Stadiums To Save Detroit

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

Giving money to the poor does not lift them out of poverty. Our "War on Poverty" since the 1960s has spent $11T.

[emu steve]

Giving money to the poor does not lift them out of poverty. Our "War on Poverty" since the 1960s has spent $11T.

while we have tried to lift the poor out of poverty through income support, housing assistance, medical insurance, etc. there have been countervailing forces which have largely negated those efforts.

Those countervailing forces include globalization with the loss of millions of jobs overseas and downward pressure on wages in the U.S.

The biggest contributor to poverty is the lack of good paying jobs for all Americans at various education and skill levels.

Looking forward, we face bigger challenges as a country as corporate America attempts to dial back defined benefit pensions and health care coverage for workers and retirees [[Retirees 65+, of course, have access to Medicare which mitigates some of the medical insurance problems.).

The decline of Detroit, Flint, etc. parallel the decline of the manufacturer of automobiles in those metropolitan areas.

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

The decline of Detroit, Flint, etc. parallel the decline of the manufacturer of automobiles in those metropolitan areas.

Nothing to do with broken homes, high drop out rates, rampant drug use, young black men killing other young black men in huge numbers? Nothing to do with hugely expensize yet useless local government? Ah, yes. Blame the auto companies! Completely justifies ignoring the actual causes of our urban breakdown.

[Detroitnerd]

And we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing the rich with bailouts, corporate welfare and infusions of taxpayers' money, and none of that has helped the rich put their money toward work that benefits the common welfare. At least the poor spend their money on consumer goods, stimulating the economy.

[antongast]

Giving money to the poor does not lift them out of poverty.

If poverty is defined by total annual income, then the only way a direct annual cash transfer to a poor person could fail to lift them out of poverty is if it's an insufficiently large transfer.

However, a lot of assistance for the poor in the United States comes in forms other than direct cash transfers, and the impact of such assistance is not measured by poverty rates. Food stamps, for example, by definition can't lift anyone out of poverty, because they don't affect anyone's cash income one way or the other.

[antongast]

I like the stadiums idea, by the way, but it's not clear to me how Mike Ilitch would benefit from the subsidies directed at non-Ilitch team owners. I think this proposal should incorporate an Ilitch Benefits Agreement [[IBA) to ensure that some percentage of the profits of all these facilities are shared with Mike Ilitch. Developing more stadiums is an important policy goal, but the City of Detroit shouldn't lose sight of the fact that its primary raison d'etre is to make Mike Ilitch richer and his companies more profitable.