Althouse: "It is not enough to call for measures that stop suburbanization..."

April 7, 2013

"It is not enough to call for measures that stop suburbanization..."

"... the suburbs aren’t going anywhere. If all we do is try to pretend away their radically unequal fortunes, we will just drop a new suburban inequality on top of the old one."

70 comments:

ricpic said...: Gonna make you pay, white suburbs, gonna make you pay big!

--Obama's dream speech; 4/7/13, 9:29 AM
Sorun said...: "High property values support high-achieving schools"

Someone, just once, should study why it always works out this way.

It's especially odd since student achievement is not proportional to per student spending -- e.g. compare North Dakota and DC public schools.; 4/7/13, 9:31 AM
tim maguire said...: How did I know, without clicking, that the link goes to the New York Times?; 4/7/13, 9:34 AM
Achilles said...: Rich person who writes for NYTs doesn't like that some people are escaping from the rich/poor dichotomy that is rigidly enforced in statist urban onclaves. At some point people will realize that the goal of high taxes and intrusive regulation has nothing to do with punishing the rich. It is really intended to protect the currently rich.

Obama is doing more for currently wealthy people than any president in history. He could rightly be called a stooge for rich bankers and trust fund babies who support him with more money than any president in history.; 4/7/13, 9:35 AM
Unknown said...: Inequalities exist.
We must prevent it.
Everyone must be poor and miserable with no way out.

Except the planners, of course.; 4/7/13, 9:36 AM
Tim said...: From the article:

"Policies to redress suburban inequality must focus not only on factors like income but also on tax equity across metro areas and regional planning that fairly distributes resources and responsibilities (like affordable housing). We should limit the mortgage-interest deduction for second homes and for values above the regional median. These steps would reduce distortions that inflate housing prices and concentrate wealth in what are already wealthy places."

All of the words to say, "make the rich pay more, damn it!"

Setting aside the primary questions (should we even try, and why?), who but your typical Democrat-voting moron really believes making the rich pay more in taxes is going to do one damn thing to "redress suburban inequality"?

Dopes.

It's always about raising taxes.

It's never about the environmental or labor laws making productive enterprises increasingly difficult, if not impossible.; 4/7/13, 9:38 AM
David said...: Suburbs don't create stratification. They house the stratified, who became such for many complex reasons and some quite simple ones.Those who change levels upward or downward then move to a different place.

The critics of the lower stratum suburbs have forgotten the tenements and the rural poverty that dominated the lower economic classes in the past.; 4/7/13, 9:40 AM
Bob Ellison said...: "Suburbanization" is a strange word. Does it describe what happens to the overall culture, to the people who suburbanize, to the land that gets suburbanized, or what? The authors don't seem to know.; 4/7/13, 9:41 AM
Michael said...: Becky is a women's studies person. She absolutely does not know what she is talking about on the subject topic. Why doesnt she write a paper on chemical engineering? Oh, I think I see....; 4/7/13, 9:41 AM
rehajm said...: Focus on equality of outcome destroys the foundations of civil society like property rights and individual freedom. Equality of opportunity is worthy of attention.; 4/7/13, 9:41 AM
Trashhauler said...: The bad example always seems to be found in California.; 4/7/13, 9:42 AM
edutcher said...: The Lefties still think gentrification will "save" the cities.

Saving black America is the only way to save the cities (if, in fact, they're not an anachronism), but the Lefties only want them as a low info underclass - and even then have set them up to abort themselves out of existence.; 4/7/13, 9:43 AM
Bob Ellison said...: David's right. Stratification in cities tends to be extremely tight, but maybe living within a few blocks of a ghetto makes NYT contributors feel as though they aren't living the stratified life.; 4/7/13, 9:44 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: Let's see if I understand this. New York City's (and esp. Manhattan's) paper of record thinks that suburbs are evil. They are apparently racist and classist, and have unequality.

