This is a great discussion. Thank you. Agree 100% on the whole creative destruction/racism/etc. point, it's impractical and leads the conversation nowhere. On

This is a great discussion. Thank you. Agree 100% on the whole creative destruction/racism/etc. point, it's impractical and leads the conversation nowhere. On a slightly more charitable note than my last post, I'd be interested to see the actual balance sheets of these municipalities. I wouldn't be surprised if the root issue is underfunded pensions, because frankly, even a relatively poor city of people making 15k/year could probably afford sewer and garbage. I think people are just pissed because they bought into the American dream of a house, didn't save enough for retirement, and were planning to use their home equity as their retirement account. Otherwise, there just isn't a great reason not to move. I look at the hardships endured by generation after generation in this country (the US), from the pioneers putting it all in a wagon, the hard labor of homesteaders moving one-ton rocks in their backyard, to the smuggling of slaves out of the south during the civil war, and just wonder, what's happened to us? When did we become such a nation of entitled whiners? I am sympathetic to pensions. Nobody saw the declines in interest rates we've had in the last ten years and in my mind, that's essentially an unforeseeable eventuality that might call for a special tax. In the overwhelming majority of cases I've seen, the underlying problem is crowding out of municipal budgets by pensions. We need to get this under control and I'm happy we're starting to talk about it.