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Javier E

The middle class is shrinking just about everywhere in America - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...st-about-everywhere-in-america

middle-class demographics rich poor

shared by Javier E on 12 May 16 - No Cached
  • a clear majority of American adults no longer live in the middle class, a demographic reality shaped by decades of widening inequality, declining industry and the erosion of financial stability and family-wage jobs
  • hile much of the attention has focused on communities hardest hit by economic declines, the new Pew data, based on metro-level income data since 2000, show that middle-class stagnation is a far broader phenomenon.
  • The decline of the American middle class is "a pervasive local phenomenon," according to Pew, which analyzed census and American Community Survey data in 229 metros across the country, encompassing about three-quarters of the U.S. population. In 203 of those metros, the share of adults in middle-income households fell from 2000 to 2014.
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  • Pew defines middle-income households here as those making between two-thirds and twice the national median household income. For a three-person household in 2014, that means an income between about $42,000 and $125,000.
  • The fact that median incomes have declined over this same time frame also means that the bar to get into the middle class is actually lower now than it was in 2000. Pew's metro-level data are also adjusted for household size and local cost of living.
  • as the middle class has been shrinking, median incomes have fallen, too. In 190 of these 229 metros, the median income dropped over this same time.
  • in other places, the shrinking middle class is actually a sign of economic gains, as more people who were once middle class have joined the ranks at the top. This has been the case in booming energy hubs like Midland, Texas.
  • In the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, the share of adults living in lower-income households has actually held steady over this time. The households disappearing from the middle-class, rather, are reflected in the growing numbers at the top
  • In total, 172 of these 229 metros saw a growing share of households in the upper-income tier. About as many — 160 — saw a growing share at the bottom. And 108 experienced both: The middle class shrank as the ranks of both the poor and the rich grew.
Javier E

The Coronavirus's Effect on Big Cities and Rural Areas - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...610075

pandemic demographics cities

shared by Javier E on 17 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Kolko calculated the number of coronavirus cases per million people within four different regional categories: those in large metropolitan areas of at least 1 million people; those in metros of 250,000 to 1 million; those in small metros with less than 250,000; and those in counties outside of metro areas. The consistent result was that, in most states, heavily populated areas are suffering many more cases per person.
  • fewer than 40 percent of college-educated white voters said they approved of Trump’s response to the outbreak; the OH poll found Biden leading Trump by 14 percentage points among the same voters in Arizona, another stunning margin.
  • In the survey, conducted in mid-March before the worst of the outbreak hit, large hospitals reported that they were using 17 times as many N95 masks as usual, Soumi Saha, the company’s senior director of advocacy, told me. Smaller hospitals were using about seven times as many. “The surge in demand that we are seeing currently is truly unprecedented,” Saha said.
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  • The counties in New York State that fall under the largest metro category—New York City and its environs—have 12,454 cases per million residents. That’s compared with 3,304 in New York’s midsize metros, 1,556 in the smaller metros, and 915 in the nonmetro counties
  • Despite his deficit in the 100 largest counties, Trump won more than 2,600 counties overall in 2016, more than any nominee of either party since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
  • the debate over how quickly to reopen the economy could align Trump with many rural communities against most Democrats and public-health experts.
  • “The piecemeal fashion that we entered into these ‘stay at home’ orders could prove disastrous if we take a similar approach to exiting these orders,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson texted me on Thursday. “A more coordinated approach to relaxing and ultimately ending these harsh restrictions—whether it is national, statewide or regional—is our best insurance against the virus raging back and making all of our sacrifices for naught.”
Javier E

A tale of two metros: how the London tube beat the New York subway | Cities | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-tube-beat-the-new-york-subway

london new york transport metro subway

shared by Javier E on 16 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • “These companies were not bringing the investment that was expected, particularly to infrastructure,” Badstuber says. “To me, this is all leading up to a realisation that, actually, you need a large amount of capital investment in the system. That’s what TfL got, and that’s what TfL needed – and to me that’s what any large system needs.
  • Crucially, central government also committed to new funding.
  • Nearly two-thirds of all trips in London are now made on foot, bicycle or public transit. The goal is to increase that “modal share” to 80% by 2040
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  • “Since TfL was formed in 2000, when just over half of all journeys were by sustainable modes, billions of pounds have been invested into London’s public transport
  • An excellent investigation by the New York Times in 2017 pointed to two key factors. First, in the 1990s, elected officials began a pattern of diverting maintenance funds to other political priorities. Second, too much has since been spent on vanity projects and consulting fees, leaving the system starved for cash. In 2019, only two of New York’s 27 lines have modern signal systems; in London, half of the system is online, with the rest expected by 2023.
  • it’s also an issue of governance. The two systems governing the respecting metros are very different. Unlike TfL, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is a holding entity for separate operating companies (including the Long Island Railroad and Metro-North); unlike TfL, it doesn’t control street operations; and unlike TfL, it doesn’t answer to the city but to the governor of New York state, which many critics say leaves it too vulnerable to politics
  • “Mass transit is not a priority for the federal government,” Moss says. “The federal government is very involved in airport construction and highway finance, but not mass transit. And that’s a key point.”
  • In the US context, New York’s transit problem is New York’s to fight alone.
mattrenz16

Why Blue Places Have Been Hit Harder Economically Than Red Ones - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ed-blue-economic-recovery.html

shared by mattrenz16 on 30 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • different mix of jobs in red and blue places.
  • The consistency of the partisan jobs gap contrasts with a shifting pattern of infections and deaths. In the spring, infection rates were far higher in blue states than in red states, with deaths even more skewed toward blue states, especially in and around New York. But the jobs gap has persisted even though red states have had higher case rates than blue states since June, and higher death rates since July.
  • Across all industries, 57 percent of employed people live in counties that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.
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  • Among hard-hit sectors in the pandemic, 59 percent of workers in lodging and food service; 63 percent in arts, entertainment and recreation; and 66 percent in information industries like publishing, film and telecommunications live in counties that Mrs. Clinton won.
  • In contrast, jobs in most sectors less harmed by the pandemic, like utilities, construction and manufacturing, are disproportionately located in counties that President Trump won in 2016.
  • local businesses like retail and restaurants have been slower to hire in places where more people can work from home.
  • Other factors that are correlated with partisanship are also systematically related to job losses during the pandemic. Employment has fallen more in larger metros and those metros with a higher cost of living — perhaps as people move away from cities, possibly to more affordable places, or as businesses struggle where rents and local wages are higher.
  • So that means more than two-thirds of the partisan gap can be explained by local job mix, size of the population, and cost of living.
  • Research suggests that individual choices contributed more than lockdown policies to declines in economic activity, and places that imposed few restrictions still lost jobs.
  • The coronavirus recession is unusual in that services employment (like at restaurants) has declined more than goods-sector employment (like at factories).
  • Still, the future looks far more promising than the present for blue states’ economies.
  • mattrenz16 on 30 Oct 20
     
