The Fight for the Soul of Seattle - NY is next?

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by Lerner, Dec 31, 2020.

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  1. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    NY , LA, San Fransisco, Seattle and other cities are slowly deteriorating.


     
  2. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    Radial left liberal policies are ineffective Gov like Cuomo, Newsom and others better wake up.
     
  3. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    I am native to Seattle but I left Washington State in 1981 to live here in New Mexico. I find the place unrecognizable after 40 years in both good and bad ways. In good ways, there's so much more there to do and see and enjoy. In bad ways, the population of the area has about doubled, housing prices have soared, and traffic is among the worst in the nation. Some of the problems KOMO-TV highlights are the results of the city becoming too expensive for middle and working class people to live in. Sometimes from the city's failure to address public needs. Over all hangs the curse of homelessness connected with mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse. I don't know what the answers are. I'm not sure anyone does. On the whole, though, I'd rather live here than there. We have the same problems but on a much smaller scale.
     
  4. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I knew even before checking that KOMO would be a Sinclair station.
     
    Dustin and Bill Huffman like this.
  5. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Well, I do visit from time to time and the problems are real.
     
  6. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    I listened to a couple minutes of the 90 minute long article that Lerner linked to. It seems to paints a picture of a post apocalypse society and blames it all on the left. I don't think the problems are that severe and I doubt it is a fair appraisal of the situation.
     
  7. eriehiker

    eriehiker Active Member

    I've never been to NY, SF or LA, but I have been to Seattle many times. I am sure that Seattle has problems, but I think that most of them are problems that good and growing cities have. I live and work in rural Michigan near Hillsdale College and the problems in Hillsdale County relate to the fact that some older residents still live in houses with dirt floors and have pretty much zero social services to speak of. It is a harsh place with high Covid infection and death rates as a percentage of population. Pretty much all of the small downtown areas in this part of Michigan are bombed out wrecks because of trickle down economics that didn't trickle down and trade policies that had absolutely zero concern for domestic industry. I always laugh when Hillsdale College is held up as a pinnacle of conservative thought because it is a terrible place to live. I live in the county next door and it is a little better, but only a little. The place is so terrible that Hillsdale College created a second campus in Washington, D.C. because it couldn't convince enough actual conservatives to move to a place that has completely implemented conservative principles.

    In Michigan, there is a long-held strategy amongst Republicans in rural areas to demonize Detroit. Most people in the area have never actually been to Detroit, but residents can always be distracted from rural poverty by pointing to Detroit and saying at least we don't live there. I don't think that all of that is racism, but certainly that makes the demonization easier. These attempts continue despite the fact that Detroit has a great mayor, much more effective government than in the past and has improved considerably in recent years. You didn't see Detroit involved with the racial strife in 2020 because the place largely has its act together now. I think that fact also had a major impact on the presidential race in 2o2o. The margin in Michigan was, at least partially, the result of Detroit coming back from the dead.

    When I saw this post, my gut level reaction was that this video is just a part of the attempt to demonize cities. Republicans pretty much have nothing positive to point to anymore. It is all anti, anti, anti. I think that Republicans used to have good points to make about deficit-spending and reasonable free trade policies, but the party doesn't believe in those things anymore. So now it just points to Democratic places and trashes them.
     
  8. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    "Trade policies that have absolutely zero concern for domestic industry." Yup. Policies pursued for decades relentlessly by Democratic AND Republican administrations. And that's how Trump got elected in 2016.
     
  9. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    As to Seattle, I think that no city can stop the damage that the arrival of a class of Super Rich does to any community, large or small. You can see a much smaller example in Santa Fe NM.
     
  10. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    I see difference between left and radical left. If you watched this video a little longer you will see how 20+ years ago it was a democrat who "predicted" warn about the future of Seattle, but then left was different and better in many ways.
    The radical left that wants to de-fund police, abolish ICE etc, are not helping with these issues but in my view at the minimum increasing the spread of multiple problems.
    But radical left are not a lone to blame.
     
  11. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    I don't make such connection, usually arrival of such class brings prosperity and jobs. I do understand that when real estate prices rise it also creates problems to less fortunate driving housing prices up.
    I think there are many factors contribute to the deterioration of cities.
    Law and order needs to be enforced, compassionate programs and crime free - or significantly reduced crime areas with afordible housing and jobs are good place to start.
    Education, child and elderly care, houses of worship, etc.
     
    Last edited: Jan 2, 2021
  12. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    House prices and rent rates go way up but wages don't track.
     
  13. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Other factors certainly DO come into play but the underlying problem is that the city becomes impossible to live in.
     
  14. eriehiker

    eriehiker Active Member

    I don't think that this is universally true. Dan Gilbert is now the 15th richest American and 21st richest person in the world at $49.6 billion. In 2010, he moved what is now the largest mortgage banker in the United States, Quicken, to Downtown Detroit. Gilbert receives occasional criticism for not expanding in Detroit neighborhoods, but he is a great example of how very wealthy people can help their own communities. Detroit and Michigan are very fortunate to have him and his company in the state. Seattle and Santa Fe are places with a lot of resources. Detroit, not so much. But this is also interesting because it shows that a "system" in which a few ultra-rich people are allowed to make their own decisions creates massive disparity between what happens in one city versus another. Detroit has greatly benefitted from Gilbert's wealth and he has, by and large, had good intentions. Other cities experience something different. Maybe it would be better to implement a system that taxes and regulates these companies so that the trickle-down benefits are more standardized and equitably distributed.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/quicken-loans-dan-gilbert-detroit-2018-8
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/08/22/richest-billionaire-gainers-musk-bezos-gilbert/?sh=1525457f6fa9
     
  15. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    Indeed the radical left alone probably can't be blamed since they are rarely in charge of anything. Usually the people running the government are more in the middle, especially at the Federal level. An exception possibly being the Donald Trump administration. Admittedly some of his policies were more middle of the road but he ruled from the right and never tried to build bridges to the middle or the left.
     
  16. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    My interpretation of the context that Nosborne's post was coming from was not so much a single or few rich people but a larger group of rich people. Seattle, for example, had a large increase in the average income because of microsoft. Home prices shot up, land prices shot up, and the folks that used to live in the area could no longer afford to live there, etc..
     
  17. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Yes, I'm defining "rich" pretty broadly and I'm talking about a whole stratum of a city's population. And it is a two edged thing, good and bad.
     
    eriehiker likes this.
  18. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    I should also make clear that I am not a refugee from Seattle's "gentrification ". I left long before Microsoft, Starbucks or Amazon even existed. In fact, I COULD move back even now but the idea does not excite me.
     
    Bill Huffman likes this.
  19. eriehiker

    eriehiker Active Member

    It is a good clarification. Dan Gilbert has, occasionally, been criticized for creating a bit of a Disneyworld situation in Downtown Detroit. The professionals attracted to Downtown Detroit are more white and have greater wealth than the average Detroiter. This criticism has only happened occasionally. It would be near-impossible to replicate the racial divisions of a city formed by extreme de facto segregation and federal housing policy that created actual walls to separate white and black populations.

    I think that gentrification is mostly a problem in areas that can afford to think about it. In a place like Detroit, waves and waves of rich people moving in is only a good thing.

    https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/john-gallagher/2019/07/18/detroit-gentrification-study/1755180001/
     
  20. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    I remember long time ago maybe 30 years or so a rush to NM. Companies and people moving there.
    Today in the last decade or so I see major movement to TX.
    Companies leaving San Fran, LA, NY etc and relocating to no state tax TX.
     

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