Late 2008 was the first shockwave of the Great Recession, and simultaneously, the high point of Hopenchange. In other words, those days shortly after Obama was elected, but before he actually took office and had to be bothered with all that pesky governing interrupting his jet-set vacations and rock star preening.
Having elected a man with no executive experience, whom they curiously compared in cover stories with FDR, the MSM seemed almost giddy to create a similarly Dickensian atmosphere for Obama to begin governing in, the better to make the inevitable and swift recovery sure to come seem all the more dazzling. (Plus ça hope & change.) That was the theme in the air amongst many journalists at the time, a perverse trend that Virginia Postrel dubbed in December of 2008 as “Depression Lust, and Depression Porn:”
If anyone should fear a Depression, it should be journalists, who are already the equivalent of 1980s steelworkers. But instead, they seem positively giddy with anticipation at the prospect of a return to ’30s-style hardship–without, of course, the real hardship of the 1930s. (We’re all yuppies now.) The Boston Globe‘s Drake Bennett asked a bunch of people, including me, what a 21st-century Depression might look like. The results sounded pretty damned good to some people–a sure sign of an affluent society, or at least affluent commentators.
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Be careful what you wish for.
Flash-forward to today, when unemployment is, at approximately 9.5 percent nationally, three percent higher than the 6.5 percent Postrel quotes at the end of her late 2008 post, and in some areas, far worse. In Chicago, they’re celebrating the milestone of unemployment dropping under nine percent…
This morning, the Bureau of Labor statistics (BLS) released preliminary February 2011 unemployment figures for the 50 states (and Washington, DC), as well as 4 Census Regions and 9 Census Divisions. Unemployment rates in Chicago and the surrounding region continued to fall from their early 2010 peak. There were an estimated 354,500 unemployed residents in the 8-county Chicago Metro Division in a civilian labor force of 4.07 million in February, representing a seasonally adjusted jobless rate of 8.7% – down from nearly 11% a year ago and slightly below the statewide rate.
… But those numbers mask some far worse statistics, as reported yesterday by the Newsalert blog:
Chicago Now reports on some shocking facts about Chicago in comparison to other large cities:
Out of the largest U.S. cities, Chicago is number one when it comes to the unemployment rate for African Americans — 21.4 percent. That’s more than two and a half times the average for white people living in the same 10 cities.
The Beachwood Reporter’s Steve Rhodes has more:
“In Chicago, nearly 56 percent of African Americans at least 16 years old are without a job (either unemployed or not in the labor force) – the highest percentage of any race or ethnic group examined among the nation’s 10 largest cities.”
And with all of that as background, let’s explore the serious case of Depression Lust in the latest edition of Newsweek that Newsalert spotted. In an article titled “Chicago Steps Out –The Second City is finally hip. Now Rahm has to keep it rolling,” note what the magazine defines as oh-so hip:
Careening toward bankruptcy after 22 years under Mayor Richard Daley, the city has lost 200,000 inhabitants in the past decade. The racial tensions of the past have lessened palpably, but no one would say the potential of a future resurgence of the bad old days has vanished. But Daley also leaves behind a glittering metropolis that Chicagoans rightly love and outsiders can only envy.
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And Chicago has lately come to see itself as a place whose inherent friendliness can now embrace all sorts of improbable invention and behavior. There is self-confidence, an upbeat feeling. Success breeds success. So, in between financial crises, Rahm Emanuel and other returning Obama crew members will have to make sure they don’t let the fizz fizzle. They seem to be working on just that.
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None of these street artists can remember a time when Richard Daley wasn’t the mayor. They seem to have a good feeling about him, even if his administration had shied away from supporting juke events for kids, for fear any juvenile gathering would promote violence and crime. Gant-Man and the others beg to differ. They claim juke has pulled minority youth away from crime, that it has been a major factor in Chicago’s falling crime rate.
Maybe Rahm Emanuel will see it their way. Having suppressed his notorious pugnacity during a campaign full of low-comic challenges from spoiler candidates and a failed lawsuit claiming he wasn’t a bona fide resident, he now faces the real challenge of toughing out punishing deficits without hacking the life out of the vibrant city he has taken over from his revered predecessor. He will need some very fancy footwork to emerge victorious from the battleground ahead.
Newsweek is spinning so fast, you can feel the centrifugal force. And it really is spin, as we’ll explore on the next page.
