Yes, in the same way that Illinois is a part of the US or that Mars is a part of the solar system or that the a moon orbits a planet.
However, a book about illinois, Mars, or one specific moon isn't really the same subject even if it is part of the larger subject. Illinois is not California any more than Mars is Earth.
So for people not from Chicago, Streeterville is a neighborhood that has a lot of young college graduates working professional jobs and retired old people who live near the hospitals on purpose.
As a Chicago native, just to add to this point, I also think there might be some problems with how they are looking at the data. People move around, a lot, and both those neighborhoods are at extreme ends of what conditions people would move. Bad luck, lost job, troubles with law, health issues or some other problem, your likelihood of moving to Englewood over Streeterville is well ... a lot higher. Retired, done well in life, taken care of your health, looking to live longer and have walking access to the top hospital, the reverse obviously. So it seems likely the statistics they are using have some major issues.
However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t agree Englewood is in bad shape and anything that could be done to better the lives of it’s residents should be attempted.
I lived in Chicago for 8 years. Here is my take on how it got so bad:
1) Decades ago, instead of raising taxes, the city started borrowing money and issuing deferred payments, such as excessively generous retirement packages (instead of raises, which would have required additional taxes).
2) Now the bill is due. Large amounts of taxpayer dollars aren't actually being used to pay for police, libraries, and schools, but are instead paying off deferred expenses from decades ago.
3) Without adequate funding, crime has skyrocketed as the city continues to crumble, unable to provide basic services. This hits the poor disproportionately.
I don't recommend anyone live in Chicago. I never want to go back. Every year I lived there I hated it more and more. It's a scary place. Now I live in Dallas. At first I hated Dallas, but every year I've been here I loved it more and more.
> Decades ago, instead of raising taxes, the city started borrowing money
Also known as "starve the beast", a proud strategy still proposed by many of the so called elites in charge of tax policy and their good, rich friends.
Bad news: Those who profited from it are the same people who live 30 years longer. And with the low taxes they pay there's more than enough money left for bribing .. err I'm sorry .. completely legal lobbying to make sure this doesn't change.
I was riding on an airplane back to Chicago after visiting Dallas. As the plane took off, the woman next to me started crying uncontrollably. Sometime before takeoff, she had just learned that her husband was murdered. I got the f_ck out of Chicago.
I was robbed in Chicago twice, once successfully, once not. A person was murdered on my street corner, probably because the perpetrator thought they could get away with it because of the victims skin color and the way they looked.
I would say to those college kids that they probably don't get out enough. Perhaps they live in a far northern suburb, removed from the problems of the city
these takes on Chicago are tiresome and false. Sure, there is crime in Chicago, but plenty of crime in SF or Oakland as well. The city is doing quite well, lots of new construction, new restaurants, 3% unemployment. The state has fiscal problems that will get resolved over time.
A third of the city is very safe. The guy you're replying to went to U Chicago which is notoriously surrounded by not safe areas that are depopulating and falling alart and not dissimilar to what people think of as Detroit.
Edit: For example our murder victims are predominantly male black and young. There are a lot of neighborhoods where the murder rate is crazy near 100 murders / 100,000 people per year and a bunch of neighborhoods with 0 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-homi...
Judging all of Chicago based on Hyde Park is like judging DC based on Anacostia, or San Francisco based on the Tenderloin. Every large city has certain neighborhoods with high crime, unfortunately. One of Chicago’s just happens to host a world class university. It’s just a very narrow and unflattering view of an entire metropolitan area. Everyone I know who lives in Chicago laughs at all the national press proclaiming it a war zone, it just doesn’t match up with the lives experience of so many people. Now, I think that points to a larger issue of inequality and socioeconomic segregation, but nonetheless it just isn’t reality that all of Chicago is a wasteland.
They shouldn't laugh. Gang violence in Chicago won't impact them and doesn't change how nice a city Chicago is to live in if you're wealthy and if you want to run a business; it is one of the great US cities. But it is also other things, at the same time. The violence in Chicago is no joke. I live just outside the city, in Oak Park, which is across Austin Blvd from the (rough) west side of Chicago. Black kids in Oak Park have friends in Austin --- why wouldn't they? It's across the street! --- and if they go hang out with their friends in Austin, they get shot.
The safe parts of Chicago are very safe. The dangerous parts of Chicago are, for residents or people who could be mistaken for residents, a calamity and a legitimate national embarrassment.
There is a well known story of an African chemistry PhD student at UChicago in the last decade who had just defended and was shot to death in a robbery right next to Midway Market. One of the perps got 120 years.
You did hit the nail on the head, it is privilege divide largely. There’s a handful of ‘bad’ neighborhoods where nobody goes if you have any option not to. It’s kind of disgusting that that’s the state of things, but outside of those few areas, it’s a beautiful city.
Likewise, a lot of the health issues are the result of poor nutrition, lead paint, and lead in the tap water. Middle class people live in more recently renovated houses, have more grocery stores nearby, and can afford water filters or bottled water.
As someone who lives in Chicago, I would caution against taking the claims in this post as face value. This specific point is not true:
>3) Without adequate funding, crime has skyrocketed as the city continues to crumble, unable to provide basic services. This hits the poor disproportionately.
The demographics of the city are changing rapidly, anyone who lived here “years ago” and thinks they know about living here today is working with old data.
I honestly couldn't tell which one of you was being truthful? I thought maybe you were trying to make Chicago seem better than it is or maybe HN User "jostmey" was being a bit alarmist.
Anyway, I had to google thee historical violent crime data myself. Turns out neither of you are being entirely honest. GP is definitely wrong when he asserts that crime has skyrocketed from "three decades ago". Would have been late 80s, early 90s and historical data says crime was much higher at that time. (Multiple times higher actually. So "jostmey" was not a little off, but way off on that assertion according to data.)
And you're not being entirely honest when you say demographics have changed and imply that means a change in crime rates. At least, the rate of decrease of violent crime has gone nowhere over the past 30 years or so. It's decreasing at the same rate today, as it was in 2009, and in 1999. Meanwhile, demographic rate of change was near constant until it ratcheted up around 2008 apparently. (And then only in downtown, and only in the income dimension. Not racially.) So, following your implication, the rate of decline in, say, violent crime, should have ratcheted up around that time as well.
The really interesting thing though is that even if I had validated either of your assertions in the data, neither of your explanations shed much light on plausible reasons for the disparity the article mentions. It's like you two just took your preferred world views and started arguing with each other without regard to what the data actually stated, or even what the original question actually was.
I mean, OK, we get it. You like Chicago. Fine. Just say that and leave it at that, don't try to snow us.
Same with "jostmey". We get it. You don't like Chicago. Just say that and leave it there. Why try to blow smoke up our collective rears?
According to Census ACS from 2017, the city went from 35% Black in 2010 to 30.5% in 2017. That is a pretty rapid shift in under s decade. Hard numbers fell from 930k to 830k.
Most of the population loss is concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods. There are also plenty of South Side neighborhoods that are doing quite well (Hyde Park, Beverly, Mt Greenwood, Kenwood, Woodlawn, McKinley Park, Chinatown, Pilsen, Bridgeport, Garfield Ridge, and a few more). Those places don’t get the news coverage so everyone lumps an entire 1/3 of the city into “dump”.
What does that have to do with Chicago's life expectancy disparity being 30 years? Are you saying then, that what we should really be doing is comparing the life expectancy of people in Chinatown, with people in Chinatown, instead of comparing people across your whole city?
