Health Care and Detroit: Killed By Government

[Bearinabox]

Yeah, we can't handle the truth. Bearinabox, if you have some counterargument to what others have to say, please share it with us. Lately, your one line dismissive remarks have served only to prove the lack of countervailing evidence.

I post what I want to post. I'm not trying to "win" a debate or prove anything to anybody. Noula is annoying and is not contributing to the discourse here, and should therefore go away. You want evidence, try here. I'm not your librarian. Have a nice day.

[Retroit]

That's a load of shit. People in the suburbs--especially in Detroit--sought geographic problems to dealing with the poor, the disabled, the black, and the undereducated. This mass geographic reallocation of resources was enabled by de jure and de facto policy at all levels of government.

Well, first of all, the suburbs do have poor, disabled, blacks, and undereducated, and Detroit has wealthy, able-bodied, whites, and educated. Detroit has a greater percent of poor because it has cheaper housing. It has more blacks because most blacks that immigrated here settled there. This has changed over the years as many have moved out. And Detroit has more undereducated because children don't want to go to school, their parents don't force them to, and the DPS up until recent improvements, has been a disaster of mismanagement and corruption. As for disabled, I'll have to look into that.

You moved away from the problems you see. Yet it still bothers you enough to whine about it on an internet forum. Who the hell are you to pass judgment on anyone else?

Well, I always lived in the suburbs, but my family did once live in the city. They bought property in the suburbs initially to grow gardens as space in the city was limited. Eventually, after the neighborhood "changed", i.e. after the crime level increased to intolerable levels due to a change in demographics, they decided to build on their suburban property.

So, yes, they did move away from the problem. It still bothers me that they felt so uncomfortable that they had to leave. And it's not my intention to pass judgment on people, but rather on their behaviors.

[Retroit]

...I'm not trying to "win" a debate...

Obviously! I would enjoy it more if you were, though. Some of us come here to challenge others' misperceptions and to have our perceptions challenged. Debate is a good thing.

[Retroit]

I have noticed that threads about these issues in Metro Detroit are inevitably moved to the non-Detroit forum.......

This is a troubling trend. As if we are too immature to realize that Detroit has difficult issues to deal with. I have no problem discussing abandoned buildings, but shouldn't the discussion include why these buildings are being abandoned.

[Retroit]

"Better sense of community" means neighborhoods where most of the buildings our occupied, people don't live in constant fear, and neighbors are more likely to take care of each other than prey on each other.

And Detroit doesn't have this?

And remember you're talking about a 143 sq. mi city with 900,000 people still occupying it.

And remember it used to have twice as many. But I will admit there are nice neighborhoods of Detroit [[some I would be honored to live in) and there are many good people in Detroit. I don't mean to portray the whole city in a bad light, but let's be honest, many areas of the city are in bad shape and many Detroiters don't really seem to mind all that much.

[ghettopalmetto]

Well, first of all, the suburbs do have poor, disabled, blacks, and undereducated, and Detroit has wealthy, able-bodied, whites, and educated. Detroit has a greater percent of poor because it has cheaper housing. It has more blacks because most blacks that immigrated here settled there. This has changed over the years as many have moved out. And Detroit has more undereducated because children don't want to go to school, their parents don't force them to, and the DPS up until recent improvements, has been a disaster of mismanagement and corruption. As for disabled, I'll have to look into that.

I think the idea I'm trying to impress is that the City of Detroit consists of a disproportionate amount of the poor, disabled, and undereducated. The number of so-called "stable" nuclear households, like one tends to find in the suburbs, is low by comparision. As a result, Detroit has a low-earning populace with social ills, who are left to shoulder the fiscal and social burden of the majority of the region's social ills. For example, there are always children who don't want to learn, but when you concentrate the majority of them into one school district--and a majority of that school district's population ends up consisting of these kids--then dysfunction can't help but arise. Most of those with means to do so have already abdicated.

Well, I always lived in the suburbs, but my family did once live in the city. They bought property in the suburbs initially to grow gardens as space in the city was limited. Eventually, after the neighborhood "changed", i.e. after the crime level increased to intolerable levels due to a change in demographics, they decided to build on their suburban property.

So, yes, they did move away from the problem. It still bothers me that they felt so uncomfortable that they had to leave. And it's not my intention to pass judgment on people, but rather on their behaviors.