    " different mix of jobs in red and blue places. The consistency of the partisan jobs gap contrasts with a shifting pattern of infections and deaths. In the spring, infection rates were far higher in blue states than in red states, with deaths even more skewed toward blue states, especially in and around New York. But the jobs gap has persisted even though red states have had higher case rates than blue states since June, and higher death rates since July. Across all industries, 57 percent of employed people live in counties that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Among hard-hit sectors in the pandemic, 59 percent of workers in lodging and food service; 63 percent in arts, entertainment and recreation; and 66 percent in information industries like publishing, film and telecommunications live in counties that Mrs. Clinton won. In contrast, jobs in most sectors less harmed by the pandemic, like utilities, construction and manufacturing, are disproportionately located in counties that President Trump won in 2016. local businesses like retail and restaurants have been slower to hire in places where more people can work from home. Other factors that are correlated with partisanship are also systematically related to job losses during the pandemic. Employment has fallen more in larger metros and those metros with a higher cost of living - perhaps as people move away from cities, possibly to more affordable places, or as businesses struggle where rents and local wages are higher. So that means more than two-thirds of the partisan gap can be explained by local job mix, size of the population, and cost of living. Research suggests that individual choices contributed more than lockdown policies to declines in economic activity, and places that imposed few restrictions still lost jobs. The coronavirus recession is unusual in that services employment (like at restaurants) has declined more than goods-sector employment (like at factories). Still, the future looks far more promising t
ethanshilling

Where Have All the Houses Gone? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-have-all-the-houses-gone.html

US economics crisis pandemic

shared by ethanshilling on 26 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • Much of the housing market has gone missing. On suburban streets and in many urban neighborhoods, across large and midsize metro areas, many homes that would have typically come up for sale over the past year never did.
  • Today, if you’re looking for one, you’re likely to see only about half as many homes for sale as were available last winter, according to data from Altos Research, a firm that tracks the market nationwide
  • “The supply side is really tricky,” said Benjamin Keys, an economist at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. “Who wants to sell a house in the middle of a pandemic?
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  • A majority of homeowners in America are baby boomers — a group at heightened risk from the coronavirus. If many of them have been reluctant to move out and downsize over the past year, that makes it hard for other families behind them to move in and upgrade.
  • “Every additional home that gets pulled off the market incentivizes someone else to not sell their house,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “That’s a self-reinforcing cycle.”
  • Add all of this up, and for every tale of someone who ran off and bought in the suburbs or paid all-cash sight unseen in some far-flung town, the larger story of the pandemic is this: Americans have been staying put.
  • Recent research by Arpit Gupta at N.Y.U. and colleagues suggests that rents have fallen the most in close-in urban neighborhoods.
  • “We’re all looking for a unified field theory for what’s going on,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “We have all these disparate pieces of information.
  • Right now, in a number of metro areas, home prices and rents aren’t just drifting apart; they’re moving in opposite directions. Prices are rising while rents are falling.
  • “I don’t think we’ve seen a housing market quite like this one,” said Jenny Schuetz, a researcher at the Brookings Institution. “And other recessions looked a little bit different, so that makes it hard to know what’s going on.”
  • The last decade has also been a period of relatively low interest rates. That incentivized many homeowners to stay in their homes longer than they would have in the past, clinging to cheap mortgages.
  • The ratio of home prices to rents in many metros is now as high as it has been since the housing bubble — but it has spiked during the pandemic in part because rents have fallen, not solely because prices have soared.
  • The pandemic will also eventually subside, and people will gain more certainty about remote work, and more confidence about having strangers in their homes. But for anyone waiting for the typical spring surge in inventory, these reasons for optimism may not materialize in time.
anonymous

