.
Joseph Stiglitz is always worth reading, and sharing:
… Detroit’s travails arise in part from a distinctive aspect of America’s divided economy and society. As the sociologists Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff have pointed out, our country is becoming vastly more economically segregated, which can be even more pernicious than being racially segregated. Detroit is the example par excellence of the seclusion of affluent (and mostly white) elites in suburban enclaves. There is a rationale for battening down the hatches: the rich thus ensure that they don’t have to pay any share of the local public goods and services of their less well-off neighbors, and that their children don’t have to mix with those of lower socioeconomic status.
The trend toward self-reinforcing inequality is especially apparent in education, an ever shrinking ladder for upward mobility. Schools in poorer districts get worse, parents with means move out to richer districts, and the divisions between the haves and the have-nots — not only in this generation, but also in the next — grow ever larger.
Residential segregation along economic lines amplifies inequality for adults, too. The poor have to somehow manage to get from their neighborhoods to part-time, low-paying and increasingly scarce jobs at distant work sites. Combine this urban sprawl with inadequate public transportation systems and you have a blueprint for transforming working-class communities into depopulated ghettos…
The same skewed priorities that have gutted Detroit at the local level are echoed in a void at the level of national policy. Every country, every society, has regions and industries whose stars are rising, and others that are in decline. Silicon Valley has, for some time, been America’s rising star — just as the upper Midwest was a hundred years ago. With technological change and globalization, though, the Midwest’s comparative advantage as a global manufacturing hub has ebbed, for reasons too well known to list here. Markets, however, often don’t do a good job of self-rejuvenation.
Rather than deal purposefully with this changing economic landscape with useful policies encouraging the growth of other industries, our government spent decades papering over the growing weaknesses by allowing the financial sector to run amok, creating “growth” based on bubbles. We didn’t just let the market run its course. We made an active choice to embrace short-term profits and large-scale inefficiency…
Ensuring that bankruptcy proceeds in a way that is good for Detroit will require vigilance, and is only the first step in recovery. In the longer term, we will need to change the way we run our metropolitan areas. We need to provide better public transportation, an education system that promotes a modicum of equality of opportunity, and a system of metropolitan “governance” that works not just for the 1 percent, nor even for the top 20 percent, but for all citizens.
And on the national level, we need policies — investment in education, training and infrastructure — that smooth America’s transition away from a dependency on manufacturing for jobs. If we don’t, post-Great Recession bankruptcies like those in Jefferson County, Ala., Vallejo, Calif., Central Falls., R.I., and now Detroit will become far too common.
CarolDuhart2
We need diversity and investment for the nation’s sake.
mai naem
More of what’s wrong with Kansas. Bloomberg’s got a piece up saying that 4/5 of counties which voted for Romney also had the highest increases in food stamp use between 2007-2011.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-14/food-stamp-cut-backed-by-republicans-with-voters-on-rolls.html
srv
It is highly questionable that America will ever be able to recover from its failed experiment with liberalism.
Chris
All of this should be patently obvious, but for ideological reasons, we just can’t do it, because shut up that’s why.
srv
AL, you are a traitor regurgitating that nattering nabob of negativity Stiglitz. Krugman says there is no structural cause for unemployment. You might as well be quoting Friedman or Glenn Beck.
smintheus
Get a load of the mindlessly vicious comments on Jack Germond’s obituary at the Baltimore Sun. Apparently Drudge linked to it, and the flying monkeys descended.
Narcissus
Why is there a comments section for obituaries
jesus
smintheus
@Narcissus: Good question.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Narcissus: It’s not like the deceased will take offense or respond.
PIGL
@BillinGlendaleCA: Obits aren’t for the benefit of the deceased. When you are dearly departed, I am sure your survivors will relish having a pack of rabid dogs piss on your grave.
Those commenters need to have their heads removed. The world would be better for it, and they none the worse.