Not really surprising, selling to an audience who are convinced that urban life, and the denser the urban life, the better, is superior to suburban life, and, of course, far, far, better than those rural bumpkins in flyover country. Not surprisingly, they don't understand the allure of not living right on top of everyone else, actually being able to own your own home, with a lawn, no less, etc. And, don't understand why the low level noise, filth, and violence in their fair city does not attact most of America.

And, yes, they also ignore that New York City has probably more inequity than do most suburbs, and quite a bit of racial separation. And, you knew that it was a liberal slam job, when they mentioned "red lining". The fact that banks don't want to be caught again lending to people who cannot pay back their loans is not evidence of racism, but rather, of prudence.

So, the article makes New Yorkers, and esp. those living, or at least working (because they can't afford to live) in Manhattan, feel better about themselves as being so much more enlightened, and, most anyone else in the country who bothers to read the article dismissive of the article and the paper that would run it.; 4/7/13, 9:45 AM
Ambrose said...: Love the use of "we" at the end as in "We must..." Who is "we"?; 4/7/13, 9:47 AM
Anonymous said...: Money flows into suburbs like San Marino and Palos Verdes, where Asian immigrants buy up expensive properties and generously donate their time and money to the local schools. Money flows out of poorer suburbs like South Gate, Bell and Huntington Park, all heavily Latino, where disposable income is tight and many families export remittances to a home country. New poverty builds upon old impoverishment. Infrastructure is stretched as renters crowd into dwellings that were modest to begin with

Damn those evil Asians for bringing wealth and jobs to this country. Glory be to our loyal Latinos who export weath and voilate those zoning laws that Liberals love...

So how come all those Viets who came here as pennyless boat people are all now millionaires? Hard work, family and marriage maybe?; 4/7/13, 9:48 AM
I'm Full of Soup said...: Did these researchers ever dream, as kids, of having a big house with a pool or making enough money to own a vacation home at the shore or in the mountains? WTF is wrong with them- did they not have dreams or goals in life to maybe buy a Corvette or own an ski chalet in Aspen. Schools like Columbia [where the female writer went] ruin people.; 4/7/13, 9:51 AM
Wince said...: Let's start with the premise that "income inequality" is a bad thing.; 4/7/13, 9:52 AM
somefeller said...: The best response to that article is: meh.; 4/7/13, 9:53 AM
Tim said...: "So how come all those Viets who came here as pennyless boat people are all now millionaires? Hard work, family and marriage maybe?"

That, and they were smart enough to remove themselves from being targeted in the Democrats' "War on Poverty."

No federal program has wasted so much money and so much time and failed as badly as the Democrats' "War on Poverty."

The Democrats' "War on Poverty" has only fostered and spread poverty through taxpayer and debt-financed subsidies.

Hooray for the Democrats!

Mission Accomplished.; 4/7/13, 9:54 AM
virgil xenophon said...: @Drill Sgt/

Yeah, the very first New Orleans neighborhoods devastated by the Katrina floods to rebuild were the Vietnamese ones..; 4/7/13, 9:55 AM
Anonymous said...: edutcher said...
The Lefties still think gentrification will "save" the cities.

The alternate article is about the evils of gentrification and the need for more zoning laws to preserve "affordable housing".; 4/7/13, 9:58 AM
edutcher said...: The Drill SGT said...

So how come all those Viets who came here as pennyless boat people are all now millionaires? Hard work, family and marriage maybe?

The American dream. The Mexicans are here because Teddy Kennedy wanted to create another underclass and many, though by no means all, just want a ride on the gravy train. The Asians came here for a better life and were willing to build it.

The undocumented Democrats are like the Moslems of Europe in that they really don't want to contribute and they don't want to belong.

They just want.; 4/7/13, 10:02 AM
Phil 314 said...: Why do I feel like I'm back in the '60s. This would have been better delivered at a teach in.; 4/7/13, 10:05 AM
Renee said...: Stable homes produce academic results, there is only so much a school can do.

