5 ms·

That doesn't answer the question. Without some sort of countervailing policy to concentrate wealth, it would seem that growth ought to lead to broad growth.

jerf 11y ago
Detroit is huge. It's really, really big. It was once a top-10 city in the world and one of the wealthiest. Now it's dirt poor (by American standards) and significantly depopulated, but it's still physically huge. It's like when you cut back a really big tree... it can't help but grow back with little shoots, because if what's left of the plant tries to revitalize the entire empty shell, it'll simply die trying. It would be a grave error to choke off the shoots of growth in Detroit out of some misguided sense of it somehow not being fair that it's not evenly distributed. This isn't San Francisco in wealth and power that maybe is doing something you don't like, with resources to spare if it just did $WHATEVER. This is, even now, a city on the edge, a city with massive financial problems even with its current financial outlays that you would probably find horribly inadequate, a city with no resources to speak of. Choke off the growth shoots and you won't get a broad-based resurgence, you'll just get nothing. (First rule of wealth redistribution: Make sure there is wealth to redistribute! The only way the city is going to get resources to spread the revitalization around is if there is somebody being successful, somewhere.)
- PavlovsCat 11y ago
  It was a simple question, not a suggestion to choke off anything. I find it curious that merely asking "why did this problem come to exist in the first place" is met with downvotes and advice about "wealth distribution" that sounds an awful lot like trickle-down economics.
  - jerf 11y ago
    It is not hard to read the code words of the modern gestalt in its ever-increasing uniformity. The defense that the code words weren't really meant "that way" is ever-more feeble. And arguing about trickle-anything is irrelevant if you start with nothing to trickle in any direction, and then ensure that there continues to be nothing to trickle in any direction. You can't redistribute what isn't there. But the real point of my message is that Detroit is huge. Geographically it's much bigger than San Francisco. You can drive for 20-30 minutes at full highway speeds starting in Detroit and still be in Detroit. There's a few shoots coming up, yes, but they are still pretty small compared to what needs to be there for the city to shed its current reputation.
gpvos 11y ago
Yes, but it can take quite some time to do so. Especially if you want it to spread geographically; by itself, wealth does have a tendency to concentrate.

jerf 11y ago

Detroit is huge. It's really, really big. It was once a top-10 city in the world and one of the wealthiest. Now it's dirt poor (by American standards) and significantly depopulated, but it's still physically huge. It's like when you cut back a really big tree... it can't help but grow back with little shoots, because if what's left of the plant tries to revitalize the entire empty shell, it'll simply die trying. It would be a grave error to choke off the shoots of growth in Detroit out of some misguided sense of it somehow not being fair that it's not evenly distributed. This isn't San Francisco in wealth and power that maybe is doing something you don't like, with resources to spare if it just did $WHATEVER. This is, even now, a city on the edge, a city with massive financial problems even with its current financial outlays that you would probably find horribly inadequate, a city with no resources to speak of. Choke off the growth shoots and you won't get a broad-based resurgence, you'll just get nothing. (First rule of wealth redistribution: Make sure there is wealth to redistribute! The only way the city is going to get resources to spread the revitalization around is if there is somebody being successful, somewhere.)

PavlovsCat 11y ago
It was a simple question, not a suggestion to choke off anything. I find it curious that merely asking "why did this problem come to exist in the first place" is met with downvotes and advice about "wealth distribution" that sounds an awful lot like trickle-down economics.
- jerf 11y ago
  It is not hard to read the code words of the modern gestalt in its ever-increasing uniformity. The defense that the code words weren't really meant "that way" is ever-more feeble. And arguing about trickle-anything is irrelevant if you start with nothing to trickle in any direction, and then ensure that there continues to be nothing to trickle in any direction. You can't redistribute what isn't there. But the real point of my message is that Detroit is huge. Geographically it's much bigger than San Francisco. You can drive for 20-30 minutes at full highway speeds starting in Detroit and still be in Detroit. There's a few shoots coming up, yes, but they are still pretty small compared to what needs to be there for the city to shed its current reputation.

gpvos 11y ago

Yes, but it can take quite some time to do so. Especially if you want it to spread geographically; by itself, wealth does have a tendency to concentrate.