BillinGlendaleCA
@PIGL: I think I wasn’t clear in what I meant. The deceased won’t care, what’s the point of people commenting. I thought it might be clear in context, but wasn’t.
dewzke
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45755822/ns/msnbc-the_ed_show/vp/52600129#52600129 added with no other comment.
Mnemosyne
In happier news, the Prop 8 assholes had their final day in court, at the end of which the California Supreme Court told them to get the fuck out and stop bothering the court with their bullshit.
Violet
@BillinGlendaleCA: The people are commenting out of their own needs. They feel insufficient so strike out at others. The fact that in this case the other is dead is irrelevant to them.
It is, however, horrible for the family.
Ruckus
@srv:
Have you been drinking John’s share as well as your own?
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Mnemosyne: That argument was bizarre, even for them.
NickT
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Let’s face it, Jesus hasn’t exactly been on a hot atheist-blasting streak recently.
PIGL
@BillinGlendaleCA: Sorry if I was too attacky. I don’t know or understand why someone would feel the need to write comments like that. I mean, I have said unkind things about dead public figures *in my own fora*, but would not think to do so in their obits. I might piss on their graves, but not during the funeral, FFS. There’s something wrong with those people.
Mnemosyne
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
In their defense, it was the only one they had, because every court up to and including the US Supreme Court had already decided that their previous argument of But gay people are icky! was not a valid legal argument.
Redshirt
The destruction of the country by the Republicans is proof Big Government doesn’t work.
Vote Republican!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Mnemosyne: I asked you this before, but I think you didn’t see it. What do you think of Jerry’s Deli in LA?
mdblanche
This awful story might relate more to the disability rights thread, but since it’s dead I’m posting it here.
Mnemosyne
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
You’re right, I didn’t see it. Honestly, most of the Jerry’s Delis near me (Glendale/Burbank) have gone out of business, so I don’t really think much about them at all. They were okay the few times I ate at one when I lived on the Westside. Good matzoh ball soup, at least in this shiksa’s opinion.
I was way too excited that they were opening a branch of Le Pain Quotidien at the Americana, which I can easily get to from home or work, but I haven’t actually gone yet.
Mnemosyne
@mdblanche:
I’m assuming that the person distributing the flyers will never understand the irony of anonymously revealing other people’s personal information.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Violet: Agreed about the family. So you’re saying they enjoy arguing with their dinning room table.
@PIGL: No problem, I was unclear. I went over and read the obit and comments. several also want to piss on ol’ Jack’s grave, though there isn’t going to be one. I guess they could piss in the river his ashes are being scattered, though I’m sure that may be against several laws.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Mnemosyne: thanks.. I’ve been in one once, somewhere near Century City, my LA geography is kind of shaky. I liked it okay, but wasn’t sure what LA people thought of it. There isn’t really anything like it around where I live here in the south bay.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
Isn’t Nate & Al’s the 800-piound gorilla of L.A. delis?
Mary G
Higgs Boson’s Mate has been introducing himself to people as my “rescue human” since Citizen_X dubbed him that, so I think I’ll call him that here from now on, so I don’t have to remember where the apostrophe goes in his nym.
He is looking much better; I told him yesterday that he had gone in a week from looking like a denizen of Skid Row to a vacationing college professor, and he has been walking to the store and doing his version of Michael Flatley’s River Dance on a huge mountain of cans and bottles that were piled up in my garage so we can take them to be recycled tomorrow. Today we went to Lowe’s, a plant nursery and a pet store.
He has now been vetted and found acceptable by my surrogate mom. I have just told most people he’s my friend from the town he was living in, which is near one of my old stomping grounds, so they just assumed he’s an old buddy from days gone by.
Some people you tell the whole truth to, though. She lost her wonderful husband in May but wanted to wait until this month to have his celebration of life, when family and friends from all over the country could more easily attend. I was there Saturday and mentioned the total stranger from the internet I had left back at my house and assured her everything would be fine. She was unconvinced.