Back in 1987, I was working for a small startup company. When the stock market tanked in October of that year, one of the sales people went positively giddy at the thought of all the rich people losing their money. I told him to be careful about what he wished for, for if the economy tanked, our company (and his job) had an uncertain future at best in that environment. That put a damper on the happy talk.
Y, the cluelessness of some people (journalists especially) is just amazing. I like Rush Limbaugh but unlike him, I never rooted for Obama to fail. I just figured it was inevitable.
Journalists are in a depressed industry. Perhaps they want company. Also, what is celebrated in these dying cities is unmeasurable – feelings, coolness, i.e. stuff 20 somethings care about. As you point out clearly, the measurable which is of importance to children, real adults, and the elderly is swept aside. Who cares about crummy schools, streets, and parks – we have a great new abandoned building for a rave!
Solid points!
Interestingly, back in the 90s (before the RAVE Act), Detroit probably had the best rave scene in America. The “313″ had the world’s best homegrown techno scene, and it had all the abandoned buildings anyone could ever ask for. But nobody said Detroit was “cool.”
Everything else you say is spot on though.
Chicago has really always been cool. But the taste makers on the East Coast didn’t find out about it until the Manhattan/D.C. media was embedded in Chicago in ’08 with the Obama campaign (“Wow!!! Chicago’s, like, not just some boring, backwoods Rust Belt town. It’s, like, got tall buildings and nightlife and young people. Who Knew!?!?!?!?!”). But in spite its longstanding party town mentality, it used to be “the city that works.” Now Chicago is hostile to business, hostile to families and hostile to the middle class. It’s become the city that plays. It’s chased away families and industry, and replaced them with gentrified miles filled with single 20 something party girls, bars, storefront theatres, Bikhram yoga studios and tapas joints.
Chicago is a great place for upscale, educated, suburban princesses to spend a few “party years.” And it’s a great place for edgy young journalists, trendy urbanists, artists and academics. But it’s lost touch with the things that made it an economic powerhouse in the first place. After all, Chicago’s economy didn’t take flight because of its sterling political climate or because of its great weather. That’s why, as you say, it’s no longer a place for serious adults.
TS could be speaking of my old neighborhood on Chicago’s North side. Growing up there in the 50′s and 60′s, it was a great place to be a kid. A socialist alderman turned it into a violent, drug filled nightmare through a policy of plantation politics. Many people who had lived there for years moved out. Young college grads, seeking the hip city scene-supporters of “liberal”, “progressive” “reform” (the name changed through the years), had to leave as well-too dangerous.
Richard M. Daley spent like a fool during the boom years of the 90s. Borrowing (Borrowing!!!) like crazy. Hence Chicago’s current dilemma. Yeah, the place looks nice, but the repo man is just around the corner.
The black urban exodus mentioned above is the ultimate rejection of 20th century urban renewal. Government failed in its goals, but hasn’t kicked failing programs. And they all fail.
Neighborhoods don’t change. People change neighborhoods.
Chicago is the next Detroit. When states run out of money to give over for welfare, people find other stupid happy people with fixed smiles on their faces and no brains – like Minnesota, which is heavily invested in Brooklyn Bridges and swampland and human rights and is considered a con man’s dream. People in the Third World look at a place like Minneapolis and lick their lips at what chumps they are.
tell someone who really cares, if you can find that person let me know?
That’s the spirit, Susan — screw all those unemployed people!
If I may Mr. Driscoll, but I think SusanM meant that for the blacks who live and vote there, they get what they vote for so why should we care about them. Why should we care about the many unemployed there when they ONLY vote dem and elect a sleazeball like Rahm? Like LA, Houston, Detroit, Philly and Wash.DC they vote only one way so why should we give a damn?
Spot on, they voted themselves into the hole, now they can climb out. I will show them the light on the way out but it is not my job or duty to “pay” for their mistakes at the voting poll or in their lives.
Hold your horses a moment, hombre. I was a resident of Chicago during the latter half of the 90′s and have kept the city close to my heart ever since (I moved to the west coast for work in ’01). In my experience, lib-Dem and/or “machine” Dem politicians are the order of the day in that place; just like Los Angeles where I’ve been for awhile, there are no alternatives on offer. The GOP can’t be bothered to organize and/or fund candidates in these cities’ mayoral races and many of the precincts’ local elections, so if they don’t even bother showing up, much less trying to persuade voters, how can we so quickly blame the voters for not taking them seriously?
