Baltimore Redux: Still Thanking the Government for the Ghetto
Want to save money? Sell your house. Move to Detroit. The median house in the Motor City sold for $7,500 in December. How about that, dear reader? You can buy a house for the same price as the Dow stocks. A little low on cash? Put it on your credit card.
Of course, then you’ve got to live in Detroit. The papers report that life in the city is so grim 1,000 people move out every month.
We’ve never been to Detroit. Out of curiosity, we offered to take Elizabeth for a romantic getaway to Detroit for her birthday. Our offer drew this reply:
“Are you out of your mind?”
Poor Detroit. No one goes to the city for a holiday. Not even students. As near as we can tell people only go there if they have to. And then, they get out as soon as they can.
We can imagine what it is like. We lived in the Baltimore ghetto for nearly 10 years. If you want to know what it is like, there’s a TV show that chronicles life there – The Wire.
Was it disagreeable living in the inner city? No, it would have to undergo major improvements to be disagreeable. It was Hell. Drug dealers on the street corners. Trash in the alleys. Everybody with a pistol in his pants and a chip on his shoulder.
Elizabeth was once on the phone with her brother.
“What’s that noise in the background?” he asked. “It sounds like popcorn popping.”
“Oh, that’s just someone shooting in the alley,” Elizabeth replied. “I think they’re trying to settle an argument.”
We’d been there too long. Elizabeth hadn’t even noticed the gunfire.
But it shows what government can do when it tries to fix a problem. In the case of Detroit and Baltimore, the government provided massive bailouts. Education standards collapsed…so the government provided money to the local education bureaucracy. Jobs disappeared (largely because people couldn’t read or write)…so the government provided massive bailouts in many different bureaucracies – training centers, welfare, food stamps. Pretty soon, the only industry left was the welfare bureaucracy.
We don’t know how it works now, but when we lived in the ghetto a girl’s best career path was promiscuity. She got more money with each child she had…provided, of course, that the father didn’t take responsibility for it. Then, the child grew up…took drugs and stole cars…until he got sent to prison. One problem led to another – but it could all be traced to the government’s giveaways. They had the same effect in Baltimore as they had in Burkina Faso. The political elite took the money and lined their pockets…the masses become more miserable than before. And the worse conditions got, the more money the cities received from federal bailout programs.
Baltimore is still in business. But from what we read, Detroit sounds like it has become a kind of Port-au-Prince with snowdrifts. The whole city sounds like a hellhole without the warm fires.
And now Obama is proposing to make things worse. More bailouts…more giveaways…more programs…more bureaucrats… Already, the ‘rich’ support whole sections of the population. Obama says he will raise taxes on ‘the rich,’ creating even more parasites. Of course, who cares if the rich have less money? They will still live in their leafy suburbs and send their children to private schools. But pity the poor parasites.
Neither Mr. Obama nor none of the candidates for Mayor of Detroit (the last mayor is doing time in a federal penitentiary) has asked for our advice. We will give it anyway. Want to save Detroit? Here’s how:
Abolish all welfare of all sorts…no unemployment insurance…no child tax credits…no welfare…no foods tamps…no nothing, except privately-sponsored charities. Close the public schools. Kick out all the bureaucrats and all federal and state employees. Abolish all rules concerning employment – no minimum wages, no overtime, discriminate all you want. Require all residents to say please and thank you…dress properly…and sneer at people who don’t seem to be gainfully employed or polite. Declare the city an Open City and Free Trade Zone. In exchange for cutting all federal aid programs, eliminate federal and state taxes for people living in the city. Allow unlimited immigration into the city…giving all immigrants a U.S. passport after 5 years of residency. Levy a flat 10% tax to pay for basic services. Eliminate elections…have the city controlled by a town council composed of 10 citizens chosen at random.
Within five years, Detroit would be the most dynamic city in the nation.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
March 6, 2009
Whiskey Contributor
Whiskey & Gunpowder occasionally features commentary from financial analysts, experts, gold bugs and an array of contributors from various fields and occupations. Their diverse insights and contrarians investing ideas are hand selected by your Whiskey & Gunpowder editors.
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The Whiskey Bar borrowed this article from our friends over at the Daily Reckoning, whom we enthusiastically recommend.
I addressed this very theme in one of my first articles for Whiskey. I blamed the government, too, but that should come as no surprise to any of you Shooters. I got some e-mail responses to that one that insisted Baltimore’s problems ran a bit deeper — on a genetic level.
“Look at the ethnic majority in the most blighted cities,” they said. “Notice anything?”
Correlation is never causality, though it may leave lingering suspicions. I’m sure dependency and criminality can be bred, but I suspect they’re much easier simply to encourage…with the right sort of government inducements. The state will nurture the sort of iniquity in the human soul that even wanton and cruel Nature wouldn’t.
A Shooter asks:
“What are your thoughts about the risk of physical gold and silver being confiscated by the US government? Do you have suggestions as to how to best purchase in a manner that is not so trackable? Appreciate the perspective as always.”
Excellent question. You could just ask your any prospective sellers whom they inform of any transactions and how much detail they give, and then take them at their word. Then act accordingly.