Please don't take the impression that I'm trying to attack you. But just as you couldn't help where you were born and raised, neither can the children of struggling families in the City of Detroit. To stand back and point fingers that "they need to get their shit together" looks very judgmental on your part--intentional or not-- given that sometimes, life deals us circumstances that we simply can't help. It's one thing to tell someone to buy a car so he can get to a job in the suburbs. It's quite another to find the money to buy that car.

[Bearinabox]

Obviously! I would enjoy it more if you were, though. Some of us come here to challenge others' misperceptions and to have our perceptions challenged. Debate is a good thing.

I come here for my enjoyment, not yours. If you enjoy my posts, that's wonderful. If you don't, I don't care.

When I find a debate that's worth my time, I contribute. A thread entitled "Health Care and Detroit: Killed By Government" just isn't it. The health care debate is over, the teabaggers lost, and it's time to move on. Watch how fast America doesn't become communist now that our health care system got tweaked a little.

[Detroitnerd]

On the statement: ...we have determined that certain cities are going to be repositories of those poor enough to never be able to leave them.

Who has determined that? You make it sound like suburbanites go around at night to gather the poor people and drag them into Detroit. Have you ever considered that people in some cities take care of each other [[and themselves) instead of waiting for Obama to take care of them?

Who has determined that? We, as a region, have determined that we are not interested in solving social problems. Instead, we shall leave areas that have social problems, thereby ensuring we're free of them and that those problems continue to fester. Ever since the 1920s and the advent of the automobile, we have decided, collectively, as metro Detroiters, that we will simply pick up stakes and move to a better place, without social problems. Then those problems will be "their" problems and we won't have to worry about them anymore.

Can you point to a single instance in metro Detroit history that doesn't dovetail with that narrative?

And so you wind up with Detroit being largely poor. Then, when the people who have enough money to leave Detroit go to a certain suburb, the people with the most resources and income who live there fear that the newcomers will bring their social problems with them, so they pick up stakes and leave. And so that suburb starts to become poorer. And then its residents consider moving to the next seemingly welcome suburb. But little do they know that the people in the next belt of development will fear social problems and move even farther away.

Is it the people who move in who cause the social problems? Or is it the exodus of taxpayers and high-income people who intensify the social problems by taking their contributions away?

Whatever the case, all you need for this to happen is an environment of fear, mistrust, institutional racism and dozens of different municipalities each trying to preserve their piece of the pie and not thinking about the region.

And people who leave can say that, you know, they're not racists. And, hey, maybe they aren't. Who knows? They can frame their decision to abandon their community in terms of insurance costs, home values, educational quality. But what it often means is that they move to a lily-white community. And then the process is poised to start all over again.

Who benefits from all this? Not just the criminal-minded political class that takes up the slack left by people of means who bail. It benefits subdivision developers, road builders, exurban governments, etc. We must build entire new communities because of those fears, and people make an obscene profit off it. These powerful interests fleece us because of our fear and aversion, and it ain't just big, bad, black politicians, Retroit. It's their partners in crime, the other people who make their money on our collective fear and mistrust. You know: the Pattersons, the Pultes, the MDOTS and SEMCOGS. Yes, we must acknowledge the kleptocracy in Detroit, but we mustn't be blind to the suburban equivalents either.

See, it's a very complicated story, and I completely understand anybody's defensive reaction to insist upon framing all this in the old narrative. "We made Detroit a great city. Then THEY moved in and trashed it. So we moved away. They deserve what they get down there." Neat, tidy little story. And no cause for any pangs of guilt or further examination.

But if you want all of "us" to examine Detroit's apparent pathologies, are you willing to bring that same scrutiny to bear on the rest of the region? To examine that we all have our part to play in creating a perfect shithole of a city? And that we all share a certain responsibility for that? I am genuinely curious.

[oladub]

ghettopalmetto, It's more than just the Detroit underclass that prevents the City from turning around. I had what I thought was a pretty good idea to revive Detroit and it was shot down on the Detroit board. I proposed that developers be allowed to buy up multiblock areas and wall them leaving only gated access. The internal communities would be large enough to have their own basic stores, private schools, and private security. This would bring middle class people back into Detroit and create all sorts of jobs. Neighborhood by neighborhood, 20 or 30 square blocks at a time, the city would revive. Since all the new residents would be paying City taxes, Detroit would have more revenue to spend on it's remaining area and schools. It is a win-win solution to reclaiming Detroit.