Asians in the US suffer more attacks as deadly shootings highlight the vulnerability of... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 19 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • At least two of the eight people killed at Atlanta-area Asian massage spas Tuesday lived in the same spa where they worked,
  • "This one fact alone highlights the vulnerability, the invisibility, and the isolation of working-class Asian women in our country,"
  • Authorities have not yet confirmed a motive for the shootings at three Atlanta-area spas, which killed eight people -- including six Asian women. A suspect is in custody.
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  • Atlanta Deputy Police Chief Charles Hampton Jr. said Wednesday the suspect, Robert Aaron Long, frequented the two Atlanta spas and bought the gun used in the shooting the day of the incident.
  • President Joe Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff Thursday to honor the victims. Biden also plans to visit Atlanta on Friday to meet with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, as well as Asian American and Pacific Islander leaders, according to Georgia State Rep. Bee Nguyen.
  • Among the issues they will bring up is the concern that the shootings be "taken seriously" and seriously considered as a hate crime against Asians and not dismissed as the suspect having a "bad day,"
  • Across the US, Asian Americans are riddled with fear as unprovoked attacks against them intensify. Anti-Asian hate crimes have more than doubled during the pandemic,
  • The violence has surged amid racist rhetoric during the coronavirus pandemic -- some popularized by ex-President Donald Trump. Many Asian Americans have been subjected to vitriol about the "China virus" or the "kung flu" -- even those who have never been to Asia.
  • whenever anyone disagrees with her opinion or policies, the first thing they do is criticize the country her parents came from and, second, her gender.
  • Three of the victims were 52, 75 and 64 years of age, according to birth years listed in an Atlanta police incident report.
  • Bottoms told CNN that nowadays "there seems to be permission now to be hateful."
  • "There seems to be a permission that I've not seen, at least in my lifetime," Bottoms said. "It does predate Donald Trump, but he certainly has given permission and done his part to elevate the hatred."
  • Kim, a 24-year-old Korean American, said she often feels like she has a target on her back. Last year, she said a parent wanted to remove one of her students from her second-grade class because Kim was Asian.
  • Yet despite outrage over the shootings, attacks against Asian Americans continue. An Asian man and woman were assaulted Wednesday by the same suspect in separate attacks,
  • "While we're relieved the suspect was quickly apprehended, we're certainly not at peace as this attack still points to an escalating threat many in the Asian American community feel today,"
  • Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33, of Acworth; Paul Andre Michels, 54, of Atlanta; Xiaojie Tan, 49, of Kennesaw; and Daoyou Feng, 44, were all fatally shot at Youngs Asian Massage in Cherokee County.
  • Actress Lucy Liu told CNN's Erin Burnett on Thursday that she believes race relations will get worse before they can get better.
  • Three more victims were found dead at Gold Massage Spa in Atlanta, and another victim was found dead across the street at the Aroma Therapy Spa.
  • Long, 21, faces eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault.Long was on his way to Florida, possibly to take the lives of more victims, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said, citing investigators.
  • The suspect told police he believed he had a sex addiction and that he saw the spas as "a temptation ... that he wanted to eliminate,"
  • It's not clear whether any of the three businesses offered sexual services in addition to massages. But authorities have given no indication the three businesses were operating illegally
  • Capt. Jay Baker on Tuesday said Long "was pretty much fed up and had been kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did."
  • Sheriff Frank Reynolds said in a statement Thursday he has known and worked with Baker for many years and his comments "were not intended disrespect any of the victims, the gravity of this tragedy or express empathy or sympathy for the suspect."
  • Shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday, deputies were called to Youngs Asian Massage between the Georgia cities of Woodstock and Acworth after reports of a shooting, Cherokee County sheriff's officials said.That shooting left four people -- two Asian and two White -- dead and one person injured, Baker said.
  • About an hour later and 30 miles away, Atlanta police responded to the Gold Massage Spa on Piedmont Road in Atlanta. Police said they found three people dead.While there, police received another call of shots fired across the street at the Aroma Therapy Spa, where they found one person dead
  • Investigators found surveillance video of a suspect near the Cherokee County scene and published images on social media.Long's family saw the images, contacted authorities and helped identify him, Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds said Wednesday."(The family members) are very distraught, and they were very helpful in this apprehension," Reynolds said.
  • Long has claimed responsibility for the shootings at the spas, the Cherokee County sheriff's office said.
  • He is facing four counts of murder and a charge of aggravated assault, according to the county sheriff's office. He also has been charged with more four counts of murder,
  • A law enforcement source told CNN that Long was recently kicked out of the house by his family due to his sexual addiction, which, the source said, included frequently spending hours watching pornography online.
  • "It looked like a hate crime to me," she said. "This was targeted at Asian spas. Six of the women who were killed were Asian so it's difficult to see it as anything but that."
  • "Sex" is a hate crime category under Georgia's new law. If Long was targeting women out of hatred for them or scapegoating them for his own problems, it could potentially be a hate crime.
  • The shootings don't have to be racially motivated to constitute a hate crime in Georgia.
  • "We hear your concerns and want it to be known that these victims will receive the very best efforts of this office," Wallace said. "We anticipate beginning to meet with the impacted families in the near future, and earn their trust, as we continue to develop our case against the defendant."
anonymous

Colorado Has More Mass Shootings Than Other Places. Survivors Say We All Have Trauma To... - 0 views

www.cpr.org/...rs-trauma-boulder-king-soopers

shared by anonymous on 24 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Like their predecessors did at Columbine in 1999 and Aurora in 2012, some of Colorado’s top elected officials gathered Tuesday to mourn victims of a mass shooting.
  • Ten people, including one Boulder police officer, were killed at King Soopers in the city Monday. It’s not clear exactly how many witnesses, now survivors, were in the store, though video footage showed at least a dozen being escorted out.They now join the thousands of people that have survived shootings at schools and other public places in the Denver metro since Columbine. More than 1,800 students attended Columbine in 1999, plus staff. Thousands more, collectively, were at other such shootings, like Platte Canyon High School in 2006, Deer Creek Middle School in 2010, a movie theater in Aurora in 2012, a Walmart in Thornton in 2017, and STEM School in Highlands Ranch in 2019. 
  • A 2019 Denver Post analysis found that the Denver metro has the third-most mass shootings, per capita, of the country’s largest metro areas since 1999. Survivors and experts say there’s a cumulative effect to so many shootings: the circle of survivors, who may face a lifetime of recovery, grows larger with each incident. 
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  • Some community members try to cope by avoiding places where shootings have happened, like movie theaters, Nicoletti said. That may prove more difficult with a grocery store, he added. Others enter a state of denial, believing that a shooting couldn’t happen to them. 
  • A better alternative, Nicoletti said, is to be as prepared as possible while not accepting that shootings are inevitable. Countless active shooter drills that have been carried out in schools and workplaces since Columbine are one example of that. Another is simply observing where all the exits are when you enter a building. 
  • Columbine survivor Missy Mendo said the only way she’s been able to keep herself from normalizing shootings through the years is to work to help people affected by them. That includes her role as a member of the Rebels Project, a local non-profit that helps survivors of mass shootings from around the world connect with one another. Mendo said Monday’s shooting in Boulder was especially difficult for her to try to comprehend.
  • Two graduates of Columbine High School co-founded the Rebels Project and named it after the school’s mascot. One of those co-founders is Heather Martin, a teacher at Aurora Central High School. 
  • She, like other survivors, has spent years finding her own coping strategies. Mental health care, including therapy, has been a big help, she said. But her fears can creep up again after she hears about another school shooting. 
  • Survivors of mass casualty events each have their own unique stories, Martin said. But they all share a common bond, or, as Martin and Mendo say, they belong to a club that no one wants to be in. That club continues to grow with each shooting, a fact that Martins says makes her feel “helpless.”
  • Suddenly, Martin said, she wasn’t the only person who felt nervous in crowded places like a grocery store.
  • It’s not just direct survivors of mass shootings that are feeling trauma right now — whether it’s images of the Boulder shooting seen via traditional and social media, or a year of living with a global pandemic. The key, Martin said, is to give yourself the grace to accept that it’s real and valid. 
Javier E

