Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups






















« George Zimmerman, Racist Monster, Emerges From Hiding Spot to Help Family Escape Overturned Truck | Main | IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins, One of Only Two Politically-Appointed IRS Officials, Visited the White House for Seven Hours Before Changing the Criteria for Targeting Tea Party Organizations Two Days Later »
July 22, 2013

Oh My: Study Shows that Taxes on the Rich and Subsidies for the Poor Have Almost No Effect on Income Mobility (That Is, "Rising Up" Socio-Economically)

But here are three factors that correlate highly with income mobility:

1. Coming from an intact, two-parent family

2. Good schools

3. Civic engagement with churches and other social organizations

Um... this study is obviously racist because it just recapitulates every racist Republican presidential platform since 1984.

There's also a fourth:

4. Living in neighborhoods containing a mix of higher-income people

I think that fourth one is about keeping the idea of aspiration and betterment alive in kids' minds-- you sort of need to see that people who play by the rules prosper by the rules.

This completely damns Blue State Welfarism. As if Detroit, where 47% of the population is functionally illiterate, didn't establish that case already. You will therefore not hear of this again.

Let me quote Mark Steyn on Detroit, given this suggestion by the study that "White Flight" -- or middle class flight -- does in fact hurt the poor.

With bankruptcy temporarily struck down, we’re told that “innovation hubs” and “enterprise zones” are the answer. Seriously? In my book After America, I observe that the physical decay of Detroit — the vacant and derelict lots for block after block after block — is as nothing compared to the decay of the city’s human capital. Forty-seven percent of adults are functionally illiterate, which is about the same rate as the Central African Republic, which at least has the excuse that it was ruled throughout the Seventies by a cannibal emperor. Why would any genuine innovator open a business in a Detroit “innovation hub”? Whom would you employ? The illiterates include a recent president of the school board, Otis Mathis, which doesn’t bode well for the potential work force a decade hence.

Given their respective starting points, one has to conclude that Detroit’s Democratic party makes a far more comprehensive wrecking crew than Emperor Bokassa ever did. No bombs, no invasions, no civil war, just “liberal” “progressive” politics day in, day out. Americans sigh and say, “Oh, well, Detroit’s an ‘outlier.’” It’s an outlier only in the sense that it happened here first. The same malign alliance between a corrupt political class, rapacious public-sector unions, and an ever more swollen army of welfare dependents has been adopted in the formally Golden State of California, and in large part by the Obama administration, whose priorities — “health” “care” “reform,” “immigration” “reform” — are determined by the same elite/union/dependency axis. As one droll tweeter put it, “If Obama had a city, it would look like Detroit.”

One of the strange excuses I hear for Detroit's downfall, and the downfall of many cities, is "White Flight." It is suggested, though I don't understand how this could possibly be suggested, that if whites decide that a city is becoming too expensive and too unlivable and remove their families to the suburbs in order to give their children a better and safer life, they have somehow committed a great social breach, bordering on a Hate Crime, for which they should be held responsible.

By, say, giving a central city the power to tax far-flung suburbs. After all, they committed a hate crime. The injured parties are entitled to recompense.

Of course this makes no sense -- no one "owes" anyone their physical presence. If you want to keep someone living in your city, do not constantly throw burdens upon them and attack their interests.

But it is interesting that this study found that the neighborhoods with a mixture of income levels had a positive impact on the income mobility of those of lesser means. It would suggest that "respectable" sort of people -- the strivers, the savers, those who keep their lawns neat and cars washed and one day visit their kids at college on Homecoming Day -- have a useful functioning of establishing a positive social norm throughout a community and, by doing so, send a virtuous ripple throughout the civic pool.

And so that would tend to suggest that "White Flight" -- or, again, Middle Class flight, as middle class minorities flee horrible cities like Detroit, too -- does tend to hurt the poor, not just as far as diminishing the tax base which funds welfare programs, but also as regards establishing a general environment of propriety and ambition which has powerful secondary effects on wealth creation.

And this, I think, should be borne in mind by city government: a government that is run purely for the government-paid civil servants and government-dependent welfare class will quickly drive out the middle class and with it a host of socially-useful norms that would otherwise help lower-class people attain middle-class status. Constantly beating on a city's productive classes, always seeking to tap the stone for another drop of blood, will simply drive them away and leave the city bankrupt not only as far as actual wealth but as far as intangible wealth like social capital, lawfulness, and work-habits as well.

Corrected: Detroit's population is 47% functionally illiterate, not 42% as I first wrote.


digg this
posted by Ace at 02:58 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Thomas Paine: "I expect the retard to pardon Jill and himself by ..."

Ciampino - The Glass Gaza Skating Rink & Parking Lot: "Watched a great podcast (not new) with Douglass Mu ..."

Don Black: "> the captain was an incompetent maniac and the cr ..."

A sea monkey: ""Marxism in science leads to women marrying brine ..."

Commissar Hrothgar (hOUT3) ~ Next year in Corsicana - again! ~ [/i][/b][/u][/s]: "The FBI has been corrupt in one way or another, ev ..."

NR Pax: "[i]37 "Yo course is so fat..."[/i] "The tuition ..."

Sean Hannity, Keeping Old Farts Entertained With Nonsense: "The FBI is staffed with the most patriotic, most h ..."

Anna Puma: "Is the Lincoln MAP Club still relevant? ..."

Common Tater: "It isn’t well known, but Warren’s fath ..."

one hour sober: "During COVID lockdown, Hillsborough County Sheriff ..."

Martini Farmer: "> When J20 rolls around, Trump oughta first pardon ..."

Anna Puma: "Blake The final report will be a fun exercise o ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64