Anyway, most of the other posters thought it was a horrid idea. They liked Detroit the way it is better. They even promoted the idea of turning Detroit into fields. Therin lies the problem. The majority sentiment was that it was better to be control freaks and watch Detroit Chernobylize itself that to give up control to private groups of people who might revive the economy.

Which brings us back to the OP article. The control freaks who drove up the price of health care while sumultaniously driving down our relative wages at the national level, want more and more control while not acknowledging their own culpability for why health care costs got out of hand. They did this all for our common welfare of course. They don't want any barriers allowing Americans to keep lawyers, bureaucrats, burdensome regulations, etc.. from looting and vandalizing our health care system; which they have done.

While the OP article overdid the Detoit analogy, it is hard to not notice that Detroit has been about the most Democrat voting major city in the country for a very long time. Where was the payoff? Now we are suposed to believe that the Party that did so much to make Detroit what it is with all its controls [[i.e. appease unions with a law requiring all houses to be brought up to standard before selling them even though the cost of of doing so was more than abandoning the house.) will be able to set standards which will will simultaniously improve health care and make it cheaper.
Wanna buy a bridge?

[Retroit]

The number of so-called "stable" nuclear households, like one tends to find in the suburbs, is low by comparision. As a result, Detroit has a low-earning populace with social ills,...

True.

...who are left to shoulder the fiscal and social burden of the majority of the region's social ills. For example, there are always children who don't want to learn, but when you concentrate the majority of them into one school district--and a majority of that school district's population ends up consisting of these kids--then dysfunction can't help but arise. Most of those with means to do so have already abdicated.

This is also true, but it can be solved by creating "so-called 'stable' nuclear households, like one tends to find in the suburbs". Much of the problems in Detroit and the suburbs is caused by a breakdown of the family. I think that all people everywhere should have better "family values", it's just that the problems in Detroit are greater and are contributing more to its destruction.

Please don't take the impression that I'm trying to attack you.

Oh, I didn't. I just thought that by pointing out one family's story, it might be more clear to you that white people didn't just start running to the suburbs because the first black person moved into their Detroit neighborhood.

But just as you couldn't help where you were born and raised, neither can the children of struggling families in the City of Detroit. To stand back and point fingers that "they need to get their shit together" looks very judgmental on your part--intentional or not-- given that sometimes, life deals us circumstances that we simply can't help.

Isn't it "very judgmental" on your part to presuppose that the people of Detroit can't help themselves? I'm not saying it's a simple matter for a poor kid growing up in a crackhouse to graduate from college, but it has been done. And I believe that Detroiters have more power than they realize to turn their lives and their city around.

It's one thing to tell someone to buy a car so he can get to a job in the suburbs. It's quite another to find the money to buy that car.

Why buy a car? Why work in the suburbs? Fix what you can fix where you are. Support local businesses. Start a business in the city. Use public transportation; if there is a great enough demand for it, it will be self-supporting.

Again, I have no problem with Detroit being poor. My grandparents were poor. Poverty is not evil. I'm concerned with how people are not taking care of themselves, their families, and their communities.

[Retroit]

I come here for my enjoyment, not yours. If you enjoy my posts, that's wonderful. If you don't, I don't care.

When I find a debate that's worth my time, I contribute. A thread entitled "Health Care and Detroit: Killed By Government" just isn't it.

Then why did you post here?

The health care debate is over, the teabaggers lost, and it's time to move on. Watch how fast America doesn't become communist now that our health care system got tweaked a little.

Watch how fast America becomes a communist country when Obamites who thought they were going to get free health care find out that their government is going to force [[i.e. communism) them to buy health insurance.

[Bearinabox]

Then why did you post here?

The same reason I post everything I post--to entertain myself.

Watch how fast America becomes a communist country when Obamites who thought they were going to get free health care find out that their government is going to force [[i.e. communism) them to buy health insurance.

This makes no sense. I have no idea what you're trying to say.

[Detroitnerd]

Much of the problems in Detroit and the suburbs is caused by a breakdown of the family. I think that all people everywhere should have better "family values", it's just that the problems in Detroit are greater and are contributing more to its destruction.