Where we build homes helps explain America's political divide - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...counties-building-new-housing

house building us land scarcity economics

shared by Javier E on 28 Nov 23 - No Cached
  • Zoning, NIMBYism and regulations — “all those things matter” when you’re trying to build housing, Herbert said. But land scarcity is the most important.
  • So what’s happening now “is a lot more infill of single-family housing in closer-in communities, where you’re not going to have room for large-scale developments and where the land is going to be worth a lot more,” Herbert said. Single-family land scarcity, he said, “has been a big factor keeping the supply down.”
  • In a blockbuster 2010 paper, Albert Saiz, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, analyzed satellite data to estimate how much land was actually available for development within a 50-kilometer (31-mile) radius of each major U.S. city. He found that available land, when combined with measures of land-use regulation, could go “very far to explain the evolution of prices” from 1970 to 2000.
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  • Saiz even took it a step further, showing that a lack of land can cause stricter regulation. If a place has less room to build — due to mountains, wetlands or oceans, for example — each square foot of dirt costs more. Homeowners also may push local officials to regulate the land more aggressively in an effort to protect their investment and safeguard a scarce resource.
  • From 2013 to 2018, zoning and related restrictions added about $410,000 to the cost of a quarter-acre lot in the San Francisco metro area, $199,000 in Los Angeles, $175,000 in Seattle and $152,000 in greater New York
  • The comparable figure for Phoenix sat at $22,000. Atlanta was $15,000. Dallas was a mere $2,000. Not coincidentally, perhaps, many such Sun Belt metros have produced floods of new housing.
  • But why do blue cities tend to have less land available for development? Perhaps it works the other way: Perhaps land-restricted places tend to evolve into Democratic strongholds.
  • We don’t have data for this, but logically higher home prices and regulation in land-light cities should make much of their housing accessible only to educated, well-compensated professionals, right? In this simple mental model, coastal cities have less room and thus, by definition, attract the elite. And in American politics right now, Democrats dominate the professional classes.
  • We’ve long heard Democrats derided as the “coastal elite,” but we never stopped to wonder why all those blue counties hugged the coasts in the first place. Exceptions are easy to find, but the subtle effects of coastal land shortages, over time, could help explain that most prominent feature of America’s political geography.
  • That effect could be compounded, Saiz told us, by the simple truth that coastlines, lakes and other natural obstacles to construction make cities more beautiful, and thus more desirable to those who can afford such amenities, as his research with Gerald Carlino of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia shows. And the presence of an educated workforce will cause the city’s economy to grow faster, further expanding economic divides.
  • “High-amenity areas are more desirable and tend to attract the highly skilled,” Saiz said. “These metros tend to have harder land constraints to start with, which begets more expensive housing prices which, in turn, activate more NIMBY activism to protect that wealth.”
Javier E

Middle-Class Miami Spends 72%(!) of Its Income on Housing and Transportation - Derek Th... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...265738

housing transport costs income metro historical trends economics transportation

shared by Javier E on 30 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Food and clothes consumed 60% of consumer spending in 1900, but as we found more efficient ways to make burgers and socks, that number fell all the way to 17% in 2003.
  • in most major cities, we spend the majority of our income on planes, trains, automobiles, and dwellings.
  • In the Miami metro area, middle-lower-income families spend a whopping 72% of their income on housing and transportation
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  • The Least Affordable Neighborhood in the U.S.? From the report: "In the Philadelphia region, moderate-income households are faced with average housing and transportation costs exceeding 90 percent of their income in some neighborhoods."
  • The Price of Density: Housing in Houston isn't so bad -- it's the 8th most affordable large city to own a home in. But the same thing that helps make it an affordable place to own a home (lots of space!) also raises its commuting costs. Factor in transportation, and it's the 8th least affordable large city to live.
  • dense expensive cities like San Francisco, Boston and New York are considerably more affordable when you add in transportation costs because of their superior public transit.
  • Nationwide, Housing Grew 2X as Fast as Income: Combined H&T expenses average $30,296 for a median-income household, according to the report. But they're growing much faster than median household income.
Javier E

Class-Divided Cities: San Francisco Edition - Richard Florida and Sara Johnson - The At... - 0 views

www.theatlanticcities.com/...4832

san francisco class geography

shared by Javier E on 02 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Maps Class-Divided Cities: San Francisco Edition Richard Florida and Sara Johnson 11:05 AM ET 9 Comments inShare4 Share Print Share on emailEmail Author's Note: This is the 11th of a series of posts that explore the class divides across America's largest cities and metros. Using data from the American Community Survey, each post explores the geography of class within a large city and metro area. For a detailed description of methodology, see the first post in the series. The map above charts the geography of class for the city of San Francisco. The creative class lives in the areas that are shaded in purple, the red areas are primarily service class, and the blue are working class. Each colored space on the map is a Census tract, a small area within a city or county that can be even smaller than a neighborhood.
  • Most of the city proper is purple, reflecting a large creative class concentration in some of the most sought-after neighborhoods such as Pacific Heights and Russian Hill. SoMa or South of Market, which stretches below Market Street along the eastern part of the city south of the Bay Bridge, is an area of mixed-use and warehouse buildings that are now home to the city's tech scene, including lots of start-up companies as well as big names like Twitter, Zynga, and Airbnb.
maddieireland334

How America Lost Its Nerve - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...484655