Because what I'm trying to explain to you guys is that, this is not how the rest of us outside Chicago think. If you were to ask me, I would say, yeah, it seems totally reasonable to compare life expectancies across the entire city of Madison for instance. (I'm from Wisconsin.) I'd wager if you'd ask someone from Nebraska, they'd say, "Yeah, it seems reasonable to compare life expectancies for people across the entire city of Lincoln." We're not coming up with some off the wall metric to try to make Chicago look bad here.
You and this "jostmey" guy are doing that for us.
Finally, look, for the average person, we see a black guy, we're gonna say he's black. Not "Two or more races". Not "Black with hispanic origin". Etc etc etc. So, going back to the original point, we didn't get hung up on that stuff 3 decades ago. In 70, 80,90, whatever, we, even the census,just called people black. (Maybe we might have called them mixed if they were mixed, but that's certainly not how our censuses would have counted them back then.) So, you throw the 2 or more ethnicities or whatever group in and you get, what? 33, 34% of what we in 1980 would have simply called "black"? I'd be willing to bet money that the two or more races / hispanic census stuff started right around the same time that the percentage of blacks in the census declined.
Point being, these ratios aren't really changing much. Only society's definitions of what is black has changed. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, maybe that's neither? The point I'm making is that demographics aren't changing much from 80, 90, 00 whatever. At least racially. Fewer total people, yes. But the ratios seem to be relatively constant. Now if you go back further, obviously you get radical change. But the original post said "last three decades". So you have to look at the last 3 decades, and not cherry pick.
Except that you are doing the same cherry picking that you accuse others of. I showed data from 2010 to 2017 to illustrate how significant the demographic change has been. For some reason, you decided to go back to 1980 to make a counter-point. Our definitions haven’t changed since 2010, so I’m not sure that’s a valid point.
To the rest of your point, test we should compare these things across cities, that is how we see the disparities. That point is more relevant to the original article and not the specific point I was responding to.
Because the original post said 3 decades ago. Which would be the 80s. Again, no one is making up stuff to try and make Chicago look bad here. You guys brought up the 3 decade time period, and I only said, "well, ok, let me look at the data since the 80s." There's nothing underhanded there guy.
And counting blacks since 2010, when you changed the definition, so that people who were called black in 1980, or 1990, or whatever, are no longer called black. Well duh. Yeah, if mixed kids are born in Chicago, and you guys call them, I don't know, whatever it is you call them. Then they won't be counted in your data as black. Is that surprising to you? So basically to me, I feel like you guys don't count any mixed blacks, and then are surprised that the number of blacks is going down? I mean come on man. That should be a no brainer. But the important thing here, is that no one really outside of Chicago would look at those people and say they are not black. And again, in 80 or 90 or maybe even 00, they counted them all as black in the census. That's all I'm saying.
Demographics aren't just white, black, brown iot runs deeper than that. In Chicago's case, the city's workforce is growing younger and more educated at a rapid clip. Here's an article written today about it, "Chicago’s new demographics: ‘A third San Francisco, two-thirds Detroit’":
==His analysis of U.S. Census Data found that between 2005 and 2017, the city of Chicago’s 25-39 year-old age cohort grew 15.7 percent, while falling dramatically in the rest of Cook County (7.2 percent drop) as well as the metro area outside of Cook County (5.9 percent decline).
==In addition, between 2005-17, Chicago’s population of 25-44 year-olds with a bachelors degrees or additional advanced degrees grew 42 percent. As Saunders wrote in a Twitter thread sharing his findings, “An older, less educated, manufacturing-oriented populace is being replaced by a younger, more educated, knowledge-economy populace.” Chicago now has a higher share of college educated workers than the surrounding suburbs.
This phenomenon is dragging down the already depressed neighborhoods the most. The jobs their residents relied on are disappearing. The residents with means are typically moving out (to the suburbs or Sun Belt cities), leaving behind the most at-risk residents.
Would you please edit the snarky bits and personal swipes out of your posts to HN? You've packed a surprising number of those into your posts in this thread. They're not necessary, they degrade discussion, they weaken your argument, they invite worse from others, and they break the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I grew up in those neighborhoods. When people refer to the "South Side of Chicago", they're not talking about Beverly; they're talking about the neighborhoods you're in when you cross 90th St. to the north, or Ashland to the east.
The white enclaves you're talking about occupy a relatively small amount of real estate. The troubled South Side is comparatively vast.
Would you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN? You used to do this a lot, and then your contributions got somewhat better. Please don't backslide.
Has the city caught up on its debt? Have taxes been raised to adequately fund the city? Chicago is a “nice city” if you are inside the ring. Outside the ring are heavily secured rich enclaves, smoldering ghettoes, and the shrinkinh middle class communities who sit inbetween.
I think you effectively described every American city. Even Dallas, the example of a well-run city provided, had a pension bubble that almost burst into insolvency in 2017.
Chicago’s problem is compounded by the fact that Illinois is extremely indebted, to the tune of tens of billions more compared to other states, and since Chicago is where all the money in Illinois is, that is where it will have to come from.
I am having trouble connecting any part of this to the actual city of Chicago, in which there are no "heavily secured rich enclaves", and absolutely huge tracts of middle class bungalow-belt housing.
You can drive to Lincolnshire or Kenilworth to see rich-folks compounds, in the suburbs. In Chicago, the white folks in Beverly and Oak Park and Evanston live in nice houses on small lots across the street from rougher neighborhoods. You'll find more metal gates in (rough) Lawndale than you will in (rich) Lincoln Park.
Also, what is this "ring" you're talking about? Can you be more specific?
I've lived here my whole life (grew up in Beverly, moved to Lakeview and Uptown, ultimately ended up raising our family in Oak Park, just off Austin) and I don't know what change you're referring to.
Right on time: Chicago’s new demographics: ‘A third San Francisco, two-thirds Detroit’
>His analysis of U.S. Census Data found that between 2005 and 2017, the city of Chicago’s 25-39 year-old age cohort grew 15.7 percent, while falling dramatically in the rest of Cook County (7.2 percent drop) as well as the metro area outside of Cook County (5.9 percent decline).
>In addition, between 2005-17, Chicago’s population of 25-44 year-olds with a bachelors degrees or additional advanced degrees grew 42 percent. As Saunders wrote in a Twitter thread sharing his findings, “An older, less educated, manufacturing-oriented populace is being replaced by a younger, more educated, knowledge-economy populace.” Chicago now has a higher share of college educated workers than the surrounding suburbs.
None of this has anything to do with crime in Chicago. By 2005, Uky Village, Wicker Park, Logan Square and Lincoln Square had been completely gentrified, so much so that we considered moving there with our kids. The fundamental dynamics of Chicago – the yuppy near-north and near-west side neighborhoods, the middle class northwest and bungalow belts, and the tragic, redlined west and south sides, has changed since I was a kid in Beverly.
What you would have said about crime in Chicago in 1998 remains true today, with one possible change being that the 1990s gang crackdowns atomized the gangs and amplified the violence.
==None of this has anything to do with crime in Chicago.==
Sure it does. As working/middle-class jobs leave, neighborhoods who overwhelming relied on those jobs fall into a spiral of dis-investment, de-population and crime.
==the middle class northwest and bungalow belts==
I think this is the part you are missing. Neighborhoods like Portage Park, Jefferson Park, Old Irving Park, Norwood Park and Avondale on the northwest side are not the same middle-class neighborhoods they were 15 years ago. They have become upper-middle class neighborhoods filled with young families.
The traditional city workers who made these strong middle-class communities are getting priced out. The residency requirements are pushing them to other neighborhoods on the west and southwest side. This trend, along with future immigration may be the best hopes for revitalizing these neighborhoods.
==with one possible change being that the 1990s gang crackdowns atomized the gangs and amplified the violence. ==
Yes, breaking up the larger gangs has led to less-structured, block-by-block affiliations. That said, the homicide rate is lower today than it was in the 1990s.
