Yes, clearly the takehome here is the Detroit is a model of efficiency.
But just for fun, why did the people leave?
Gingrich Detonates Inconvenient Truth re War on Poverty
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Yes, clearly the takehome here is the Detroit is a model of efficiency.
But just for fun, why did the people leave?
My argument is that the city isn't run very well. People don't want to live in a place where they can't work, live and play. People have had ample opportunity to judge Detroit as a place to do that, and the city lost that foot-vote by a landslide.
You're saying that Detroit is run well?
Please elaborate on why the city is being abandoned, in the face of its masterful stewardship. Enlighten us (since they cannot).
Detroit: come for the highest taxes allowed by law (but pack a flashlight, and $20B dollars)!
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Strickland33
Well-known member
If you think that conservatives (or their respective establishments) give three shits about the city of Detroit, then I suggest that you catch up on some reading.
Here are a two recommendations to start:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Urban-Crisis-Inequality/dp/0691121869
http://www.amazon.com/Detroit-Ameri...e=UTF8&qid=1388648812&sr=1-1&keywords=detroit
You're just making yourself look even dumber with this one. Stick to Cincinnati or Gary or some less-well-documented cities in decline.
It's not that I don't appreciate your confidence in the argument you've yet to articulate (but are certain is convincing and will prevail) in defense of Detroit's policy decisions. I respect a person who is so self-assured that he doesn't have to make his point to wholesale dismiss the counterpoints (in fact, all 10,000 of them) and declare victory.
When the climb is simply too steep, declare victory and go home. Having anointed yourself the winner and I the vanquished, will you at least go home?
In addition to the awful conditions for the people left in the wake of the collapse, the lessons of Detroit matter precisely because of how reluctantly some of you are in admitting the source of the problem. The same stormclouds (grossly unsustainable public pensions) are gathering over Chicago, and they have nothing on God's green earth to do with which cars executives in Michigan were electing to building in the 1980's or the costs of global shipping. But I'd like to be a fly on the wall when someone explains that reasoning to a retired Chicago fireman who didn't get his pension check. Good luck with that.
Strickland33
Well-known member
So, let me get this straight. Your arguments are as follows:
1) Detroit is a terminally poor city because of democratic leadership in the mayoral position over a sustained period of time.
2) Detroit is a terminally poor city because it is inhabited by poor people.
Am I misrepresenting your arguments? I really can't keep them straight at this point. I'll leave you to better articulate your point because neither myself nor anybody else who has been stupid enough to engage you (yet again) has any damn idea what you're arguing outside of your original (absurd) assertion that democratic mayors conspire across administrations and historical and administrative contexts to keep large American cities (but not all of them) poor and mired in said poverty.
ETA: I'll include - 3) Detroit's neighborhoods are abandoned because of democrats, their leadership, and their policies. I forget who said it, but you need to brush up on your understanding of how correlation/causation and necessary/sufficient work in argumentation.
ETA: (The burden to develop a causal mechanism connecting your explanandum to your explanans isn't on me, anyway, as I didn't make these idiotic claims in the first place.)
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I understand that you have no defense for Detroit's management. That's been evident for quite some time. What I find curious is the visceral need to avoid addressing the lessons that can be learned, and instead manufacture a great deal of outrage about an argument that was never made by anyone at any time. It would be nice if you could source the bolded portion. You can't, but you're far too prideful to admit that your party has made an utter mess of that city, so you persist in mischaracterizing what I'm saying to avoid the painful lessons that should be learned from Detroit. That's fine. That's what disingenuous people do.
eta: Why don't you answer your own question about whether or not you are misrepresenting my arguments? By all means, find any portion of any post I have made on any thread where I said Detroit is "terminally" poor because it is inhabited by poor people? That's disingenuous and you know it.
Detroit is poorly managed. It's been exclusively managed by Democrats for 50 years, from the height of its prosperity to the depths of its insolvency. That a city unable to pay its bills and in bankruptcy protection was managed "poorly" hardly seems to be a controversial assertion. With a monopoly on power comes some measure of accountability for the results, no? Part of that poor management was rendering the city of Detroit an uncompetitive place to do business (in the abstract, but certainly in contrast to the places in America that now produce cars). Take a clear eyed look at why domestic manufacturing is moving South and East in this country, take a look at those videos Deacman posted, and tell me that Detroit wouldn't like a do-over on the decisions that helped (I argue in large, but not exclusive, part) usher its employers out the door. If you choose to respond, please respond to something I have actually said.