Chicago is great. While the population may be finding a good place, the average income has been rising. I am not saying it is perfect, but it is one of the best cities in the country hands down. The neighborhoods all have distinct personalities, and there is reasonable priced food everywhere. The cost of living is probably half that of NY city, but you still enjoy all the cultural benefits. It would behoove people to spend some time in the city before trash talking it. Also, it is nothing like Detroit. Chicago is not a one trick pony, it has medical and tech industries. The population decrees are due to gentrification pushing lower income residents into the suburbs. That is why there is constant development being pushed from the cities center along the elevated lines.
People who don’t know Chicago regularly draw somewhat misinformed conclusions from data points that, admittedly, look bleak at first blush. Understandably, without first hand familiarity with the city, they assume that Chicago’s downward-trending numbers mean that Chicago is in the same boat as Detroit and Cleveland.
And that’s not really the case.
But let’s not kid ourselves either. Chicago’s foundation isn’t exactly solid. Mayor Daley made a risky play — he gambled that the onetime “City of Broad Shoulders” could remake itself as a gentrified playground for the crowd that Stuff White People Like so adroitly skewers. Thus, industrial areas close to entrifying areas were rezoned, public housing was “disappeared” and vast chunks of the Black and Puerto Rican populations were quietly repatriated elsewhere so that politically-connected developers with friends (of ours) in high places could build block after block of uninspired, lookalike red brick condo buildings in supposedly edgy/authentic/trendy gentrifying neighborhoods to house hipsters and well-heeled, single white girls living out their “Carrie Bradshaw years.”
Daley and Co. essentially swept a couple hundred thousand minorities and members of the city’s ethnic middle class — in addition to sections of old, grubby industry — out of town. He wound up with a considerably downsized, but also considerably more educated, more affluent and whiter city (shh! … nobody’s supposed to mention that last point: it would ruin everybody’s P.C., “our strength is our diversity” rainbows and unicorns buzz).
Mayor Daley and scores of Chicagoans (or, at least scores of the “right kind” of Chicagoans) are proud of their re-branded city. And indeed, contrary to what many commenters here — and many conservatives in general — seem to think, there’s plenty to like about Chicago. But anybody who doesn’t admit that the city’s fortunes are, at best, a mixed bag is kidding him or herself. The core of the city looks great. And the Windy City is a fantastic place to visit, a fantastic place to live for a few years after college, and even probably still a good place for high income people to plant roots.
But it’s broke.
And with Chicago’s cost of living ever skyrocketing, and with the city no longer as business-friendly as it used to be (at least not for businesses that aren’t politically favored), it has become a tough place to eek out a middle class existence. So middle class Chicagoans — middle class Blacks, Hispanics, and the kind of “meat and potatoes” blue collar, neighborhood white people who, fairly or unfairly, epitomized the stereotypical ChiCAWgoan of days gone by — keep fleeing the city for growing, middle class-friendly Chicago suburbs/exurbs and for middle class-friendly regions with pro-growth economies, like Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham, Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Chicago is hardly the burned out, apocalyptic, Detroit-style hellhole that a lot of people seem to assume it is. If anything, it’s become America’s first Western European city: business (the “wrong” kind of business) and working class people have been squeezed out of the city’s center, only to be replaced by balls-to-the-wall gentrification and scores of the kinds of educated, affluent urbanites who chronically inhabit such newly rarefied locales. But when business and the middle class go away, so does a great deal of economic growth. Thus, as is the case in so many Western European cities, the new Chicago is full of affluence, “edginess”, nightlife and cool people. But it’s beginning to lack in children, families, middle class people and tangible economic growth. And, oh yeah, it’s broke.
Chicago still has plenty of things going for it. However, it’s got some major, major problems as well. And those problems are growing by the day. Detroit-Cleveland-Flint it ain’t. But things aren’t nearly as peachy as Mayor Daley and the throngs of rose colored glasses-wearing urbanists would have one believe.
Chicago is a great city. It is NOT Detroit. It is also not LA and it is definitely not New York.
The city and even the entire state have been driven into the ground by Democratic hucksters for almost as long as the Cubs have not won a World Series.
This is not to say that Republican governors have covered themselves in glory when they held office, but it is hard to operate like Chris Christy when every case is fixed ahead of time.
The city indeed has much to build on, it has great people and a solid underpinning. And it has been dealing with Democratic strongarm tactics for far longer than other places….it is nothing new, less of a shock to the system. It’s a unique place. Rahm won’t hurt Chicago, he is much more likely to help, believe it or not.
With all due respect, but are you kidding? And who are you trying to kid? Without diving deep into what you wrote, your comments are both contradictory and contraindicated. Chi Town is a dem rat hole bec. dems have controlled it for decades. Are you purposely overlooking the foul stench of voter fraud in the last and any previous elections?