First, Jeff Park is recently popular, but it is still fundamentally a middle class neighborhood full of firefighters and police officers and starter homes. My sister, a public interest DV attorney, and her husband, a local journalist, bought their first house there; as you might imagine, neither are wealthy.
Second, to the extent that these places have changed, none of these changes impact the fundamental dynamics of crime in Chicago. Neighborhoods are gradually gentrifying, sure. That's incompatible with the idea that neighborhood flight is worsening crime.
I think anyone who lived here in the 1990s would recognize pretty much the same Chicago in 2019, modulo the wifi in the cafes.
==My sister, a public interest DV attorney, and her husband, a local journalist, bought their first house there; as you might imagine, neither are wealthy.==
And I have two different co-workers and my tech company who have moved there in the past 5 years. These anecdotes aren't data, but show how personal experience drives perception.
==I think anyone who lived here in the 1990s would recognize pretty much the same Chicago in 2019, modulo the wifi in the cafes==
I think the data disagrees with you. Today, 39% of city residents have college degrees, in 1990, it was 19% [1]. The city has a higher percentage of residents with a college degree than larger, metro Chicago, the first time that has ever been the case. Other ways this can be observed is through the disappearance of the "Chicago accent". As more Big Ten graduates have migrated to the city from around the Midwest, the city's make-up has changed [2].
It relates to crime in the way these people have migrated. If the city was 1/3 working class, 1/3 middle class and 1/3 upper class 30 years ago; today it is more like 2/5 working class, 1/5 middle class, and 2/5 upper class. This mirrors what we have seen across the US economy. It reminds us of the quote, "Chicago is the most American of American cities."
This change has meant that previously working class neighborhoods have lost jobs, residents and investment. Those are the things that lead to increased levels of crime/violence. If we look at any Rust Belt city, we see high murder rates [3]:
>Out of the five metropolitan areas with the highest per capita murder rates, according to CBS News, four are deindustrialized cities: St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit and Cleveland.
Chicago has managed to avoid much of the population loss and economic collapse of these cities, but still saw both happen over the past 40 years.
==Neighborhoods are gradually gentrifying, sure. That's incompatible with the idea that neighborhood flight is worsening crime.==
Except there are 77 neighborhoods, so 25 can be gentrifying and seeing lower crime while 5 are facing de-population and increased crime. It's pretty obvious when you look at the 3 most violent neighborhoods (community areas) of Austin, Garfield Park and Englewood. They are each seeing population decrease and together account for 25% of murders in the city.
Austin, Garfield Park, and Englewood were dangerous in the 1980s, dangerous in the 1990s, dangerous in the 2000s, and are dangerous now. That's no surprise: they're redlined neighborhoods.
Jeff Park is full of houses between 200-300k, and Zillow forecasts the median price there to drop to near 250k. That's data.
I’ve never heard of Detroit as being a low tax city. In fact a quick google found a couple of lists showing it to be the second highest taxed big city in the country. And didn’t the last city tax increase get voted down because economists consulted said a tax hike would actually lower revenue, with the reason given that high tax payers would just move?
for perspective, a lot of HN readers are under 30 or in their early 30s. 30 years is about their entire lives and is NOT a `perfectly normal` difference.
>What is the use of having money, if it does not gives you advantages ?
such a weird thought. i can think of many reasons: to have fun (i.e. fritter away), to spread advantage to other, to use to build something (that won't necessarily confer advantage later).
Chicago has a murder rate of 18.5 per 100,000 residents. That's high, but that's not "Oh, that's why all the poor people die younger" levels, not even close.
But that neighborhood in particular has a higher murder rate, as it's described as "one of Chicago's most violent". In fact, the article itself blames the low life expectancy partly on violence: "The violence, of course, drives down life expectancy and health outcomes."
Question from an European: what is racist in that? We don't know what racism is in my country, we have virtually no foreigners of other races, but I see people labeling each other as racist in contexts that are not at all self-explanatory.
The racism is in the suggestion that the violence is due to race rather than to the stressful conditions in which poverty places people and to institutional problems (ex: underfunded educational systems, the unjust justice system). If the conditions were improved, it is almost certain that the violence would decline. The way that race matters here is that because of race, those neighborhoods are not given the same levels of institutional support and suffer from institutional bias (ex: the Chicago police).
When, in some statistical context, a race has some problem, it naturally becomes a talking point for racists. Blacks disproportionately killing blacks is one of the most common examples. It's hard to differentiate bad-faith from good-faith application of the fact, and, while ideally we give everyone the benefit of all doubt, in reality it is sometimes impractical - e.g. the more terse the statement, the more it appears to not be making a salient point.
Statistics is statistics, it should have nothing to do with race. But downvoting a question just because it is asked, how is this called? Are Europeans downvoted for being outsiders?
Unsubstantive? People are voting with their feet because incapable but very popular politicians have ruined the city.
Chicago is heading inexorably towards bankruptcy and those fat pensions will never be paid, As I said, please turn out the lights if you are the last one left...
While I'm a huge fan of social justice, I have to admit that poor people make some truly awful choices that partly account for their differing life expectancy.
The number of young people smoking in poor neighborhoods is ridiculous. You would have to be an absolute fucking moron to enrich some horrible death-dealing corporation by buying a product that makes you sick. And to do it in an age where the information about what you are doing is readily available is brain dead. The tobacco companies are on record as aiming at, "The poor, the black, the young, and the stupid." How do poor people not notice that?
Same goes for drugs, where the main issue is quality control. I wonder why the stuff that gets carried across Afghanistan on a mule and then cut with rat poison could possibly be bad for me? I know, I'll shove it in my veins and see what happens. No, even smart and rich people can't possibly know what the fuck is in there, but at least they have access to great health care when they get crap growing on their heart valves.
And poor people eat garbage. Why the actual fuck anyone would buy processed food when you can readily get tomatoes and beans and decent meat for far less money, I have no idea. But they gobble it up, all the processed wheat and sugar and salt and fat. Poor people chow. The information is out there.
And when they get any money, it goes instantly on alcohol or horrendously over-priced poor-quality consumer goods. I've volunteered in a community center in the poorest neighborhood in the country and I've seen this continuously. No thought for saving or buying only what you really need. Never occurs to them to buy used. Just fucking hemorrhage money on whatever stupid thing they can think of. Drinking fucking Perrier and talking on the latest iPhone while living in a shelter. WTF?
And they are blighted by check-cashing places with usurious interest rates, nail salons, scams, and cable television draining every last penny they might save for emergencies, or decent food and shelter, or health care. At least their nails will look good when they are dead.
And the church. Jesus Christ people, doesn't it ever occur to you that someone made all that shit up and you just believed it? Now I love Christian philosophy, which is why I work with the poor, but fuck, don't actually believe that crap. Otherwise you will fall prey to every huckster out there just because they fucking said something and you believed it. Isn't it obvious that people lie all the time for their own advantage? That's how you end up spending $100 a week on vitamins when you're morbidly obese and have Type II diabetes and can't afford insulin. Say goodbye to your feet, ya fucking gullible idiot.
Raising a family in Chicago. We like it. Had a bike stolen. Not sure how best to help the poorer areas of the city. Me moving out of state won’t help them, I don’t believe.
There is a timely On The Media series by Brooke Gladstone on eviction. It's directly related to the issues of poverty, especially among racial minorities who have been historically targeted via redlining and other governmental policies. The 2nd episode spends ~20 minutes on the challenges (present and past) of housing in Chicago. When basic housing is a constant struggle, lots of stuff, including reasonable health outcomes and economic opportunity are often out of reach.
Before we start burning witches, I think it's "fair" (yeah, the same word used in the title) to not only decide on fairness based on outcome but also on reasons.