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Strickland33
Well-known member
I don't care about Detroit's management. If you want to know why the city is abandoned, why it's a shithole filled with upper middle class gentrification of downtown and crushing urban poverty (while Auburn Hills sits fat like a hen outside of city limits), relegated to offering tremendous tax breaks to any sort of development (economic or otherwise) that would otherwise stimulate the city's crumbling municipal infrastructure, or why the damn state approves funding of hockey stadiums over community development projects, then your path dependent argument should be focused at the state and federal level policies, developed before the second world war and cultivated over time - from the war on poverty to the war on drugs, from the federally-protected redlining to the contemporary foreclosure crisis (brought to you by Democrat Bill Clinton, btw) - rather than bitching about fucking mayors. Seriously, who gives a shit about mayors?
My party? Fuck Democrats. Fuck Republicans, too. If history has proven anything, then it's that neither party can manage a city to save its life (umm, duh?). But if you want to know why cities like Detroit are in decline for all of eternity, you'll have to abandon your cushy partisan bubble for a minute and look at the actual history of the place, in both local and national policy contexts.
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Strickland33
Well-known member
So, you deny that you made this post? Or does it depend on what your definition of is is?
Let's read it together, shall we?
Every major city isn't run by Democrats. [True. Most are, but not every.]Every major city that is a center of poverty is run by Democrats. [You will pay careful note that my post was a response to someone who was intentionally trying to mischaracterize the Speaker's point in the OP. My post re-states the Speaker's quote from the video); a point which I agree with. He's right, but I will grant you that phrasing is vague as to a number of its terms.] Show me a center of poverty that isn't. [23 pages later, no one has taken up that challenge. That's fine. It's not the thrust of the point, but worth noting. The Speaker's point is, like it or not, a factual statement.]
Fifty years into the War on Poverty, it is time to take a clear-eyed look at the failures of these well-intended [note: "well-intended"; where did you derive your conspiracy accusations from?] policies. The people they are hurting deserve better. [I am willing to go there]. They deserve policies designed to get them a job [and there] and upward mobility. [and there] Programs designed to encourage cyclical dependence [Any program that pays you more for each additional baby conceived and born into existing poverty by definition "encourages cyclical dependence". I didn't design the program, I am telling you how it operates. Go get mad at somebody else if you don't want people accurately describing it this way.] by any definition encourages re, opposition to performance metrics in public schools, [Look at Detroit schools. Just look at them] job and city-killing unions [Historic bankruptcy because of $10B to public pensions ought to tie this one down fairly nicely, but if you don't believe me, go see what Rahm Emmanuel is saying. Good for that Democrat Mayor for having the courage to engage the powerful interests in his party; let's hope it's not too late to save Chicago from Detroit's fate] and the lottery [You want this debate?] all need to go.
[So yes, I said all of those things, and none of them say that Detroit is poor because of its people. As a matter of fact, you linked a post where I specifically said the people are being failed by the system and that they deserve better; the very opposite thing you accused me of in your stated attempt to get my argument straight. Not a great effort on your part, if that was indeed the goal.]
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Minute 18:00 to 30:00. Brutal.
"complete absence of any process or organization." - Superintendent of DPS, on her arrival.
"no evaluation of district employees in over a decade...paying utility bills on schools years after they had been abandoned...chaos by design"
She started a review to conform the reported enrollment to actual enrollment, so that they know how many students they have. Not a bad starting point. She was, of course, fired.
In 2009, DPS students scored lowest proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Not just for the year, but for the history of the test. Which is not to say no one in the school system was good at math, because somebody found a way to wire $46M in district funds out the door, triggering an FBI investigation.
It makes sense then that they would turn down a $200M gift from a philanthropist (and a "business leader" to boot!) to build new charter schools.
Of note from the article: Teamed with his strategic wizard Doug Ross, Thompson guaranteed schools that would graduate 90 percent of their students and send 90 percent of those graduates on to college.
Instead of grabbing the money and doing a happy dance, Detroiters, as is their custom, wailed about a suburban outsider taking away their schools and stealing their children.
Then-Mayor* Kwame Kilpatrick told Thompson to just drop off the check and let Detroit Public Schools decide how to spend it. Gov. Jennifer Granholm stood in the schoolhouse door, assuring unionized teachers she wouldn't allow Thompson's charters to come in and take their jobs.