The suburbs have divided in the same way that charter schools will divide a community.; 4/7/13, 10:11 AM
Anonymous said...: For me, the final indicator the the message was redistribution without end was We should limit the mortgage-interest deduction for second homes and for values above the regional median. These steps would reduce distortions that inflate housing prices and concentrate wealth in what are already wealthy places.

Other than as a rationale for wealth confiscation, who is impacted by the lack of a mortgage deduction on a ski chalet? or a 2 million dollare 1000sf beach condo?

Without the deduction, poor Latino farm workers could move to Big Baar and commute to the fields? Some lower middle class San Fernando Valley guy is going to move to Malibu because lack of tax write-offs for the Elites will all of a sudden make beachfront affordable? Clue: Those rich people often pay cash...

PS: The reason California no longer has union manufacturing jobs jobs is high power prices, Enviro laws and zoning that has destroyed business...; 4/7/13, 10:12 AM
Anonymous said...: Looking at the disparity of income levels in neighborhoods and home values in geographical segments is stupid.

People can move in and out of those zones.

The more interesting and important study is to look longitudinally at family generations to see who moved economically up and down.

What in the families is producing high resource producers and gatherers?

What is producing depletion and low productivity?; 4/7/13, 10:19 AM
khesanh0802 said...: Claptrap!; 4/7/13, 10:25 AM
Insufficiently Sensitive said...: For the roots of this NYT article, look no further than Obama's support for the 'Building One America' campaign, which means to undo American suburbs and redistribute their wealth into the control of politically organized urban elites.

Better explained in Stanley Kurtz's 2012 book 'Spreading the Wealth'.

In this unfortunate second Obama term, I think we'll see a growing barrage of such articles harping on 'income disparity', coordinated with Federal moves to loot the suburbs for the benefit of leftist politicians and their constituents.; 4/7/13, 10:36 AM
bleh said...: As young professionals and trustafarians make formerly poor urban neighborhoods expensive, cute, and desirable, the poor and lower middle class move elsewhere to even less desirable urban ghettos or, apparently, to the 'burbs. How strange, and interesting.

In reality, the biggest ax liberals have to grind has to do with the 'burbs "stealing" wealth and tax receipts from the cities but use the cities' infrastructure (or something). We should all live in cities, close to ghettos and subsidized housing if possible, with the rich paying a premium for the wonderful luxury of living in a city.

Certain rural areas are OK, since cities need farmers markets. Organic only, though.; 4/7/13, 10:43 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: Too bad for those poor houses stuck in the cheap suburbs, and shame on those fancy pants rich house looking down their dormers at all the rest. She's right that none of these houses move around. So stratified!; 4/7/13, 10:47 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: There's something to be gained by confusing classification for class, apparently.; 4/7/13, 10:47 AM
bagoh20 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/7/13, 10:49 AM
bagoh20 said...: If you want the cause of why the middle class is shrinking, which is a main point of this article, then just go back to decades of NYT articles about how we need more protection and benefits for middle class employees and regulations over their employers and their businesses.

The idiots really thought you could enforce equality of outcome in the world through regulation. All they did was send the jobs overseas. Now the jobs are gone, and they want to pour the same poison on the graves of those jobs that they used to kill them.; 4/7/13, 10:53 AM
Oso Negro said...: She lost me "racial redlining", which was effectively done in the early '90s with the CRA. The big thing that the NYT is unlikely to address is that decent people of any race don't really want to deal with the lower class black culture that dominates so many urban centers. Anyone on this board really want to live next to a housing project? Come to Galveston, we have a spot for you.; 4/7/13, 10:58 AM
cubanbob said...: Sometime soon the NYT is going to publish an editorial demanding that the Hamptons, Westchester County Greenwich CT and Georgetown should be carpet bombed.
All in the name of fairness and equality for the children.; 4/7/13, 11:01 AM
Moose said...: Not sure why this is any different than the concept of cities and with a rich section and a poor section. In this case they're just different suburban towns.; 4/7/13, 11:04 AM
lemondog said...: ... coordinated with Federal moves to loot....