What percentage of being poor is your own doing or 'not doing'?
What life choices do you make? Do you smoke/drink/do drugs, are you obese, are you physically active?
These things affect both how long you live and also how rich you are at the time of your death.
Yeah, I know it's a spiral and it's hard to break out (been there).
Still, nobody will do it instead of every individual, no matter how "social" the government is.
When I went to middle school, we went to an old, collapsing building that was falling apart. Students (including myself) acted terribly. The very next year, we went to a brand new school. Suddenly everybody acted in a much more civilized manner.
Have you never been influenced by your environment? Or are you just not seeing how it influences you?
What that has to do with fairness? It's up to the parents to take care of that (or not).
What kind of age-of-death gap would be "fair"? And what's the point of living longer if you can't afford the medical expenses or simply have no savings to retire on?
I've lived in Chicago my entire life - the city is in a death spiral. When my youngest kid graduates high school I'm out of here.
The finances of the city will inevitably end in some combination of bankruptcy and ruin thanks to toxic pensions, the abuse of them, and the city's refusal to prudently manage around them (though in fairness the pensions have been so toxic that no prudence could keep up with them). It's just algebra. The city (and state) is already insolvent and just resorts to various can-kicking tactics.
Violent crime is tolerated and ignored by most. No one dare point out the elephant in the room that it's committed wildly disproportionately by minorities. A white kid trolls the Cubs with that bogus "okay" symbol and the city goes berserk; 25 black kids shot over the weekend and it's a collective shrug. Things tend to settle at the level of expectations, and a liberal ethos has set expectations for the black community to be all but nonexistent.
The suburbs are dying, and this is reflected in real estate values. Follow the Chicago Tribune's architecture columnist, Dennis Rodkin, on Twitter. Every day this guy features a new home sale in the suburbs where it's sold for less than what it sold for 20, even 30 years ago. It's depressing to see how Illinois' failed policies have a massive tax against families' greatest asset.
The city is dying, as population loss continues at a rapid pace. Chicago has lost more millionaires than any other city in the world over the last decade. The stats are all readily available with a quick search. The real estate values will inevitably follow the path of the suburbs.
The new governor - a bored billionaire heir who's never accomplished anything on his own merit in his life - is about to effectively double the state income tax. The death spiral accelerates. When you tax something you get less of it.
The corruption of the city politicians is tolerated and even joked about as The Chicago Way. Corruption has been normalized, just like it has for places like Russia. These sorts of cultural rot are difficult to reverse.
Do you actually think that the “lack of expectations” from the leftwing has meant that the black community in Chicago has gone into crime? That seems... absurdly racist or pseudoracist in nature. Do white people also fall into crime because of “lack of expectations” as well?
What you describe of black kids dying sounds nothing like “lack of expectations” to me. More like “forsaken communities”.
Not denying any longstanding cultural factors, people go into crime because of a combination of opportunity and motivation (from the studies I remember reading). “Lack of expectations” has never been measured as a problem as far as I know. And your sentiment just sounds like 21st century “white mans burden” all over again.
If poor crime policy is the problem then that’s another thing entirely. But then crime gets reduced by a combination of reducing inequality, increasing opportunities and yes good (sometimes draconian) policing. But you don’t mention that, only that black people in Chicago are criminal somehow because the political class has a “lack of expectations” for them.
I agree that forsaken communities is a problem. That’s why I asked OP if he considered a black problem. I was trying to tease out an answer from him.
Of course he immediately attacked me and refused to answer it directly and called what I said gobblygook. Which makes me think I was right in calling him out.
I think you've proven my point about the inability to confront reality and blame shifting that's allowed violence to spiral out of control. That you call me racist in between all that gobbleygook couldn't be more cliche.
The lack of expectations is simply an observation and alternative way to say that no one actually cares. And since no one cares, the behavior is allowed to continue unabated. We can debate why no one cares and why it's tolerated (I would argue liberal ethos but to each his own) but the fact is that no one cares and that creates some extraordinarily bad incentives over time.
Or could it possibly be that the “War on Drugs” disproportionately targets minorities, as well as arrests and sentencing? Drug use and selling is just as real in the burbs but when little Bobby gets caught it’s swept under the rug, because the judge thinks it’s just youthful indiscretion and “that could be my kid”. When little Jerome gets arrested let’s throw the book at him to keep another “thug” off the street.
Let’s not even get into the difference between how drug abuse is a “disease that needs to be treated” now that it impacts “rural America” instead of the “inner city”.
In fact, if there's any 'death spiral' in cities to speak of, it's the one caused by the War on Drugs and tough-on-crime policies which have led to mass incarceration.
People in low-income areas have few income options. They turn to illegal activities to make money.
They then get incarcerated for those activities. That then removes those income generators (illegal as the income may be) from the community, which in turn impoverishes the area even more. Go to beginning.
Unfortunately there's no immediate fix to this but at least it does seem that there is starting to be more bipartisan agreement that the current mass incarceration system doesn't work.
And then when they get out of jail, no one will hire them because they have a felony conviction.
But the “War on Drugs” was a favorite talking point of both Democrats and Republicans. Now both parties except for a few hard liners on the right and politicians that are in the pockets of private prisons and the bail bonds industry are for prison reform.
This has nothing to do with race. The reason people view the recent wave of rural drug abuse differently is because it largely originates from trusted professionals. Even old people with no prior history of drug addiction are getting caught up in it now.
In the traditional case of drug addiction, it started because somebody said "hey, let's get fucked up". It was foolish self-destructive thrill seeking.
In the modern case of drug addiction, somebody was prescribed Oxycontin for recovery after surgery or an injury. The addiction became established long before turning to illegal street drugs.
So it isn't "these people are white". It's more like "these are responsible people who were in the care of trusted medical professionals".
You really believe that? That most people who are getting addicted in rural America are getting addicted because they were first on prescription pain medicine - including all of the abuse of drugs based on over the counter pseudoephedrine?
And this is just what I’m referring to. It couldn’t possibly be that poor people in rural America are abusing drugs for the same reason that poor people in the “inner city” are using it. Because those drug dealers in rural America are “responsible people”.
There were also stiffer penalties for crack than the same amount of cocaine.
The entire reason that weed became illegal in the first place was because it was used by Mexicans.
Methamphetamine, which is what I think you mean by "abuse of drugs based on over the counter pseudoephedrine", does not get the same sympathy as opioids. The reason is because people aren't getting addicted to methamphetamine via the actions of trusted medical professionals. Methamphetamine is a long way from being over-the-counter, requiring a reaction with either anhydrous cryogenic ammonia or with phosphorous and iodine.
I don't believe that penalties for crack and cocaine are evidence for racial discrimination. (crack being largely black, and cocaine being largely hispanic) When a new drug appears and rapidly becomes popular with lots of resulting violence, we legislate in a panic. The resulting legislation is unlikely to be well-thought-out or consistent with anything else. In the years since then we have made adjustments, most recently in 2018 when Trump helped 2,600 people imprisoned for crack by signing the First Step Act.
In any case, people of all races have a very simple and reliable way to avoid getting in trouble for the non-opioid drugs. Just say no.
I think saying something demonstrably absurd about the black community is a form of racist thinking or belief. Do you also think that white people turn to crime because of “lack of expectations”? If you do I’m willing to give this a pass. If you don’t I don’t understand why you’d think someone wouldn’t consider it strange for you to single them out like that.
Also what I said was not gobbledygook. Perhaps you should take some time to revisit some of your beliefs while looking into actual scientific studies on crime.
That's terrible to hear. Is there any upside at all, you think? I mean things like communities coming together and changing the city over time without government intervention, or maybe some kind of hitting rock bottom is often followed by positive change.