That was six years ago. Had Detroit embraced Thompson the way Newark is embracing Zuckerberg, the city would have all 15 of those high schools open by now, and a whole lot more of its children in college. Newark is on the road to better schools; Detroit is still resisting reform.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20100930/OPINION03/9300328#ixzz2pEunBQLM
* :thumbsup:
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Wrangor
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Deacon923
Scooter Banks
Detroit is a complete mess, and its leaders - especially the mayor who was there for 40 years and the crook Kwame Kilpatrick - bear a lot of responsibility for the mess it is in. Their policies were atrocious and their management ability non-existent. No matter who is to blame for the woes of the American auto industry, the bad policies and lack of management in Detroit made the fallout many times worse than it had to be. There is plenty of truth in DeacMan's posts about taxing the prosperous out of the jurisdiction and failing to manage the contraction of the city in anything like a responsible manner, and plenty of sorry Detroit politicians and bureaucrats who bear responsibility. Most of them have a D beside their names, and most of them made bad deals with public unions to buy votes.
All that can be true without making the huge logical leap to the conclusion that all Democratic Party policies are direct pathways to a Detroitesque apocalypse, or the even larger leap to the conclusion that if all states just acted like Mississippi and Alabama, we'd all be better off. Does anyone really think it would be a good idea if the economic profile of those states was spread nationwide? They can keep their massive poverty rates, barely educated populace, low workforce participation, and pitiful GDP, thanks very much. Good for them if they can get a few auto plants at Detroit's expense to alleviate the suffering of a small fraction of their citizens. Doesn't mean I want my state to import the Mississippi approach to governance.
It's even more alarming when these arguments are supported by a misguided cherry-picking of statistics without any apparent understanding (or perhaps, with an intentional disregard) of the realities creating those statistics. I note that after I demolished the myth of the magically dropping NC unemployment rate that argument quietly slunk off to die, so perhaps I have been of some service to this 22-page exercise in shouting past each other.
All that can be true without making the huge logical leap to the conclusion that all Democratic Party policies are direct pathways to a Detroitesque apocalypse, or the even larger leap to the conclusion that if all states just acted like Mississippi and Alabama, we'd all be better off. Does anyone really think it would be a good idea if the economic profile of those states was spread nationwide? They can keep their massive poverty rates, barely educated populace, low workforce participation, and pitiful GDP, thanks very much. Good for them if they can get a few auto plants at Detroit's expense to alleviate the suffering of a small fraction of their citizens. Doesn't mean I want my state to import the Mississippi approach to governance.
It's even more alarming when these arguments are supported by a misguided cherry-picking of statistics without any apparent understanding (or perhaps, with an intentional disregard) of the realities creating those statistics. I note that after I demolished the myth of the magically dropping NC unemployment rate that argument quietly slunk off to die, so perhaps I have been of some service to this 22-page exercise in shouting past each other.
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
Wrangor's post just above mine is a good post. The only thing I would add to it is to just note that "competition between states" for businesses generally takes the form of politicians channeling taxpayer dollars into the hands of privately-owned companies, usually owned by out of state shareholders. If that's how we're going to organize competition between states, so be it, but it is extremely hypocritical to pretend that the process of politicians bribing corporations to relocate is in any way morally or substantively different from politicians bribing public unions to get votes. Call a spade a spade. Not saying Wrangor doesn't recognize this or is being hypocritical, just further developing the thoughts in his post.
I would take issue with Wrangor's response to point number 1. In NC, which has historically taken a more balanced approach than its brethren in the deep South, we have managed to create a highly educated workforce and a fairly diversified economy. As a result, we've created a world-class high tech sector in the Triangle and a world-class finance sector in Charlotte, and a growing aviation sector in Greensboro. Now, in an attempt to race to the bottom and claw back some of the low-wage manufacturing jobs that have been lost to China and automation, we're trying to Alabama-ize our state finances. If fully realized, the long-term impacts of that over the entire state are predictable - a less educated workforce with more poor people and greater economic inequality, and a lower overall per capita GDP. It would be great for Greensboro to land a Hyundai plant, but that locally-felt positive impact is more than outweighed by the greater negative impact on the rest of the citizens of the state.
It's not hard to understand this if your eyes are open. There are plenty of example in the Southeast of exactly how this strategy plays out. That doesn't mean NC should go full Michigan and become a union-heavy closed shop state with a big tax load, but it does support the historical NC model of charting a moderate path between the plantation mentality of Mississippi and the moribund policies of the Rust Belt.