How is Obamacare like Cyprus

Section 163 of the bill now in Congress allows the government real-time access to a person's bank records, including direct access to bank accounts for electronic fund transfers.; 4/7/13, 11:13 AM
Michael K said...: It's amusing that Orange County is not mentioned. I guess the writers never made it through the "Orange Curtain."

Those Latino suburbs used to be all black. Interesting to wonder about the demographics of that migration.; 4/7/13, 11:16 AM
CWJ said...: I read the article in order to understand the title of Ann''s post. I still don't.

"It is not enough to call for measures that stop suburbanization"

The "not enough" presumes that such measures would be good things, just insufficient to the goal. Is there really a body of people out there lobbying for such measures, or is this just a rhetorical straw man?

Or, perhaps most likely, its just sloppy writing.; 4/7/13, 11:19 AM
n.n said...: Let's begin urbanization with prime real estate, including: beach front properties in Hawaii, The New York Times building, and other places where people living in ivory towers seek refuge.; 4/7/13, 11:21 AM
CWJ said...: As an aside, I clicked through to the second author. How big is San Diego State? The History Department has 19 professors (real one's) and 7 lecturers -26 faculty! The world is a big place and a lot has happened over time, but still!; 4/7/13, 11:24 AM
Unknown said...: If you start with a flawed premise what good are your conclusions?; 4/7/13, 11:45 AM
Joe said...: Wanna bet your suburban salary that Becky M. Nicolaides and Andrew Wiese live in nice, stratified, neighborhoods?

News flash to these idiots; this isn't a new thing. People with drive, who earn their own keep don't like living next to those who are inclined to take that from them, under force of government if necessary.

(I've a former brother-in-law who spends more energy mooching off of other people, welfare shopping and being generally lazy ass than if he just got a damn job. Oh, and a neighbor once gave him a dream job that required less actual work than most and paid $10 an hour. He quit after a day. I have no desire to live next to assholes like my former brother-in-law. Neither do most people.); 4/7/13, 12:05 PM
Darleen said...: I was born in Los Angeles and raised (1st) in Granada Hills and (2nd) Brea.

What a bunch of self-serving sob-sister crap as a veil for "suburbs suck! let's ban em and force everyone to live in 800 square foot cubes and share People's Parks and People's Transportation"

scribbled by some gal at UCLA, in the midst of Westwood & a stone's throw from Santa Monica.; 4/7/13, 12:19 PM
Illuninati said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/7/13, 12:29 PM
Illuninati said...: Unfortunately the segregation is enforced by the people from the poor neighborhoods not just by the people living in the wealthy areas. A person of the wrong ethnicity wanders around in the poor neighborhoods at his/her own peril, especially if they look like they have money. The Latinos have their gangs and the blacks generally hate white and Asaian people.; 4/7/13, 12:31 PM
Darleen said...: oh ... btw, I took a quick peak at Zillow at my old neighborhood in Granada Hills. You know in that "working class" neighborhood of San Fernando.

My parents bought there, on the GI Bill, a 1200 sq foot basic house. And I mean BASIC (no appliances, no landscaping, no fencing, no air conditioning) for $14,000.

The same house is now $476,000.

Working class? Yep, many places in SFV are, and Latino. When you have several families sharing a one-family house, the per-household income is higher. It does make people who only want to live with their immediate family look elsewhere to buy where they can actually afford something.; 4/7/13, 12:31 PM
Anonymous said...: People can move in and out of those zones.

Grabbing their wealth is a pretty good way of getting the rich ones to move out. So there's that.; 4/7/13, 12:42 PM
Seeing Red said...: I thought the NYT kicked out poor people to expand a few years ago? If someone is interested, I'm sure there will be some article or comment on it somewhere.

Rahm once floated turning the collar counties into 1 big Cook County.

No thanks.

What is her real complaint, she's an island surrounded by poor people?

I thought that's the lifestyle they wanted, "gritty?"; 4/7/13, 12:57 PM
Seeing Red said...: I thought the NYT kicked out poor people to expand a few years ago? If someone is interested, I'm sure there will be some article or comment on it somewhere.