And just what good has come from Chi Town. O’Dummer?? Graduation rates improving? Employment??
I would not be so harsh with cfbleachers – arguably, it is a great city. To an outsider visiting, downtown Chicago comes across as spectacular. Comparing its 1996 looks with those of 2009, there was an enormous improvement. In fact, it made a much better impression than NYC.
If it could serve as any consolation at all, at least some of the proverbial graft that goes on backstage has produced tangible and generally pleasing, results. The city may be broke, but not all the money went down a deep black hole.
Politically correct gender diversity to the contrary, the liberal media always orgasms over the idea of a new liberal alpha male coming to power in a major American city. Rahm’s connections to the D.C.-New York liberal media already through his two White House stints simply turn this situation, and Newsweek’s story, into an example of multiple orgasm, and the writers and editors will never admit the view was wrong, evem if Chicago’s woes keep increasing. As it was in New York in the 60s through the 90s, the left will simply define down what is acceptable, tighten up the areas that are considered non-threatening and deem that satisfactory, and in the end, say the problems of Chicago are systemic and intractable, and cannot be solved, only managed (which I expect will be one of the rationales on the world and national level used by Obama’s supporters in next year’s election).
Within globalism there is cheaper labor in Mexico, and India with no union. Add the government plantation members, the Global Bank,(the FED), bailing out the worlds economy with American tax money due to a very large Marxist housing bubble, and throw in the cost to America with illegal alien everything, is it is any wonder the unemployment is only 9%.
I bet the unemployment is much higher, the CFR controlled government is fudging numbers again so it doesn’t look like a depression. Chicago is an example of a much larger problem.
When Nationalism is thrown away with morality, a nation gets the above. Drug abuse, out of wedlock births, abortion, and out of control spending I include within morality.
I suppose we shouldn’t wonder about the tamed office jockey journalist pining for the Great Depression. After all, it was during that depression that the freelancer was brought inside almost exclusively. Of course, then they learned manners and how to keep from offending their masters. Odd, that in this current depression-like period, the “journalists” seem to be all out in the cold, making their own way, publishing their own words while the magazines fade into obscurity.
BTW, would anyone call Time “an expertly edited, newsy, and withal irreverent (though not at all radical) weekly” low these many years later?
It is ironic that as people flee those cesspool population centers of Detroit, Chicago and Los Angles, they frequently land in (comparatively) small towns in Colorado, Utah and Idaho. Then all too often they set about trying to implement those same destructive policies which ruined the cities they fled. If you doubt this, ask any long-time resident of Denver, Salt Lake, or Boise.
Some fools never learn.
Your’re right. That is exactly what too many of big city “refugees” do in their new location. We are one of the destinations of same, both sides, the welfare seekers, and middle class fleeing the crime and high taxes required to support the leftist utopian dream.
I’ve concluded that these escapees don’t want to live among the mess created by such a worldview. But, as committed zealots to the liberal cause, they work to legislate their ‘enlightenment’ in the new nest that they soil, with the aid of pandering (likely bought off) politicians.
Liberalism is truly a mental disorder. These people are simply, sometimes brilliantly, insane.
And in charge.
Hey Woodsman
didn’t you know
that when the folks move to the Country the first thing they do is complain about the roosters crowing and the public slaughter of livestock
classic
“In Chicago, nearly 56 percent of African Americans at least 16 years old are without a job (either unemployed or not in the labor force) – the highest percentage of any race or ethnic group examined among the nation’s 10 largest cities.”
Mainly thanks to our minimum wage laws. This is a result of “feel good economics” of the liberals – “Let’s keep some people working at $7.25/hr. at the expense of many that would be willing to work for less”.
There’s one important reason why some developed urban areas have lost population: people spread more Families are smaller. Many family homes are now occupied by a single empty-nest retiree.
Apartments that formerly housed couples or families, or were shared by roommates are now occupied by singles.
It’s not just the central cities. If you look at the figures for first-tier suburbs (those that border the central cities) they’re declining too for the same reason. Their housing stock is built out, and the household size is declining.
Chicago reversed this trend in the 1990s with the redevelopment of core areas into new residential districts.
The last decade supposedly shows renewed decline. I want to see the figures on housing units.
A truly declining city like Detroit is losing housing units. Chicago lost a lot of housing in the 60s to the 80s with the destruction of slum neighborhoods. But I don’t think there’s been net loss recently.