courtesy is a quaint, outdated concept, and it shows.

 

I know that traveling through that area you have to deal with some of the most disrespect careless drivers in a semi.

 

Im not disagreeing with the end result you see, but i dont know that the eastern bloc driving mentality is the causal shift.

Anecdote granted, but i have an aquaintence who roughly every 2 years (since 2006) posts a picture of his (newly) totaled car. Now its POSSIBLE that none of those were his fault, his insurance and the cops always end up saying he was not at fault after all, BUT, lets compare. my brother drives a car about 8x as many miles a year as my aquaintence, and has 0 wrecks/accidents since 1999 (less the single 2013 instance where someone ran him off the road)

So is it the case that the aquaintance is just unlucky EVERY 2 years, or is he just a bad driver? Or is my brother actually an exceptionally good driver? (Hes probably above average, but i dont know about exceptional)

Both of those individuals are born and raised in the usa, but one is slightly older, pre-phone era and not a millenial, one IS a millenial. This is not an indictment of all millenials, I am one too after all, but driving is certainly a task at which my age cohort doesnt seem to excel.

 

Now, do you check the passports of those drivers to be from Eastern Europe, or you judge them by the shape of their noses?
Because the driver demographics changed quite a bit in the last decade or so.
The last time someone took my paid for spot was a full blooded American, and he did not quite understand the meaning of private property, he had to be told twice to get the hell out. I know that you are generalizing, but Chicago is not the only center of where Eastern Euro are concentrated. Detroit, Seattle, LA, Sacramento and not that different. Yet, they never earned that level of notoriety.
You are presuming too much.

 

cheap labor???
I question this
Most these foreign ran companies in Chicago offer some of the highest cpm compared to the mega ran American companies. But naturally they don't give no miles. They also under the same safer scrutiny that all companies our.
Just they get bad raps cause of certain shoddy practices like 1099 or crappy lease programs but I definitely wouldn't say they hire cheap labor

 

The post you quoted is about our culture in general.

But to pretend that Illinois-plated trucks based on the general O'Hare area weren't over-represented in poor driving behaviors is crazy. Stereotypes happen for a reason, and especially when the WVM first exploded on the scene, those drivers were fairly easy to pick out, both in the truck, due to how they drove, and out, due to how they dressed.

That's not a slam on the entirety of the Eastern Bloc immigrants, either. You want to paint us all with a broad xenophobic brush, when it's a very specific segment that's pointed out as the problem. Hell, the majority of my great-grandparents were born in Germany and Poland, I'm well aware that most who emigrate from Europe bring a helluva work ethic.

 

I would say its proximity to interstates and two countries, the US and Canada.

 

Plus, Chicago has always been a railway hub. Containers heading into Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, etc. from the west coast almost all goes through Chicago.