This is all, totally, flagrantly wrong. It's all to be provocative.
Firstly, Chicago is one of the top economic cities in the world. Pensions are a big problem, but they are not going to wreck it. The algebra is fine.
Violent crime is another big problem, but it's a big problem everywhere in US. Cities, and Chicago isn't even near the top, per-capita. It's almost entirely gang-related. The big problem, as everywhere, is the red-lining of the past, drugs, and no opportunities. Illinois just legalized weed, will release tons of people for drug-related crimes, and this might help the hood a lot.
The suburbs are not dying. Real estate isn't great, but guess what, other than a few markets on the west coast, this is what home prices are going to do everywhere. The baby boomers got to have their houses triple, quintuple in value, millennials will not.
The population loss of Chicago is only in areas that, frankly, need population loss. There's no reason to live in some of these communities that are beset with drug problems and have no opportunities. These days people have cell-phones and the internet, they can move to better places all over the country. It's the reverse of the great migration and it's because the country hasn't helped these people ever in their entire history. Meanwhile middle-income and high-income 20 somethings are still flocking to Chicago.
JB Pritzker is the new governor. He is the absolute opposite of a "bored billionaire" who has never accomplished anything in his life. He has guided the Pritzker funds in a huge amount of charity work all over Chicago including, this audience might want to know, huge investment in startups in Chicago.
We are nowhere even close to the normalization of corruption as Russia, that's just stupid.
Edit: I also want to add that I've seen this narrative from three places -- journalists trying to be provocative; Chigoans that like to complain about politics but not get involved (favorite pastime); and Hanity trolls trying to stir up reasons why Democrat havens are poorly run / liberal policies supposedly fail.
Credit ratings keep getting worse. (Illinois is worst in the US)
New sources of taxes enacted. (Weed, gambling)
It's all right there, man. I don't like it anymore than you but sadly every warning sign, every symptom is right there staring at you in the face. If I asked someone to generally describe a death spiral this is what they would describe. And it's not like these are modest problems, we often rank DFL in the country for most of these things.
State/City assets should be sold. Why should the state operate any assets?
Weed and gambling taxes are a good thing, not a bad thing.
Population loss is indeed continuing but it's to be expected. Older people moving to Florida is a big reason. Another reason, Chicago is more expensive than neighboring states. And unless you value big city amenities, there is no reason to stay.
Oh I read it, you're just wrong, unconditionally wedded to politics. I can't argue with people who insist the sky is red, why waste my time...it's a nice day out.
this is nonsense, clearly. Nothing is dying and real estate values being cheap is a great thing. Chicago area has fantastic cultural amenities, low unemployment, lots of restaurants, convenient access to airport, great schools ( some of the best in America ), top unversities, lakefront, etc. We have cold winters and quite a few people move to Florida to escape the climate.
>The suburbs are dying, and this is reflected in real estate values. Follow the Chicago Tribune's architecture columnist, Dennis Rodkin, on Twitter. Every day this guy features a new home sale in the suburbs where it's sold for less than what it sold for 20, even 30 years ago.
Looking through some of these, I'm not surprised.
However, I think its not just taxes and Illinois corruption to blame for the 'death spiral' of far flung suburbs. The housing market in the US is changing in general. Buyers want shorter commutes, urban lifestyles. Living in some of the places Rodkin looks at - Lake Forest, Burr Ridge, Vernon Hills are 1+ hour commutes by train to the loop which a lot of buyers don't want.
I really don't understand how you can blame the downfall of the Chicago suburbs on the city of Chicago.
The suburbs were growing and thriving while Chicago rotted away in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. However, since then the economy, culture, and tastes have changed and there's been a sustained period of urban renewal. As businesses seek to relocate to cities to attract millennial talent, suburban office parks and shopping centers have struggled, forcing them push more of their tax burden on residential property taxes. The younger, college-educated workforce prefers urban amenities like shorter commutes, public transit, cycling and walkable living. This is all exacerbated by the financial circumstances of millennials and zoomers.
It's no surprise that suburbs that provide those things continue to do well. For example, my hometown of Elmhurst, a Chicago suburb, has radically gentrified since I was a child. The home my parents purchased in 1980 for $68,000 is now worth more than ten times that. Why? Because it's walkable, has a legitimate downtown and you can commute to Chicago in 30 minutes during rush hour with Metra.
The one thing that I hope is obvious to everyone is that mainstream American politics lacks a way to resolve this problem. Often political solutions make the problem worse.
What's unique about Chicago, I think, isn't the discrepancy in life expectancy but the visibility of it. Chicago's segregation of outcomes is much more visible for historical reasons including being a Northern city, being a city of millions and being a city in the Midwest. My hope is that Chicago's fix can be applied to the rest of the country.
The context you want for this story is here (ignore the title if it raises your hackles and just read for the factual content, which is quite detailed and accessible).
In short: legal apartheid ended in the US in the 1960s, but economic apartheid, some of it state-supported, continued through the 1970s --- that's in many of your lifetimes. The form it took in Chicago was particularly pernicious: redlining carved up the city like a scalpel, destroying the economic and social fabric of neighborhoods, making it impossible for black folks to productively own homes or create a base on which to build businesses.
It would have taken profoundly competent and principled leadership for the city to pull out of the engine of despair that redlining created. We have not had that.
One item to deeply consider: The same gun laws, yet there is a world of difference in gun violence just a mile or two apart. The same gun laws. What's up with that?
I look forward to the day a difference like this isn't possible.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadHowever, a book about illinois, Mars, or one specific moon isn't really the same subject even if it is part of the larger subject. Illinois is not California any more than Mars is Earth.
However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t agree Englewood is in bad shape and anything that could be done to better the lives of it’s residents should be attempted.
1) Decades ago, instead of raising taxes, the city started borrowing money and issuing deferred payments, such as excessively generous retirement packages (instead of raises, which would have required additional taxes).
2) Now the bill is due. Large amounts of taxpayer dollars aren't actually being used to pay for police, libraries, and schools, but are instead paying off deferred expenses from decades ago.
3) Without adequate funding, crime has skyrocketed as the city continues to crumble, unable to provide basic services. This hits the poor disproportionately.
I don't recommend anyone live in Chicago. I never want to go back. Every year I lived there I hated it more and more. It's a scary place. Now I live in Dallas. At first I hated Dallas, but every year I've been here I loved it more and more.
Also known as "starve the beast", a proud strategy still proposed by many of the so called elites in charge of tax policy and their good, rich friends.
Bad news: Those who profited from it are the same people who live 30 years longer. And with the low taxes they pay there's more than enough money left for bribing .. err I'm sorry .. completely legal lobbying to make sure this doesn't change.
Just part of a privilege divide?
I was robbed in Chicago twice, once successfully, once not. A person was murdered on my street corner, probably because the perpetrator thought they could get away with it because of the victims skin color and the way they looked.
I would say to those college kids that they probably don't get out enough. Perhaps they live in a far northern suburb, removed from the problems of the city
Edit: For example our murder victims are predominantly male black and young. There are a lot of neighborhoods where the murder rate is crazy near 100 murders / 100,000 people per year and a bunch of neighborhoods with 0 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-homi...
The safe parts of Chicago are very safe. The dangerous parts of Chicago are, for residents or people who could be mistaken for residents, a calamity and a legitimate national embarrassment.
Likewise, a lot of the health issues are the result of poor nutrition, lead paint, and lead in the tap water. Middle class people live in more recently renovated houses, have more grocery stores nearby, and can afford water filters or bottled water.
Race statistics for victims. Do you also have them for perpetrators?
FWIW, it's not clear that the former has much to do with the latter.
https://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-o...