US History Economy

shared by maddieireland334 on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • Americans today are strangely averse to change. They are less likely to switch jobs, or move between states, or create new companies than they were 30 years ago.
  • In economist-speak, "the U.S. labor market has experienced marked declines in fluidity along a variety of dimensions."
  • They are a driving force behind regional inequality, and the phenomenon stems from a significant root cause: the cost of having a place to live in America’s most productive cities.
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  • . On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that productivity “is set to fall in the U.S. for the first time in more than three decades.”
  • States with more workers in routine-intensive tasks, like administrative duties, actually saw smaller declines in labor market fluidity.
  • Young people are more likely to switch jobs and move around.
  • If young people are tumbleweeds, adults are like trees: They grow roots, and they tend to stay put. So, as a country ages, it should become less dynamic.
  • The fraction of workers required to hold a government-issued license has sextupled since the 1950s, from less than 5 percent to almost 30 percent today. It’s harder to switch into an industry, especially one in a new state, that’s larded with licensing.
  • Geographic mobility was very high in the U.S. in the 19th century. This was initially due to the settling of the western frontier. But even after the “closing" of the frontier in 1890, mobility remained high for decades, according to the economists Jason Long and Joseph Ferrie.
  • In every major city, there are many stores, health-care facilities, and insurance offices. By and large, less educated workers might be less willing to move between states because they assume every area has generally the same type of work.
  • somebody moving from a small farm to Washington, D.C., would have to visit the capital to understand its culture, job mix, pretty falls, and humid summers. But today’s potential movers are more informed and therefore more strategic:
  • Between 1880 and 1980, people generally moved from poor states to rich states, seeking the best jobs. “The creation of a single automobile plant—Ford’s River Rouge complex, completed in 1928—boosted Michigan’s population by creating more than 100,000 workers,” as Tim Noah reported. Migration promoted geographical equality.
  • Smaller counties used to lead the nation in the growth in new businesses even through the early 1990s. But this decade, small counties have lost businesses, while venture capital, the lifeblood of high-growth startups, clustered in a handful of metros.
  • Land-use policies prevent more middle-class families from living in productive areas, because housing becomes too expensive. Meanwhile, the rich can afford to cluster in a handful of metros where entrepreneurship is a norm, while business dynamism falls in the rest of the country.
sarahbalick

Moscow child beheading: Uzbek nanny says 'ordered by Allah' - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-europe-35705924

moscow child nanny

shared by sarahbalick on 02 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Moscow child beheading: Uzbek nanny says 'ordered by Allah
  • A nanny in Russia accused of murdering and then decapitating a little girl in her care has said that "Allah ordered" her to carry out the act.
  • Bobokulova, a Muslim and a citizen of Uzbekistan, also replied "yes" when asked if she accepted her guilt.
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  • CCTV appeared to show her, dressed in a hijab, walking near a metro station with a head in her hands.Russian media reported that she pulled the head out of a bag and began screaming that she would blow herself up after a police officer asked to see her identity documents.
  • "I am a terrorist. I am your death".
  • Investigators told the Presnensky district court they had not found anyone else involved in the case. But prosecutors also said they believed that Bobokulova had been "incited" to commit the crime.
  • Moscow residents have left flowers and children's toys outside the Oktyabrskoye Polye metro station, where Bobokulova was arrested, and outside the murdered child's home.
saberal

FBI agent charged in off-duty shooting of man on subway | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...duty-shooting-of-man-on-subway

US politics

shared by saberal on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • An FBI agent has been charged with attempted murder in the off-duty shooting of another man on a Metro subway train last year in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., according to court records unsealed Tuesday.
  • The charges stem from a Dec. 15 shooting on a train near Medical Center Station in Bethesda. Police for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said in a Dec. 18 statement that the agent fired multiple shots after the man had approached him that morning and they exchanged words.
  • When the man asked Valdivia for money on the train, the agent said no and the man muttered expletives while walking away, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Robert Hill said during Tuesday’s hearing. Valdivia told the man, "Watch your mouth," and the man turned around and approached Valdivia, who told him to back up multiple times. Valdivia shot the man from 2 to 3 feet away, Hill said, and did not identify himself as an agent until after the shooting. The man had part or all of his spleen, colon and pancreas removed during surgery after the shooting.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In a statement Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Baltimore field office said the bureau was aware of the charges and is fully cooperating with the investigation.
  • In a 911 call released in January, a witness said the agent had warned the man to back away, but the man ignored the command and instead prepared to fight him, the Washington Post reported.
anonymous

Tornadoes and heavy winds strike five states as storms continue into the Southeast - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Tornadoes struck the Deep South after a line of storms moved through the region Wednesday, part of a system that is expected to continue further into the Southeast and the Eastern Seaboard on Thursday, leaving millions at risk from severe weather conditions.
  • At least 24 preliminary reports of tornadoes across five states were tracked Wednesday
  • with the greatest storm damage apparent in Alabama and Mississippi.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • A confirmed "large and extremely dangerous" tornado was spotted near Shelton State Community College just south of Tuscaloosa at 2:45 p.m.
  • At least 37 homes were damaged by storms in in the towns of Moundville and Akron in Alabama's Hale County, according to county emergency manager Russ Weeden. Further east, at least a dozen areas of damage are being investigated in the Birmingham, Alabama area
  • In southwestern Alabama, two people were injured as their home was destroyed by the storm. Four other homes in the area were damaged.
  • A possible tornado that touched down in Wayne County in Eastern Mississippi damaged two homes and left roads blocked due to debris, according to Angela Atchison of Wayne County Emergency Management. No injuries have been reported.The greatest threat of storms Thursday now shifts east to parts of the southeastern US, including Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
  • An estimated 45 million people will be under threat for severe storms Thursday, from the Ohio Valley into South Florida, according to the Storm Prediction Center. Tornadoes, some of which may be intense, will be of concern along with damaging winds and large hail,
  • The worst of the severe weather pushes into the Carolinas and parts of parts of Central and Southern Georgia late morning. An elevated risk for strong tornado development exists for over 8 million from Southeast Georgia through the Carolinas into the northern Outer Banks. An area of greatest concern is the coastal area of the Carolinas that straddles the state line between North and South Carolina, and include Wilmington and Myrtle Beach.
  • As the line of storms progress throughout the day there is the risk of gaining more energy and become more violent,
  • Other locations that need to be on the lookout for stronger tornadoes Thursday include Raleigh/Durham, Savannah, GA and Columbia, SC.
  • Another line of storms will develop in the late afternoon out of the Ohio Valley and Northern Kentucky and push into the Appalachians of West Virginia and Virginia. The system will not stay organized very long, but the potential for dangerous weather conditions will continue into the early evening
  • The southern end of the line of storms will hit the Florida Panhandle and move into Central Florida through the early evening hours. Risk of strong winds, dangerous lightning, hail and tornadoes will continue into overnight hours.
  • The northern Georgia and metro Atlanta areas are anticipating storms in the morning, which has led Atlanta schools to move to online learning Thursday.
  • Covid-19 vaccine distribution has also been disrupted by the line of storms, with DeKalb County in metro Atlanta announcing its changes in schedules. Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency Mass Vaccination Sites plan to delay opening or alter its hours to avoid the severe weather.
anonymous