Retroit, are you aware that you are taking an effect and saying it's a cause? If you pull the majority of capital out of a city, leaving it to its poorest residents, you create an environment that is hostile to stable family life. This type of faulty thinking goes back to the days of Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report "The Negro Family." As myths go, it "sells well" because it provides affluent white suburbanites with a comfortable conclusion.

Why buy a car? Why work in the suburbs? Fix what you can fix where you are. Support local businesses. Start a business in the city. Use public transportation; if there is a great enough demand for it, it will be self-supporting.

I am amused by the spectacle of a person who lives in a heavily subsidized environment exhorting the poor on how to improve themselves.

[Retroit]

We, as a region, have determined that we are not interested in solving social problems. Instead, we shall leave areas that have social problems, thereby ensuring we're free of them and that those problems continue to fester. Ever since the 1920s and the advent of the automobile, we have decided, collectively, as metro Detroiters, that we will simply pick up stakes and move to a better place, without social problems. Then those problems will be "their" problems and we won't have to worry about them anymore.

Not true. Detroit's problems are self-imposed. Before "the 1920s", Detroiters took care of each other. To this day, suburbanites take care of each other. [[I'm speaking in generalizations here. I realize it is not as cut-and-dry.) It is very hard for "the region" to solve the problems in Detroit. Consider how hard it is for me to even bring up the matter on an internet forum. What kind of response do you think I would get if I started knocking on doors in Detroit and asking "Excuse me, do you have any social problems that I can solve?"

And so you wind up with Detroit being largely poor. Then, when the people who have enough money to leave Detroit go to a certain suburb, the people with the most resources and income who live there fear that the newcomers will bring their social problems with them, so they pick up stakes and leave. And so that suburb starts to become poorer. And then its residents consider moving to the next seemingly welcome suburb. But little do they know that the people in the next belt of development will fear social problems and move even farther away.

It is true that as a population increase, wealth stratification becomes more obvious. In earlier times, Detroit had a greater mix of income groups living among each other. But I refuse to believe that poverty equates to social problems. Maybe this is a stubbornness on my part to accept the concept that poverty is bad and wealth is good, but I've seen enough good poor people and bad rich people to know that wealth and virtue are not inseparably linked.

But if you want all of "us" to examine Detroit's apparent pathologies, are you willing to bring that same scrutiny to bear on the rest of the region?

Sure. Everyone should try to improve their world. But it starts locally. Start within your neighborhood, then your city, then region, state, country, world. But we have limited time and resources. Suburbanites are busy enough taking care of their own communities. What are Detroiters doing to take care of theirs?

To examine that we all have our part to play in creating a perfect shithole of a city? And that we all share a certain responsibility for that? I am genuinely curious.

I don't see it this way. If no one ever left Detroit, its population would be 4.4 million. You think that might cause a few problems? Suburbanites did not create social problems in Detroit before deciding to flee to the suburbs. Most of the problems were created by those who stayed. I would be in favor of more regional cooperation, but I wonder if Detroiters are really receptive to "white suburbanites" coming into "their city" and "telling them what to do".

[Retroit]

The same reason I post everything I post--to entertain myself.

Have you ever tried masturbating? - it's much better!

This makes no sense. I have no idea what you're trying to say.

You are aware that people who don't have health insurance will be required to purchase it, right?

[Papasito]

Detroit is more of a study of what happens when the city is neglected by the rest of the nation

So it's some Texan guy's problem that Michigan taxed the piss out of a Detroit company, so it moved to Mexico and laid off 800 workers? Please, give me a break. Hold your city accountable for its' own demise.

[Bearinabox]

Suburbanites did not create social problems in Detroit before deciding to flee to the suburbs.

Um...

I would be in favor of more regional cooperation, but I wonder if Detroiters are really receptive to "white suburbanites" coming into "their city" and "telling them what to do".

Perhaps telling people what to do is the wrong approach.

[Bearinabox]

Have you ever tried masturbating? - it's much better!

No comment.

You are aware that people who don't have health insurance will be required to purchase it, right?

Yes.

[Retroit]

Retroit, are you aware that you are taking an effect and saying it's a cause? If you pull the majority of capital out of a city, leaving it to its poorest residents, you create an environment that is hostile to stable family life.

