I love Robert Reich, the former Clinton Secretary of Labor. I don't love the way he thinks, but I love the way he will often take off the mask and honestly express what the left really thinks - especially when they are exasperated by a situation they can't explain away with their usual Bolshevik. The Detroit bankruptcy is one such situation, and Reich went on Twitter the other day with this gem:
Americans are segregating by income, leaving the poor behind in their own separate cities. Any wonder Detroit goes bankrupt?
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) July 19, 2013
Let's break down his thinking, because it's even more instructive than you might realize at first glance. First, yes indeed, he does correctly identify the elephant in the room. The hardest problem to overcome in Detroit - and bankruptcy will not fix it - is that over the course of six decades, almost everyone who could leave Detroit has done so. I say almost because there are always some people who simply prefer the urban lifestyle, and still others who live in the city as some sort of social or moral statement. I personally know people who live in Detroit because they see it as "the right thing to do," and God bless them. Live wherever you want for whatever reason you want.
But let's be honest and recognize these folks, who live in riverfront apartment buildings or the few remaining viable neighborhoods, are a tiny minority of Detroit's remaining 700,000-some residents. The vast majority are those who remain because they do not possess the means to go elsewhere. If you drive through Detroit's neighborhoods - and I do not recommend this if you want remain alive - it will become clear to you very quickly that no one would live there if they knew how to get out, or had the means to get out.
And that leads me to a question people should be asking Democratic elected officials in America's urban areas: Why don't rich people want to live in your cities?
Think about it. They are big believers in the urban models they use to govern. They offer the bustling central business districts, the nightlife, the professional sports, the public transportation, the ethnic diversity - these are all supposed to be things that highly recommend cities as a place to live. But the results of housing supply and demand in America don't bear that out. Those with the means to live anywhere they want almost never choose central cities. They choose the ritzy suburbs. And even the middle class typically choose the less swanky but still liveable suburbs. This is not as uniformly true in other cities as it is in Detroit, but the trend still persists nationwide.
And that leads me to pose this challenge: Big-city liberals follow a certain model in governing and running their cities. They think it's a good model. Fine. So why don't the people who have the means to go wherever they want choose to live in these cities? What isn't the governing model embraced by big-city liberals offering them? Why don't these cities have neighborhoods that rich people want to live in? Schools that rich people want their kids going to? You say the cities lack the means, and I ask, why is that? The suburbs don't lack the means because they manage to function well with lower tax rates, better schools and more effective police protection, while keeping up homes and properties such that they protect the value of their properties and thus their tax base.
The left is upset that rich people choose to abandon central cities, and they blame this (calling it "white flight" in Detroit and probably elsewhere) for the cities' plight. But people live where they want to live, if they can, and obviously the rich can live wherever they want. If it's so important for the cities to keep wealthy people living there, why do they keep running the cities in the way they do? Why do they maintain insanely high tax rates, well-paid but poorly functioning municipal workforces and inefficient delivery of basic services? Why do they maintain poor-performing school systems that spend heavily on administration but graduate kids who care barely read?
If liberals want to come right out and admit that the urban environment cannot deliver high quality of life, then let them admit that. But I for one do not think that's the case. I think you could run central cities in such a way that you could maintain good neighborhoods where people of means would want to live. But you would have to re-think the policies by which cities are run, and that would certainly start by changing the poverty mindset that says urban areas will always be the home of blight and decay, and all urban leaders can ever do is just manage the inherent shortage of resources.
As it stands, they run cities via a model that seems perfect to them, only to complain when people who don't like that model leave. The only difference between Detroit and the notorious models of the Soviet communist era is that people are still allowed to leave Detroit, and for the most part, anyone who can does. This upsets the likes of Robert Reich, but the fault doesn't lie with those who leave. The fault lies with whose who run the cities and can't give them a reason to stay.