Airbnb Canceling All D.C. Area Reservations For Inauguration Week : Insurrection At The... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...o-d-c-during-inauguration-week

shared by anonymous on 13 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Airbnb says it is canceling reservations made in the Washington, D.C., metro area during inauguration week, citing various officials' requests that people not travel to the area during this time
  • The service will also block new bookings in the area during that period. Airbnb says it will refund guests whose reservations were canceled and reimburse hosts for the money they would have earned from the canceled reservations.
  • Additionally, we are aware of reports emerging yesterday afternoon regarding armed militias and known hate groups that are attempting to travel and disrupt the Inauguration."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The company said it has taken steps to "ensure hate group members are not part of the Airbnb community" — banning "numerous individuals" from using its platform if Airbnb has learned they "are either associated with known hate groups or otherwise involved in the criminal activity at the Capitol Building."
  • Neighborhood message boards in D.C. lit up in recent days with reports of shouting matches between pro-Trump Airbnb guests and D.C. neighbors, and of hosts hearing guests talking afterward about taking part in the riot.
  • Some neighbors urged D.C. Airbnb hosts to be careful who they rent to, while others cautioned hosts not to run afoul of nondiscrimination policies.
  • "Members of hate groups are never welcome on Airbnb," the company said,
aidenborst

Times Square's business leaders weigh in on what's to come in 2021 - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US Culture pandemic crisis pandemic-recovery change covid-19

shared by aidenborst on 03 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • New York City tourism and real estate officials are hoping Thursday night's New Year's Eve celebration will mark a turning point for Times Square, the Manhattan neighborhood that has become a symbol of sorts for the economic ills of the Covid-19 economy.
  • Commerce among the more than 1,500 businesses in the tourist destination and business district — centrally located between major public transportation hubs — has been decimated by the pandemic. However, business leaders still expect the area to make a full economic recovery once Covid-19 vaccines become widely distributed.
  • "We wanted to send a message that New York is still here. It's not going away," Tompkins told CNN Business.
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  • Officials have differing opinions about how much change Times Square may be in for over the next few years — as new businesses inevitably replace old ones — and how long its full recovery will take. Real estate and tourism officials say estimates range between one and four years.
  • "2021 is certainly going to feel more upbeat than 2020 did, but I think there will also be some disappointment,"
  • Douglas Hercher, managing director at RobertDouglas, a private real estate investment bank. "If people are thinking Times Square, by the summer, is going to look like the Times Square we all know and love, that's probably not going to be the case."
  • A Times Square Alliance study found foot traffic in the neighborhood's busiest block on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues was down 70% from the previous year.
  • Tompkins says about 43% of Times Square's street-level businesses are currently closed, down from 87% in the spring. Hercher estimates 25%-30% of retail rental spaces in Midtown have "gone dark" due to tenants shuttering indefinitely.
  • "You're going to see those retailers reducing their footprint to bring their costs in line with their sales. ... I think rental rates are going to have to come down tremendously to attract tenancy to those spaces."
  • Krispy Kreme, for example, opened its new flagship Times Square location in September, a few months after Covid-19 lockdowns caused a 78% drop in Manhattan retail sales activity, according to the Metro Manhattan Office Space blog.
  • Tompkins says the pandemic hasn't changed Times Square's appeal to retailers looking to create more-engaging shopping experiences for their customers. Luxury real estate developer L&L Holding Company has continued construction of its TSX Broadway experiential retail complex throughout the pandemic.
  • L&L managing director David Orowitz says the pandemic hasn't shaken the developer's faith in the $2.5 billion project, which is still set to open at the end of 2022.
  • "We've been really fortunate in that we raised the original capital for the project prior to Covid," Orowitz said. "At the end of the day, from the perspective of an entertainment and tourism Mecca, I think Times Square continues to evolve and will continue to be what it always was."
  • the normalizing of remote work options across business sectors this year has already led many companies to scale back on office space, which some analysts have predicted will be a permanent shift in the commercial real estate market.
  • "We've definitely seen in the residential market, rents have dropped 10-15% this year in Manhattan," he said. "That's probably a little bit of the canary in the coal mine."
  • Only 8% of Manhattan's estimated 1 million office employees returned to their offices for work by mid-August, according to a survey conducted by the Partnership for New York City.
  • "There's talk about whether it makes sense to make those into residential usage," he said. "The name of the game here in the Covid era is flexibility."
katherineharron

Federal authorities expected to erect 'non-scalable' fence around White House - CNNPoli... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

election

shared by katherineharron on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Federal authorities are expected to put back into place a "non-scalable" fence around the entire perimeter of the White House on Monday as law enforcement and other agencies prepare for possible protests surrounding the election,
  • The fence, the same type that was put up during protests this summer, will encompass the Ellipse and Lafayette Square. It will go down 15th Street to Constitution Avenue and then over to 17th Street. The fence will then run up to H Street and across by Lafayette, and then come down 15th Street, the source said.
  • The extra layer of security marks the most high-profile example to date of authorities preparing for unrest following this year's election
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • As CNN previously reported, the immediate perimeters around the White House have already been largely blocked off to the public this year for a range of reasons, from construction on the White House gate, to protests and looting that occurred in downtown Washington in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May.
  • And many businesses in the downtown DC area in the proximity of the White House have boarded up doors and windows in the last couple of days in anticipation of possible protests.
  • DC Metro police have been preparing its officers for well over a year, as it does ahead of every general election, ensuring that they are prepared to handle everything from civil disturbance to crowd control to potential disruptions to metro transit, Patrick Burke, executive director of the Washington, DC, Police Foundation, previously told CNN.
  • "If there's no winner, you will see significant deployments of officers at all levels across the capital," said Burke. "Officers will get cancellations of days off, extensions of shifts and full deployments of officers across the city."
zarinastone