The entire point of saving in gold and silver is to avoid the stealth tax of inflation. Yet the feds have the nerve to call that sort of thing a “capital gain” and insist on taxing you for not letting them leach away your purchasing power. Sometimes, they just insist that you hand them the gold and silver outright.
No good can come of bowing to tyranny, of allowing the state into your home and private affairs…like which substances you put into your body or how much money you make. But that ship sailed a long time ago.
So when they come for our gold and silver, will anyone resist? What about when they assign us all housing and tell us where and when to report to work?
See you on the farm, Comrade.
Do svidania,
Gary Gibson
Managing Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder
Gary, you nut!
If you’re going to bid us farewell in Russian, shouldn’t we say, “See you on the kolkhaz?!”
A topic bobbing around in my mind is the Alien and Sedition laws of 1798. Like so many other things in the land of the not very free, “sedition” is what the government says it is. Are you aware that possessing books by Tom Clancy is considered having “terrorist” literature?
Freedom of speech isn’t even a polite fiction any more; saying what you think can get you tossed out of college, off the job, or into jail. If there were ever a thing that is clearly unconstitutional it is “hate crime” laws, although my least favorite is the Sacred Handicapped Restriction. Yes, decent people are kind to those less fortunate, but that doesn’t mean the “disabled” are “entitled” to “free” Social Security, every decent parking place in America, and to go to the heads of lines. What price equal treatment before the law?
At what point do we say “ENOUGH!” and at what point does the government agree with us…and send us to Gitmo? It is said that “they” “have a little list…of those who won’t be missed.” Habeus corpus (aaaargh, for my italics) is dead; we no longer have a right to face our accusers or be told what we are charged with. What right to an attorney? “Probable cause” is a meaningless joke. A young friend stopped to put water in his radiator a few months ago and was rousted by the local cops…who charged him with having a “concealed weapon.” It was his fish-scaling knife, locked in his tackle box, locked in his trunk.
Did you see the latest “locking the barn door” photo? Five soldiers patrolling a deserted street in the South following the shooting recently. There they are, in full battle regalia, with hastily-donned vests that say “Police” on the back. If you look at the photo carefully you will note something else interesting. It is impossible to be certain in the poor light, but at least three of the soldiers are black, and I’m pretty certain that at least one other is; it is iffy for the one in the worst light. What ante bellum mind came up with the notion that black soldiers are more likely to shoot whites…or is it just a strange coincidence? We knew that posse comitatus had been revoked, and there are the results: armed troops occupying a small town where a tragedy took place.
As for mortgages…the best solution is not to have one! Live within your means. Buy outright a house you can afford. Live in a three-thousand buck 30′ RV or motor home, if necessary, and save towards the day when you can buy your own plot of land to put it on. I returned to Texas after I was widowed and bought a house. The realtor advised me to get a mortgage, which I didn’t want. I wanted it even less after being told that as a widow I had no credit and the interest rate to me would be three points higher! I replied calmly that I didn’t need credit because I had cash and wrote a check. Good decision. I sold that a couple of years ago and moved back to the ranch, which is also free from encumbrances.
No, I don’t have my lovely 4400+ square foot house any more, but (as Epictetus would say) I still have my money as well as a roof over my head. How all of this is bound together inextricably! My relatives, especially my children, are aghast that I am living in a very delapidated slum that had had no upkeep for eighteen years when I moved in, but we are working slowly on renovations and expansion, doing them ourselves. The shabby walls and grafitti can be repaired and painted; the rug which appears to have had a motorcycle engine rebuilt on it has to be the last thing to replace. In the meantime, we are happy, not in thrall to the bank, and able to dismiss anyone shallow enough to judge us by the worst of our surroundings rather than the best. Let the Jones’ worry about keeping up with US. If anyone can prove to me that serenity and happiness flow from a MacMansion…I still won’t live in one. No matter how high class a ghetto may be, it is still a ghetto. I have luxuries such as letting my dogs roam free, and playing the grand piano at four a.m. or vacumming then if I choose. Our friends see only the joy and love that is here, and the pleasure we take in our leisurely lifestyle.
“Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood.” Happiness is found in what we do, think, and are, not in our surroundings. Sure, I look forward to the day when I don’t cringe over clouded windows whose thermal seals have failed, and to tearing out the 1949 kitchen and turning two rooms into the kind I’m accustomed to, but those are pleasures I am glad to defer because the rest of my life is so good. Marble halls and crystal chandeliers are life’s consolation prizes.
Testify!
Good stuff, RL.
The statement is made:
“But it shows what government can do when it tries to fix a problem.”
I prefer:
1. Define a problem, any problem.
2. Establish a government entity to address the problem.
3. Tie the budget of the entity to the size of the problem.
4. Watch the problem grow.
The first rule of ANY organism or organization is to survive. Why would you expect any organization to solve the problem when such a solution would result in the demise of the organization?
The second rule of ANY organism or organization is to grow. Why would you expect any organization to reduce the problem which would result in a decrease in the budget and thus a shrinking of the organization?