>3) Without adequate funding, crime has skyrocketed as the city continues to crumble, unable to provide basic services. This hits the poor disproportionately.
The demographics of the city are changing rapidly, anyone who lived here “years ago” and thinks they know about living here today is working with old data.
Anyway, I had to google thee historical violent crime data myself. Turns out neither of you are being entirely honest. GP is definitely wrong when he asserts that crime has skyrocketed from "three decades ago". Would have been late 80s, early 90s and historical data says crime was much higher at that time. (Multiple times higher actually. So "jostmey" was not a little off, but way off on that assertion according to data.)
And you're not being entirely honest when you say demographics have changed and imply that means a change in crime rates. At least, the rate of decrease of violent crime has gone nowhere over the past 30 years or so. It's decreasing at the same rate today, as it was in 2009, and in 1999. Meanwhile, demographic rate of change was near constant until it ratcheted up around 2008 apparently. (And then only in downtown, and only in the income dimension. Not racially.) So, following your implication, the rate of decline in, say, violent crime, should have ratcheted up around that time as well.
The really interesting thing though is that even if I had validated either of your assertions in the data, neither of your explanations shed much light on plausible reasons for the disparity the article mentions. It's like you two just took your preferred world views and started arguing with each other without regard to what the data actually stated, or even what the original question actually was.
I mean, OK, we get it. You like Chicago. Fine. Just say that and leave it at that, don't try to snow us.
Same with "jostmey". We get it. You don't like Chicago. Just say that and leave it there. Why try to blow smoke up our collective rears?
Most of the population loss is concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods. There are also plenty of South Side neighborhoods that are doing quite well (Hyde Park, Beverly, Mt Greenwood, Kenwood, Woodlawn, McKinley Park, Chinatown, Pilsen, Bridgeport, Garfield Ridge, and a few more). Those places don’t get the news coverage so everyone lumps an entire 1/3 of the city into “dump”.
==https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...
OK moorhosj, let's try to step through this.
What does that have to do with Chicago's life expectancy disparity being 30 years? Are you saying then, that what we should really be doing is comparing the life expectancy of people in Chinatown, with people in Chinatown, instead of comparing people across your whole city?
Because what I'm trying to explain to you guys is that, this is not how the rest of us outside Chicago think. If you were to ask me, I would say, yeah, it seems totally reasonable to compare life expectancies across the entire city of Madison for instance. (I'm from Wisconsin.) I'd wager if you'd ask someone from Nebraska, they'd say, "Yeah, it seems reasonable to compare life expectancies for people across the entire city of Lincoln." We're not coming up with some off the wall metric to try to make Chicago look bad here.
You and this "jostmey" guy are doing that for us.
Finally, look, for the average person, we see a black guy, we're gonna say he's black. Not "Two or more races". Not "Black with hispanic origin". Etc etc etc. So, going back to the original point, we didn't get hung up on that stuff 3 decades ago. In 70, 80,90, whatever, we, even the census,just called people black. (Maybe we might have called them mixed if they were mixed, but that's certainly not how our censuses would have counted them back then.) So, you throw the 2 or more ethnicities or whatever group in and you get, what? 33, 34% of what we in 1980 would have simply called "black"? I'd be willing to bet money that the two or more races / hispanic census stuff started right around the same time that the percentage of blacks in the census declined.
Point being, these ratios aren't really changing much. Only society's definitions of what is black has changed. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad, maybe that's neither? The point I'm making is that demographics aren't changing much from 80, 90, 00 whatever. At least racially. Fewer total people, yes. But the ratios seem to be relatively constant. Now if you go back further, obviously you get radical change. But the original post said "last three decades". So you have to look at the last 3 decades, and not cherry pick.
To the rest of your point, test we should compare these things across cities, that is how we see the disparities. That point is more relevant to the original article and not the specific point I was responding to.
And counting blacks since 2010, when you changed the definition, so that people who were called black in 1980, or 1990, or whatever, are no longer called black. Well duh. Yeah, if mixed kids are born in Chicago, and you guys call them, I don't know, whatever it is you call them. Then they won't be counted in your data as black. Is that surprising to you? So basically to me, I feel like you guys don't count any mixed blacks, and then are surprised that the number of blacks is going down? I mean come on man. That should be a no brainer. But the important thing here, is that no one really outside of Chicago would look at those people and say they are not black. And again, in 80 or 90 or maybe even 00, they counted them all as black in the census. That's all I'm saying.
==His analysis of U.S. Census Data found that between 2005 and 2017, the city of Chicago’s 25-39 year-old age cohort grew 15.7 percent, while falling dramatically in the rest of Cook County (7.2 percent drop) as well as the metro area outside of Cook County (5.9 percent decline).
==In addition, between 2005-17, Chicago’s population of 25-44 year-olds with a bachelors degrees or additional advanced degrees grew 42 percent. As Saunders wrote in a Twitter thread sharing his findings, “An older, less educated, manufacturing-oriented populace is being replaced by a younger, more educated, knowledge-economy populace.” Chicago now has a higher share of college educated workers than the surrounding suburbs.
This phenomenon is dragging down the already depressed neighborhoods the most. The jobs their residents relied on are disappearing. The residents with means are typically moving out (to the suburbs or Sun Belt cities), leaving behind the most at-risk residents.
>https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/6/24/18691792/chicago-econom...
The white enclaves you're talking about occupy a relatively small amount of real estate. The troubled South Side is comparatively vast.
Demographics may change, debt obligations do not.
==https://interactives.dallasnews.com/2017/the-85th/issue/pens...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loop_(CTA)
"The ring" turns up little particular to Chicago.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chicago+"the+ring"&ia=web
There's also "collar counties":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collar_counties
You can drive to Lincolnshire or Kenilworth to see rich-folks compounds, in the suburbs. In Chicago, the white folks in Beverly and Oak Park and Evanston live in nice houses on small lots across the street from rougher neighborhoods. You'll find more metal gates in (rough) Lawndale than you will in (rich) Lincoln Park.
Also, what is this "ring" you're talking about? Can you be more specific?
>His analysis of U.S. Census Data found that between 2005 and 2017, the city of Chicago’s 25-39 year-old age cohort grew 15.7 percent, while falling dramatically in the rest of Cook County (7.2 percent drop) as well as the metro area outside of Cook County (5.9 percent decline).
>In addition, between 2005-17, Chicago’s population of 25-44 year-olds with a bachelors degrees or additional advanced degrees grew 42 percent. As Saunders wrote in a Twitter thread sharing his findings, “An older, less educated, manufacturing-oriented populace is being replaced by a younger, more educated, knowledge-economy populace.” Chicago now has a higher share of college educated workers than the surrounding suburbs.
==https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/6/24/18691792/chicago-econom...
What you would have said about crime in Chicago in 1998 remains true today, with one possible change being that the 1990s gang crackdowns atomized the gangs and amplified the violence.
Sure it does. As working/middle-class jobs leave, neighborhoods who overwhelming relied on those jobs fall into a spiral of dis-investment, de-population and crime.
==the middle class northwest and bungalow belts==
I think this is the part you are missing. Neighborhoods like Portage Park, Jefferson Park, Old Irving Park, Norwood Park and Avondale on the northwest side are not the same middle-class neighborhoods they were 15 years ago. They have become upper-middle class neighborhoods filled with young families.
The traditional city workers who made these strong middle-class communities are getting priced out. The residency requirements are pushing them to other neighborhoods on the west and southwest side. This trend, along with future immigration may be the best hopes for revitalizing these neighborhoods.
==with one possible change being that the 1990s gang crackdowns atomized the gangs and amplified the violence. ==
Yes, breaking up the larger gangs has led to less-structured, block-by-block affiliations. That said, the homicide rate is lower today than it was in the 1990s.