Whale Tail Sculpture Catches Dutch Train 30 Feet Above Ground : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...racks-is-caught-by-statues-tai

netherlands sculpture art train save

shared by zarinastone on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • A Dutch train burst past the end of its elevated tracks Monday in the Netherlands.
  • But instead of crashing to the ground 30 feet below, the metro train was caught — held aloft by an artist's massive sculpture of a whale's tail. Despite some damage, no injuries or deaths were reported.
  • It's unclear why the train didn't stop.
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  • The architect who created the sculpture, Maarten Struijs, was shocked it held u
  • "I am amazed that it is so strong," Struijs said, according to The Guardian. "When plastic has stood for 20 years, you don't expect it to hold up a metro train."
Javier E

The Cascading Complexity Of Diversity - The Weekly Dish - 0 views

andrewsullivan.substack.com/...cading-complexity-of-diversity

violence silence gop future conservatism equity demographics anti-racism goals

shared by Javier E on 07 Aug 20 - No Cached
  • the News Guild of New York — the union that represents 1200 New York Times employees — recently set out its goals for the newspaper, especially with respect to its employees of color. Money quote: “Our workforce should reflect our home. The Times should set a goal to have its workforce demographics reflect the make-up of the city — 24 percent Black, and over 50 percent people of color — by 2025.”
  • what I want to focus on is the core test the Guild uses to judge whether the Times is itself a racist institution. This is what I’ll call the Kendi test: does the staff reflect the demographics of New York City as a whole?
  • systemic racism, according to Kendi, exists in any institution if there is simply any outcome that isn’t directly reflective of the relevant racial demographics of the surrounding area.
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  • The appeal of this argument is its simplicity. You can tell if a place is enabling systemic racism merely by counting the people of color in it; and you can tell if a place isn’t by the same rubric. The drawback, of course, is that the world isn’t nearly as simple
  • On some measures, the NYT is already a mirror of NYC. Its staff is basically 50 - 50 on sex (with women a slight majority of all staff on the business side, and slight minority in editorial). And it’s 15 percent Asian on the business side, 10 percent in editorial, compared with 13.9 percent of NYC’s population. 
  • But its black percentage of staff — 10 percent in business, 9 percent in editorial — needs more than doubling to reflect demographics. Its Hispanic/Latino staff amount to only 8 percent in business and 5 percent in editorial, compared with 29 percent of New York City’s demographics, the worst discrepancy for any group
  • notice how this new goal obviously doesn’t reflect New York City’s demographics in many other ways. It draws overwhelmingly from the college educated, who account for only 37 percent of New Yorkers, leaving more than 60 percent of the city completed unreflected in the staffing.
  • We have no idea whether “white” people are Irish or Italian or Russian or Polish or Canadians in origin. Similarly, we do not know if “black” means African immigrants, or native black New Yorkers, or people from the Caribbean
  • Around 10 percent of staffers would have to be Republicans (and if the paper of record nationally were to reflect the country as a whole, and not just NYC, around 40 percent would have to be
  • Some 6 percent of the newsroom would also have to be Haredi or Orthodox Jews
  • 48 percent of NYT employees would have to agree that religion is “very important” in their lives; and 33 percent would be Catholic.
  • Taking this proposal seriously, then, really does require explicit use of race in hiring, which is illegal, which is why the News Guild tweet and memo might end up causing some trouble if the policy is enforced.
  • It would also have to restrict itself to the literate, and, according to Literacy New York, 25 percent of people in Manhattan “lack basic prose literary skills” along with 37 percent in Brooklyn and 41 percent in the Bronx.
  • My point is that any attempt to make a specific institution entirely representative of the demographics of its location will founder on the sheer complexity of America’s demographic story and the nature of the institution itself
  • Journalism, for example, is not a profession sought by most people; it’s self-selecting for curious, trouble-making, querulous assholes who enjoy engaging with others and tracking down the truth (at least it used to be). There’s no reason this skillset or attitude will be spread evenly across populations
  • It seems, for example, that disproportionate numbers of Jews are drawn to it, from a culture of high literacy, intellectualism, and social activism. So why on earth shouldn’t they be over-represented? 
  • that’s true of other institutions too: are we to police Broadway to make sure that gays constitute only 4 percent of the employees? Or, say, nursing, to ensure that the sex balance is 50-50? Or a construction company for gender parity?
  • take publishing — an industry not far off what the New York Times does. 74 percent of its employees are women. Should there be a hiring freeze until the men catch up? 
  • The more you think about it, the more absurdly utopian the Kendi project turns out to be. That’s because its core assumption is that any demographic discrepancies between a profession or institution and its locale are entirely a function of oppression.
  • That’s how Kendi explains racial inequality in America, and specifically denies any alternative explanation.
  • So how is it that a white supremacist country has whites earning considerably less on average than Asian-Americans? How does Kendi explain the fact that the most successful minority group in America are Indian-Americans — with a median income nearly twice that of the national median?
  • Here’s a partial list of the national origins of US citizens whose median earnings are higher than that of white people in America: Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Pakistani, Iranian, Lebanese, Sri Lankan, Armenian, Hmong, Vietnamese.
  • But it is absurd to argue that racism is the sole reason for every racial difference in outcome in the extraordinarily diverse and constantly shifting racial demographics of New York City or the US
  • It’s true, of course, that historical injustices have deeply hurt African-Americans in particular in hobbling opportunity, which is why African-Americans who are descendants of slaves should be treated as an entirely separate case from all other racial categories. No other group has experienced anything like the toll of slavery, segregation and brutality that African-Americans have. This discrimination was enforced by the state and so the state has an obligation to make things right. 
  • You can argue that these groups are immigrants and self-selecting for those with higher IQs, education, motivation, and drive. It’s true. But notice that this argument cannot be deployed under the Kendi test: any inequality is a result of racism, remember?
  • In fact, to reduce all this complexity to a quick, crude check of race and sex to identify your fellow American is a kind of new racism itself.
  • It has taken off because we find it so easy to slip back into crude generalizations.
  • for all those reasons, attempting to categorize people in the crudest racial terms, and social engineering them into a just society where every institution looks like every other one, is such a nightmare waiting to happen. It’s a brutal, toxic, racist template being imposed on a dazzling varied and constantly shifting country.
  • this explicit reintroduction of crude racism under the guise of antiracism is already happening. How many institutions will it tear apart, and how much racial resentment will it foment, before it’s done? 
  • this cannot mean a return to the status quo ante. That would ignore the lessons of the 21st century — that neoconservatism’s desire to rule the world is a fantasy, and that zombie Reagonomics has been rendered irrelevant by its own success and unintended failures
  • What the right needs to do, quite simply, is to seize the mantle of cultural conservatism while moving sharply left on economics.
  • Here’s the gist of a platform I think could work. The GOP should drop the tax cut fixation, raise taxes on the wealthy, and experiment with UBI
  • It needs a workable healthcare policy which can insure everyone in the country, on Obamacare private sector lines. (Yes, get the fuck over Obamacare. It’s the most conservative way to achieve universal access to healthcare we have.
  • It has to promote an agenda of lower immigration as a boon to both successful racial integration and to raising working class wages.
  • It needs finally to acknowledge the reality of climate change and join the debate about how, rather than whether, to tackle it.
  • It has to figure out a China policy that is both protective of some US industries and firm on human rights.
  • It needs to protect religious freedom against the incursions of the cultural left.
  • And it needs to become a place where normie culture can live and thrive, where acknowledgment of America’s past failures doesn’t exclude pride in America’s great successes, and where the English language can still be plainly used.
  • No big need to change on judges (except finding qualified ones); and no reason either to lurch back to worrying about deficits in the current low-inflation environment.
  • I believe this right-of-center pragmatism has a great future. It was the core message behind the British Tories’ remarkable success in the 2019 election
  • The trouble, of course, is that GOP elites would have a hell of a time achieving this set of policies with its current membership. Damon Linker has a terrific piece about the problem of Republican voters most of whom “remain undaunted in their conviction that politics is primarily about the venting of grievances and the trolling of opponents. The dumber and angrier and more shameless, the better.”
  • I see no reason why someone else couldn’t shift it yet again — not back to pre-Trump but forward to a new fusion of nationalist realism, populist economics, and cultural conservatism. By cultural conservatism I don’t mean another round of the culture wars — but a defense of pride in one’s country, respect for tradition, and social stability. There is also, I suspect, a suppressed but real desire for the normality and calmness that Trump has eviscerated.
  • What I was trying to argue is that the roots of critical theory are fundamentally atheist, are very much concerned with this world alone, and have no place for mercy or redemption or the individual soul.
  • Christians who think they can simply adopt both are being somewhat naive. And yes, I feel the same way about “liberation theology” as well, however sympathetic the Pope now is.
  • It seems to me the logical outcome of a broad application of critical theory will be a wider revival of white supremacy. Where there’s no possibility of redemption, resistance becomes inevitable.
Javier E