Rahm once floated turning the collar counties into 1 big Cook County.

No thanks.

What is her real complaint, she's an island surrounded by poor people?

I thought that's the lifestyle they wanted, "gritty?"; 4/7/13, 1:01 PM
Goju said...: It would seem the Lib's biggest objection to suburbs is that people who get tired of living in the hell of Dem controlled cities move there and tend to adopt conservative (comparatively) values. If you tax the wealth earners into poverty they will vote like poor people.; 4/7/13, 1:58 PM
Gahrie said...: The basic underlying fallacy of this article is a common one: the belief that economics is a zero sum game. (If people in the suburbs are living well, it is only because they are taking the innercity person's share.); 4/7/13, 2:52 PM
Alex said...: One way to equalize things would be to snatch the kids of well-to-do parents and put them in urban poverty, while taking the urban kids and putting them in the well-to-do homes. I mean that's a leftist fantasy trope right?; 4/7/13, 3:18 PM
Alex said...: Or better yet, just kill all the rich people like they did in the Russian Civil War.; 4/7/13, 3:19 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Moose said...

Not sure why this is any different than the concept of cities and with a rich section and a poor section. In this case they're just different suburban towns.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs only works* if the abilities and needs are within the same tax base.

*By works, I mean provides those in power the opportunity for graft, cronyism, and other forms of corruption, all for our benefit.; 4/7/13, 4:37 PM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/7/13, 5:10 PM
n.n said...: Ignorance is Bliss:

Why stop now?

Exactly. No more selective diversity, no matter the kind or form; no more discrimination of minorities, no matter how small; no more rights violations, no matter a person's age or stage of development. The "decent" men and women need to step forward and explain their selfish and peculiar interests.

Forward... to dysfunctional convergence on the wings of vice; 4/7/13, 5:18 PM
ALP said...: For those interested, the blog New Geography (Joel Kotkin) runs some of the best articles I have come across that counter the "suburbs suck" mentality.; 4/7/13, 5:48 PM
Craig Howard said...: What a horrible article.

When I was just out of college, I lived in a really crappy neighborhood [it's probably worse now]. But I worked, my career improved and I moved to a better one.

This, like all liberal commentary on the fact that people make different incomes -- income inequality, they call it -- assumes we are stuck in one place, one demographic, and one quintile or quartile all our lives.; 4/7/13, 6:04 PM
Craig Howard said...: What a horrible article.

When I was just out of college, I lived in a really crappy neighborhood [it's probably worse now]. But I worked, my career improved and I moved to a better one.

This, like all liberal commentary on the fact that people make different incomes -- income inequality, they call it -- assumes we are stuck in one place, one demographic, and one quintile or quartile all our lives.; 4/7/13, 6:04 PM
Rusty said...: You know why there are suburbs?
'cause cities suck dick. High taxes . High crime. Uncontrolled corruption.; 4/7/13, 6:59 PM
Joe said...: I'm curious how these authors react to people like my cousin and best friend who bought run down houses in shitty neighborhoods and fixed them up, often using their own hands. Their neighbors did the same and now they live in nice neighborhoods, similar to those decried by the authors.

Even in those suburban neighborhoods like what the authors described and what I've generally lived in, weren't just bought; they were made by the people who live there.; 4/7/13, 7:23 PM
Renee said...: "When I was just out of college, I lived in a really crappy neighborhood [it's probably worse now]. But I worked, my career improved and I moved to a better one."

Why didn't you stay and improve the community?

That's the problem with economic flight, a community can not improve if those who obtain economic stability leave.; 4/7/13, 8:39 PM
test said...: Some of this is obvious. High property values support high-achieving schools, which in turn increase property values and personal wealth. Racial redlining holds property values down, limiting investment in schools and preventing families from building equity, disadvantages that pass to the next generation like a negative inheritance.