I would take issue with Wrangor's response to point number 1. In NC, which has historically taken a more balanced approach than its brethren in the deep South, we have managed to create a highly educated workforce and a fairly diversified economy. As a result, we've created a world-class high tech sector in the Triangle and a world-class finance sector in Charlotte, and a growing aviation sector in Greensboro. Now, in an attempt to race to the bottom and claw back some of the low-wage manufacturing jobs that have been lost to China and automation, we're trying to Alabama-ize our state finances. If fully realized, the long-term impacts of that over the entire state are predictable - a less educated workforce with more poor people and greater economic inequality, and a lower overall per capita GDP. It would be great for Greensboro to land a Hyundai plant, but that locally-felt positive impact is more than outweighed by the greater negative impact on the rest of the citizens of the state.
It's not hard to understand this if your eyes are open. There are plenty of example in the Southeast of exactly how this strategy plays out. That doesn't mean NC should go full Michigan and become a union-heavy closed shop state with a big tax load, but it does support the historical NC model of charting a moderate path between the plantation mentality of Mississippi and the moribund policies of the Rust Belt.
Wrangor
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My thoughts are not in contradiction to this. Good post. Balanced approach is best. Nc is proof of that. But some states need the business more than others. Thus they bid more aggressively.
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Well, let's start with our gratitude for your heroism in contributions to the thread. The sun never sets on the twin empires of your knowledge and humility. That said, your view that we shouldn't credit the McCrory Administration for the full measure of the job growth is a debate I'd prefer over whether we should blame him if his administration reigned over the shedding of jobs under Perdue Administration. All things being equal, I'll take exaggerated reporting of job gains over actual job losses every chance I get (query: who wouldn't? Does a McCrory recovery make you nostalgic for the jobs hemorrhaged under the reign of his predecessor? Not sure of your angle.)
Be that as it may, who is making the conclusion that "All Democratic Party policies are direct pathways to a Detroitesque apocalypse"? I'll offer you the same challenge I did to my good friend Strickland: Please quote the post you are objecting to in response. I'd like to see that. I know of many posts where I personally said that Democrats---and only Democrats---presided over the municipal government in the city of Detroit during its economic collapse, and I believe that the influences of labor, civic fiscal malpractice and high taxes rendered the economic climate unsustainable, which helped chase away employers and the jobs they used to create in Detroit (and continue to create in other states without those influences), which aggravated the damage being independently done in municipal governance and hastened the collapse. And yes it was Democrats---and only Democrats----had all of the power and in my view, a corresponding amount of the responsibility for the decisions that they made during their stewardship of public resources. A lot of bad things can be said about big Three execs and Republicans who lost the races for city government, but none of them made the promises to the city employees that have left the pension funds $10B short. They didn't have the power to do that or not do that. Democrats---and only Democrats---had that power and only they made those promises that now have to be paid for by other people. That's not arguable.
As to your second asserted argument, I do believe that operating factories in Alabama are better outcomes than shuttered, abandoned buildings leaking water and raw sewage into the rest of a town in bankruptcy, where they are having to actually demolish entire city blocks and just surrender them back to nature. No one is advocating that we copy and paste the entire Alabama State Code into the General Statutes and preempt all local laws and "that we'd all be better off" if we did so (again, this must be from another post I skipped over), but I don't think it hurts to confront the collapse of a city and examine why it lost its manufacturing base (and where it chose to go, and why). Knowing what, why, how and when might help us digest the....realities creating those statistics. Perhaps we could even ask those questions without calling each other white supremacists. Someday, maybe.
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Deacon923
Scooter Banks
Um, thanks for your response? :noidea:
ChrisL68
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here is a history of NC employment growth, so the loss of jobs occurred primarily during the year or two following the massive financial crisis at the end of the Bush term. The actual employment level growth numbers in 2013 don't look much different than 2012 or 2011.
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/north-carolina/
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/employment/north-carolina/
Watch this, if you haven't yet, and let me know what you think. Skip to the 18:00 block and just give it ten minutes. It's a tour du fail in the management of public resources. It's enraging, actually, when you think about who really pays the costs of this gross negligence.
Deacon923
Scooter Banks
I think I have made it clear that I agree with you regarding the failures in Detroit. I don't agree with some of the conclusions you draw, or at least strongly imply, despite now denying that you drew them or implied them. I don't need to watch a youtube video in order to agree with you more strongly that Detroit is a disaster. But I am glad that you are concerned about the citizens of that city, it is true that the worst impacted are those least able to cope.