Second, to the extent that these places have changed, none of these changes impact the fundamental dynamics of crime in Chicago. Neighborhoods are gradually gentrifying, sure. That's incompatible with the idea that neighborhood flight is worsening crime.
I think anyone who lived here in the 1990s would recognize pretty much the same Chicago in 2019, modulo the wifi in the cafes.
And I have two different co-workers and my tech company who have moved there in the past 5 years. These anecdotes aren't data, but show how personal experience drives perception.
==I think anyone who lived here in the 1990s would recognize pretty much the same Chicago in 2019, modulo the wifi in the cafes==
I think the data disagrees with you. Today, 39% of city residents have college degrees, in 1990, it was 19% [1]. The city has a higher percentage of residents with a college degree than larger, metro Chicago, the first time that has ever been the case. Other ways this can be observed is through the disappearance of the "Chicago accent". As more Big Ten graduates have migrated to the city from around the Midwest, the city's make-up has changed [2].
It relates to crime in the way these people have migrated. If the city was 1/3 working class, 1/3 middle class and 1/3 upper class 30 years ago; today it is more like 2/5 working class, 1/5 middle class, and 2/5 upper class. This mirrors what we have seen across the US economy. It reminds us of the quote, "Chicago is the most American of American cities."
This change has meant that previously working class neighborhoods have lost jobs, residents and investment. Those are the things that lead to increased levels of crime/violence. If we look at any Rust Belt city, we see high murder rates [3]:
>Out of the five metropolitan areas with the highest per capita murder rates, according to CBS News, four are deindustrialized cities: St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit and Cleveland.
Chicago has managed to avoid much of the population loss and economic collapse of these cities, but still saw both happen over the past 40 years.
==Neighborhoods are gradually gentrifying, sure. That's incompatible with the idea that neighborhood flight is worsening crime.==
Except there are 77 neighborhoods, so 25 can be gentrifying and seeing lower crime while 5 are facing de-population and increased crime. It's pretty obvious when you look at the 3 most violent neighborhoods (community areas) of Austin, Garfield Park and Englewood. They are each seeing population decrease and together account for 25% of murders in the city.
[1] https://danielkayhertz.com/2019/05/15/out-of-state-college-g...
[2] https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/04/why-city-accents-are-fa...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/paidpost/cbs/why-are-murder-rates-so...
Jeff Park is full of houses between 200-300k, and Zillow forecasts the median price there to drop to near 250k. That's data.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/05/nyregion/recalling-new-yo...
such a weird thought. i can think of many reasons: to have fun (i.e. fritter away), to spread advantage to other, to use to build something (that won't necessarily confer advantage later).
Take your racism somewhere else.
Somehow I doubt skin color makes much of a difference here.
Did you have some other kind of statistic in mind?
The number of young people smoking in poor neighborhoods is ridiculous. You would have to be an absolute fucking moron to enrich some horrible death-dealing corporation by buying a product that makes you sick. And to do it in an age where the information about what you are doing is readily available is brain dead. The tobacco companies are on record as aiming at, "The poor, the black, the young, and the stupid." How do poor people not notice that?
Same goes for drugs, where the main issue is quality control. I wonder why the stuff that gets carried across Afghanistan on a mule and then cut with rat poison could possibly be bad for me? I know, I'll shove it in my veins and see what happens. No, even smart and rich people can't possibly know what the fuck is in there, but at least they have access to great health care when they get crap growing on their heart valves.
And poor people eat garbage. Why the actual fuck anyone would buy processed food when you can readily get tomatoes and beans and decent meat for far less money, I have no idea. But they gobble it up, all the processed wheat and sugar and salt and fat. Poor people chow. The information is out there.
And when they get any money, it goes instantly on alcohol or horrendously over-priced poor-quality consumer goods. I've volunteered in a community center in the poorest neighborhood in the country and I've seen this continuously. No thought for saving or buying only what you really need. Never occurs to them to buy used. Just fucking hemorrhage money on whatever stupid thing they can think of. Drinking fucking Perrier and talking on the latest iPhone while living in a shelter. WTF?
And they are blighted by check-cashing places with usurious interest rates, nail salons, scams, and cable television draining every last penny they might save for emergencies, or decent food and shelter, or health care. At least their nails will look good when they are dead.
And the church. Jesus Christ people, doesn't it ever occur to you that someone made all that shit up and you just believed it? Now I love Christian philosophy, which is why I work with the poor, but fuck, don't actually believe that crap. Otherwise you will fall prey to every huckster out there just because they fucking said something and you believed it. Isn't it obvious that people lie all the time for their own advantage? That's how you end up spending $100 a week on vitamins when you're morbidly obese and have Type II diabetes and can't afford insulin. Say goodbye to your feet, ya fucking gullible idiot.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/introducing-the-scarlet-e-...
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/on-the-media-40-acres
https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/scarlet-e-part-iii-tenants...
OTM is always good. This is transcendent.
Listen.
(Or read: yes, there are transcripts.)
What percentage of being poor is your own doing or 'not doing'? What life choices do you make? Do you smoke/drink/do drugs, are you obese, are you physically active?
These things affect both how long you live and also how rich you are at the time of your death. Yeah, I know it's a spiral and it's hard to break out (been there).
Still, nobody will do it instead of every individual, no matter how "social" the government is.
Have you never been influenced by your environment? Or are you just not seeing how it influences you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
What kind of age-of-death gap would be "fair"? And what's the point of living longer if you can't afford the medical expenses or simply have no savings to retire on?
The finances of the city will inevitably end in some combination of bankruptcy and ruin thanks to toxic pensions, the abuse of them, and the city's refusal to prudently manage around them (though in fairness the pensions have been so toxic that no prudence could keep up with them). It's just algebra. The city (and state) is already insolvent and just resorts to various can-kicking tactics.
Violent crime is tolerated and ignored by most. No one dare point out the elephant in the room that it's committed wildly disproportionately by minorities. A white kid trolls the Cubs with that bogus "okay" symbol and the city goes berserk; 25 black kids shot over the weekend and it's a collective shrug. Things tend to settle at the level of expectations, and a liberal ethos has set expectations for the black community to be all but nonexistent.
The suburbs are dying, and this is reflected in real estate values. Follow the Chicago Tribune's architecture columnist, Dennis Rodkin, on Twitter. Every day this guy features a new home sale in the suburbs where it's sold for less than what it sold for 20, even 30 years ago. It's depressing to see how Illinois' failed policies have a massive tax against families' greatest asset.
The city is dying, as population loss continues at a rapid pace. Chicago has lost more millionaires than any other city in the world over the last decade. The stats are all readily available with a quick search. The real estate values will inevitably follow the path of the suburbs.
The new governor - a bored billionaire heir who's never accomplished anything on his own merit in his life - is about to effectively double the state income tax. The death spiral accelerates. When you tax something you get less of it.
The corruption of the city politicians is tolerated and even joked about as The Chicago Way. Corruption has been normalized, just like it has for places like Russia. These sorts of cultural rot are difficult to reverse.
Death spiral.
What you describe of black kids dying sounds nothing like “lack of expectations” to me. More like “forsaken communities”.
Not denying any longstanding cultural factors, people go into crime because of a combination of opportunity and motivation (from the studies I remember reading). “Lack of expectations” has never been measured as a problem as far as I know. And your sentiment just sounds like 21st century “white mans burden” all over again.
If poor crime policy is the problem then that’s another thing entirely. But then crime gets reduced by a combination of reducing inequality, increasing opportunities and yes good (sometimes draconian) policing. But you don’t mention that, only that black people in Chicago are criminal somehow because the political class has a “lack of expectations” for them.