I figured she was going to be over in a week or so, but it only took three days. She called yesterday morning and announced that she was coming over with a casserole for dinner and we should be present with a salad made. She is a former junior high school principal and knows how to run an interrogation. After she extracted most of his life story the rescue human passed her muster with flying colors. She gave me the wink and the nod as she left and sent me an email apologising for coming off like the Gestapo Inquisition Squad. (NOBODY expects the…)
If you have 15 minutes, this is a great video done by their son about his dad. He has always been an awesome photographer and now that his youngest has finished her first year at UC Santa Cruz, he has been doing some shows and working for some bands and hopes to quit the day job at some point. I always mean to tout his pictures in Cole’s “artists among us” threads and never remember to. This picture is my favorite.
Redshirt
@Mary G: You’re Grade A Weapons Awesome, Mary G
ruemara
@Mary G: I’m loving your updates. Brightest blessings to you, HBM and surrogate mom, who knows how to conduct a grilling better than Bobby Flay.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Mary G: THANK YOU for that update.
Violet
@Mary G: Love your updates, Mary G. So vivid, I can just imagine Dr. Rescue Human doing the riverdance on your recyclables. And the former middle school principal deciding her opinion of the situation was necessary, casserole in hand.
Glad it’s all working out so well for you guys. You are definitely Grade A Weapons Awesome.
Yatsuno
@Mary G: Tu esta una angeli. :)
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Yatsuno: Sisi.
Ruckus
@Mary G:
Good news for the both of you.
A double rescue in one fell swoop. Not a bad days work.
Is there anything we can do?
Mary G
@Ruckus: Nothing that I can think of right now.
Thanks to everyone for the kind words.
WereBear
@Mary G: I love “rescue human.”
Blessings to you both.
Debbie(aussie)
OWhat a woman one who has actually put her words in to actions. MaryG & HBM please take care of each other………..one ….. Step.. …. At a time…..
Best wishes, Deb(Aus)
Klare
@Narcissus: More hits, more ads. Who woulda thought?
Klare
@Mary G: Tell HBM that we are all rescue humans at one time or another. Rescuing one another makes life 3D. Thanks for the update. Makes my day, along with seeing Cole’s post.
Suffern ACE
@mdblanche: Christ. And what happens if the community decides you’re not disabled? Are you stripped of the right to vote?
Tone In DC
No doubt. Seen some friends in a bad way, on a few occasions. Seen myself in a bad way as well, after hearing those friends tell me about it.
And yes… Mary G is weapons grade awesome.
Ultraviolet Thunder
This is especially true in the Detroit area. The city has 1/3 of the area’s population, much higher unemployment and only 10% of the job postings for the region. There are jobs around here, Detroiters just can’t get to them. Mass transit? What part of Motor City is unclear to you?
Three of the 5 wealthiest ZIP codes in MI are in the Detroit suburbs. The city’s ZIPs are all in the lower third. Voluntary segregation along economic and racial lines is very strong here.
negative 1
@Ultraviolet Thunder: Connecticut is very good at that, also. Check out the socioeconomic (and actually, racial as well) splits between cities like New Haven, New London, Bridgeport, Hartford and their surrounding neighbors.
schrodinger's cat
Did anyone read MoDo’s evisceration of Summers yesterday, it was brilliant!
boatboy_srq
Not to be the perennial wet blanket, but anyone looking at what passes for urban planning in much of the South and Southwest would laugh their a## off at this suggestion. It’s truthful, and valid, but absolutely impossible with the Teahad so thoroughly entrenched in the New South. Not to mention that, to the Reichwing, the voluntary segregation, limitation of opportunity, containment of Teh Other in select enclaves and all the other artifacts of neglecting Stiglitz’ prescription is feature-not-bug territory.
I Heart Breitbartbees
@boatboy_srq: I agree about urban planning in the South. The Alabama part of Florida, or as they call it,the Panhandle, has roads that could have been designed by M. C. Escher.