This excerpt encapsulates the fatal flaw of this article and helps explain why NYT readers are so ignorant. While there clearly are differences in performance between suburbs and cities (or rich and poor areas) the reasons are quite varied. This article is careful to omit examination of any factor which might lead to politically incorrect conclusions.

The number one determinant of educational success is the intrinsic ability and drive of the student, and number two is parental involvement. This article doesn't even mention them. So where is the discussion of greater competition for academic recognition in suburban neighborhoods? The left certainly knows it exists since they cite it disparagingly whenever possible (Tiger moms, mommy wars).

Studies also show that beyond a certain minimum level funding has no effect on education outcomes, and every state in America except Mississippi is over that threshhold. So the NYT ignores significant facts to focus on discredited theories, and the common thread is that both of these errors overstate the role of money.; 4/8/13, 8:29 AM
Scott M said...: Saving black America is the only way to save the cities (if, in fact, they're not an anachronism), but the Lefties only want them as a low info underclass - and even then have set them up to abort themselves out of existence.

I've noticed something interesting in black communities lately. In the neighborhood I grew up in on the south side of Chicago, it went from roughly 60/40 white to almost completely black and got pretty bad for about 10 years (Domino's wouldn't deliver to my old "hood"). Now, friends that still live in the area tell me it's a solidly middle-class, almost completely black suburb.

Toward the end of the 90's, I lived in another black-dominated town on the north side of St Louis. I hadn't been back since until yesterday to help someone move a table, but I was pleased to see that was once nearly blighted urban decay was now teaming with new neighborhoods and a large shopping center anchored by a Target and Walgreens. Still overwhelmingly black, but, again, solidly middle class.

I was not aware that we had a growing population of decent, middle-class black neighborhoods growing up just outside the demilitarized zones of south Chicago and north St Louis. It's good to see that someone is putting forth the effort, both the vendors and the residents.; 4/8/13, 8:53 AM
Peter said...: 'Bruce Hayden' said, "And, yes, they also ignore that New York City has probably more inequity than do most suburbs, and quite a bit of racial separation."

I suppose those who live in million-dollar co-ops on the Upper West Side feel infinitely superior to these rich suburbanites, yet part of the reason for such high housing prices is the difficulty in building new housing in the City.

That is, people in rent-controlled apts have the right to live there for the remainder of their natural lives. As a result, it is all but impossible to empty an old, small building so one can build a new, much larger one on the site.

And even if you can empty it, NYC's endless building regulations and construction unions create some of the highest building costs in the nation.

So, supply remains very limited, and prices remain high.

And the rich live high up in their doorman-protected highrises, looking down on the rich in ... Los Angeles' suburbs?

Why don't they ask their co-op boards to make a few apts in their costly buildings "affordable"? Or, at least, think about the consequences of the laws, regulations and unions that force up housing prices in NYC?; 4/8/13, 10:03 AM
Andy Freeman said...: > Why didn't you stay and improve the community?

Because the community didn't want to improve. Trying to fight that is a waste.

> That's the problem with economic flight, a community can not improve if those who obtain economic stability leave.

You've got the causality backwards.

Is it rude to point out that you want someone else to sacrifice to help others? I don't see you moving into a blighted area to help folks....

Places stay poor because the people there do things that create poverty.

Meanwhile, folks in some currently poor places are doing what it takes to create wealth.

If you only look at one moment in time, you don't see those things.; 4/8/13, 11:18 AM
Sam L. said...: Azusa. Reminds me always of Mel Blanc as the railway announcer: "Now leaving on Track 9 for Anaheim, Azusa, and Coooooooooooook-ha-MONGA."; 4/8/13, 1:40 PM
ALP said...: > Why didn't you stay and improve the community?

Because the community didn't want to improve. Trying to fight that is a waste.
************
True that - a great response to an insipid question. I spent a decade working in non-profit agencies, where this attitude is typical and I never understood the logic: why in the world would I care more about strangers than THEY seem to care about themselves? I have seen too much effort, time and money wasted on those who never wanted the help proffered in the first place.; 4/8/13, 4:29 PM