Why not? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory is quite race independent FWIW.
Of course he immediately attacked me and refused to answer it directly and called what I said gobblygook. Which makes me think I was right in calling him out.
The lack of expectations is simply an observation and alternative way to say that no one actually cares. And since no one cares, the behavior is allowed to continue unabated. We can debate why no one cares and why it's tolerated (I would argue liberal ethos but to each his own) but the fact is that no one cares and that creates some extraordinarily bad incentives over time.
Let’s not even get into the difference between how drug abuse is a “disease that needs to be treated” now that it impacts “rural America” instead of the “inner city”.
People in low-income areas have few income options. They turn to illegal activities to make money. They then get incarcerated for those activities. That then removes those income generators (illegal as the income may be) from the community, which in turn impoverishes the area even more. Go to beginning.
Unfortunately there's no immediate fix to this but at least it does seem that there is starting to be more bipartisan agreement that the current mass incarceration system doesn't work.
But the “War on Drugs” was a favorite talking point of both Democrats and Republicans. Now both parties except for a few hard liners on the right and politicians that are in the pockets of private prisons and the bail bonds industry are for prison reform.
In the traditional case of drug addiction, it started because somebody said "hey, let's get fucked up". It was foolish self-destructive thrill seeking.
In the modern case of drug addiction, somebody was prescribed Oxycontin for recovery after surgery or an injury. The addiction became established long before turning to illegal street drugs.
So it isn't "these people are white". It's more like "these are responsible people who were in the care of trusted medical professionals".
https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/topics/substance-abuse
And this is just what I’m referring to. It couldn’t possibly be that poor people in rural America are abusing drugs for the same reason that poor people in the “inner city” are using it. Because those drug dealers in rural America are “responsible people”.
There were also stiffer penalties for crack than the same amount of cocaine.
The entire reason that weed became illegal in the first place was because it was used by Mexicans.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/how-did-marijuana-become-ille...
Also, why are doctors who overprescribe medicine for the financial kickbacks not considered hardened “thugs” like street level drug dealers?
Also check out the same site referenced above and compare use of the same drugs in “large metro”, “small metro”, and “non metro”.
I don't believe that penalties for crack and cocaine are evidence for racial discrimination. (crack being largely black, and cocaine being largely hispanic) When a new drug appears and rapidly becomes popular with lots of resulting violence, we legislate in a panic. The resulting legislation is unlikely to be well-thought-out or consistent with anything else. In the years since then we have made adjustments, most recently in 2018 when Trump helped 2,600 people imprisoned for crack by signing the First Step Act.
In any case, people of all races have a very simple and reliable way to avoid getting in trouble for the non-opioid drugs. Just say no.
Firstly, Chicago is one of the top economic cities in the world. Pensions are a big problem, but they are not going to wreck it. The algebra is fine.
Violent crime is another big problem, but it's a big problem everywhere in US. Cities, and Chicago isn't even near the top, per-capita. It's almost entirely gang-related. The big problem, as everywhere, is the red-lining of the past, drugs, and no opportunities. Illinois just legalized weed, will release tons of people for drug-related crimes, and this might help the hood a lot.
The suburbs are not dying. Real estate isn't great, but guess what, other than a few markets on the west coast, this is what home prices are going to do everywhere. The baby boomers got to have their houses triple, quintuple in value, millennials will not.
The population loss of Chicago is only in areas that, frankly, need population loss. There's no reason to live in some of these communities that are beset with drug problems and have no opportunities. These days people have cell-phones and the internet, they can move to better places all over the country. It's the reverse of the great migration and it's because the country hasn't helped these people ever in their entire history. Meanwhile middle-income and high-income 20 somethings are still flocking to Chicago.
JB Pritzker is the new governor. He is the absolute opposite of a "bored billionaire" who has never accomplished anything in his life. He has guided the Pritzker funds in a huge amount of charity work all over Chicago including, this audience might want to know, huge investment in startups in Chicago.
We are nowhere even close to the normalization of corruption as Russia, that's just stupid.
Edit: I also want to add that I've seen this narrative from three places -- journalists trying to be provocative; Chigoans that like to complain about politics but not get involved (favorite pastime); and Hanity trolls trying to stir up reasons why Democrat havens are poorly run / liberal policies supposedly fail.
Real estate values are some of the worst performing in the country. (see Rodkin)
Taxes keep skyrocketing. (Thanks JB!)
Pension underfunding keeps increasing. (https://wirepoints.org)
Population loss continues.
Violent crime continues. (http://heyjackass.com/home)
Politicians keep getting arrested with almost comical regularity. (See Mick Jagger's joke the other night?)
State/city assets keep getting sold. (Parking meters, Thomson Center, Skyway, etc)
Debt keeps going up, often with usurious terms.
Credit ratings keep getting worse. (Illinois is worst in the US)
New sources of taxes enacted. (Weed, gambling)
It's all right there, man. I don't like it anymore than you but sadly every warning sign, every symptom is right there staring at you in the face. If I asked someone to generally describe a death spiral this is what they would describe. And it's not like these are modest problems, we often rank DFL in the country for most of these things.
Violent crime in decline. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-chicago-...
State/City assets should be sold. Why should the state operate any assets?
Weed and gambling taxes are a good thing, not a bad thing.
Population loss is indeed continuing but it's to be expected. Older people moving to Florida is a big reason. Another reason, Chicago is more expensive than neighboring states. And unless you value big city amenities, there is no reason to stay.
Looking through some of these, I'm not surprised.
However, I think its not just taxes and Illinois corruption to blame for the 'death spiral' of far flung suburbs. The housing market in the US is changing in general. Buyers want shorter commutes, urban lifestyles. Living in some of the places Rodkin looks at - Lake Forest, Burr Ridge, Vernon Hills are 1+ hour commutes by train to the loop which a lot of buyers don't want.
He retweeted this comic which is one aspect:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D9XTp8MXUAE7T7B.png:large
>The real estate values will inevitably follow the path of the suburbs.
How long do you think that'll take?
The suburbs were growing and thriving while Chicago rotted away in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. However, since then the economy, culture, and tastes have changed and there's been a sustained period of urban renewal. As businesses seek to relocate to cities to attract millennial talent, suburban office parks and shopping centers have struggled, forcing them push more of their tax burden on residential property taxes. The younger, college-educated workforce prefers urban amenities like shorter commutes, public transit, cycling and walkable living. This is all exacerbated by the financial circumstances of millennials and zoomers.
It's no surprise that suburbs that provide those things continue to do well. For example, my hometown of Elmhurst, a Chicago suburb, has radically gentrified since I was a child. The home my parents purchased in 1980 for $68,000 is now worth more than ten times that. Why? Because it's walkable, has a legitimate downtown and you can commute to Chicago in 30 minutes during rush hour with Metra.
What's unique about Chicago, I think, isn't the discrepancy in life expectancy but the visibility of it. Chicago's segregation of outcomes is much more visible for historical reasons including being a Northern city, being a city of millions and being a city in the Midwest. My hope is that Chicago's fix can be applied to the rest of the country.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-cas...
In short: legal apartheid ended in the US in the 1960s, but economic apartheid, some of it state-supported, continued through the 1970s --- that's in many of your lifetimes. The form it took in Chicago was particularly pernicious: redlining carved up the city like a scalpel, destroying the economic and social fabric of neighborhoods, making it impossible for black folks to productively own homes or create a base on which to build businesses.
It would have taken profoundly competent and principled leadership for the city to pull out of the engine of despair that redlining created. We have not had that.
One item to deeply consider: The same gun laws, yet there is a world of difference in gun violence just a mile or two apart. The same gun laws. What's up with that?
I look forward to the day a difference like this isn't possible.