Detroitnerd, blaming one's problems on a lack of money is a lame excuse. There are people who would rather die of starvation than to do harm to another human being.

[Papasito]

It doesn't matter if you have blacks, whites, hispanics, or whatever in Detroit communities, if there are no jobs, there are no jobs. if there is no prosperity, there is no prosperity. Detroit went from the richest city on the planet to a complete disaster because the representative government did not protect thier constituents, and what you see is the result.

[Bearinabox]

Detroitnerd, blaming one's problems on a lack of money is a lame excuse. There are people who would rather die of starvation than to do harm to another human being.

How many such people would you say there are, worldwide? And how many of those have ever actually been faced with that choice? I think that number is much, much smaller than you seem to be implying.

[Retroit]

Um...

And why do you suppose that signs like this were made? Can you really blame people for fearing another group when all the fears about that other group became true. It's not like once Detroit became black, it was no worse than when it was white. It was not a fear of skin color; it was a fear of an increase in crime that whites expected from blacks, which unfortunately and regrettably proved to be true. [[I realize that not all blacks are criminals and that no whites are. It's just a matter of disproportions.)

[Retroit]

How many such people would you say there are, worldwide? And how many of those have ever actually been faced with that choice? I think that number is much, much smaller than you seem to be implying.

Well, I was using an extreme case to prove a point. I don't think that just because a person has less money than they would like, they will resort to causing problems in society.

[Detroitnerd]

Detroitnerd, blaming one's problems on a lack of money is a lame excuse. There are people who would rather die of starvation than to do harm to another human being.

Oh, yes. Poor people aren't all criminals. But let's say you put people in a place where there is no way out. Where the personal and institutional racism are so pervasive they can't walk down the street outside the city without scrutiny from cops. Where the schools are poorly equipped and filled with underachievers who threaten the bright students. Where you can't get adequate city services. Where the air quality is so poor that many people have asthma. Where the libraries are small and often closed. Where you're so poor that you can't even get adequate food and you actually suffer brain damage. Where you can't even get fresh food without traveling for a mile or two, but you have no car. Where your father can't get any work so your mother has to provide for the family, and your dad, if he stays, feels useless and impotent. Where people are much more likely to be alcoholics, drug-abusers, etc.

You see, you can get out of poverty, but that isn't the same thing as getting out of the ghetto.

Perhaps you might consider doing some reading about urban poverty. We are fortunate enough to have a bunch of very bright sociologists over the years who can explain just what ghetto life is like. Or you could read the fictional stories of Donald Goines or something.

I say that because urban poverty seems to be one of the major, recurring concerns in your posts. Perhaps if you were to read more about ghettos and enforced poverty, you'd better understand why those who rise out of those environments are very rare indeed. It's one thing to grow up poor and become more comfortable. It's quite another to have the full weight of society and individual prejudice arrayed against you. It could be an eye-opening experience for you!

Or perhaps that's not what you're interested in. Maybe you don't want to deepen your understanding of Detroit's poverty. Maybe for you it's just a convenient thing to blame for problems you don't want to see your role in helping create and perpetuate.

But if that's the case, why post here with all these questions?

[Bearinabox]

And why do you suppose that signs like this were made? Can you really blame people for fearing another group when all the fears about that other group became true. It's not like once Detroit became black, it was no worse than when it was white. It was not a fear of skin color; it was a fear of an increase in crime that whites expected from blacks, which unfortunately and regrettably proved to be true. [[I realize that not all blacks are criminals and that no whites are. It's just a matter of disproportions.)

When a subset of the population is completely isolated, over a period of generations, from all the trappings of mainstream society and the knowledge required to function and succeed in that type of society, the result is a whole bunch of social problems. That's just what happens. Residential segregation of the type exemplified by that picture led directly to many of the social problems now present in Detroit. You can say "well Detroiters should have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps anyway" until you're blue in the face, but that's not a realistic expectation, and is a cop-out as regards actually improving things here. Now, you could make a fairly convincing argument that the behavior of those homeowners was completely rational in the context of the overall system in place at the time, and thus not necessarily motivated by clear-cut racial prejudice and nothing else, but you can't argue that it had no role in creating social problems.

[[See, Retroit? I do debate sometimes).