Opinion | This Is Why We Need to Spend $4 Trillion - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ederal-spending-democrats.html

alienation dignity biden legislation package family working class middle-class

shared by Javier E on 04 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • I’ve spent the past few weeks in a controlled fury — and I’m not normally a fury kind of guy. Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and others are trying to pass arguably the most consequential legislative package in a generation, and what did I sense in my recent travels across five states? The same thing I sense in my social media feed and on the various media most-viewed lists.Indifference.
  • here was a time when the phrase “the common man” was a source of pride and a high compliment.
  • Over the past few decades there has been a redistribution of dignity — upward
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • From Reagan through Romney, the Republicans valorized entrepreneurs, C.E.O.s and Wall Street.
  • The Democratic Party became dominated by people in the creative class, who attended competitive colleges, moved to affluent metro areas, married each other and ladled advantages onto their kids so they could leap even farther ahead.
  • There was a bipartisan embrace of a culture of individualism, which opens up a lot of space for people with resources and social support but means loneliness and abandonment for people without. Four years of college became the definition of the good life, which left roughly two-thirds of the country out.
  • so came the crisis that Biden was elected to address — the poisonous combination of elite insularity and vicious populist resentment.
  • Read again Robert Kagan’s foreboding Washington Post essay on how close we are to a democratic disaster.
  • They are willing to torch our institutions because they are so resentful against the people who run them.
  • The Democratic spending bills are economic packages that serve moral and cultural purposes. They should be measured by their cultural impact, not merely by some wonky analysis.
  • In real, tangible ways, they would redistribute dignity back downward. They would support hundreds of thousands of jobs for home health care workers, child care workers, construction workers, metal workers, supply chain workers. They would ease the indignity millions of parents face having to raise their children in poverty.
  • Biden had it exactly right when he told a La Crosse, Wis., audience, “The jobs that are going to be created here — largely, it’s going to be those for blue-collar workers, the majority of whom will not have to have a college degree to have those jobs.”
  • we’re a nation enduring a national rupture, and the most violent parts of it may still be yet to come.
  • These packages say to the struggling parents and the warehouse workers: I see you. Your work has dignity. You are paving your way. You are at the center of our national vision.
  • This is how you fortify a compelling moral identity, which is what all of us need if we’re going to be able to look in the mirror with self-respect. This is the cultural transformation that good policy can sometimes achieve. Statecraft is soulcraft.
  • These measures would not solve our problems, obviously. In many large Western nations, there are vast tectonic forces concentrating wealth in the affluent metro areas and leaving vast swaths of the countryside behind. We don’t yet know how to do the sort of regional development that reverses this trend.
  • e can make it clear that we value people’s choices. For years, there was almost an officially approved life: Get a B.A., move to those places where capital and jobs are congregating, even if it means leaving your community, roots and extended family.
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