
Saving the heartland: Place-based policies in 21st Century America - Dowwie
https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/saving-the-heartland-place-based-policies-in-21st-century-america/
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ryandrake
> The enormous social costs of non-employment suggests that fighting long-term
> joblessness is more important than fighting income inequality.

Isn’t joblessness a second order problem? What is the root cause? One’s
ability to survive (basic necessities-wise) is limited by their ability to get
and keep a job. Uncouple these two, via Basic Incone or something like it, and
joblessness in and of itself is no longer a problem. Tough to do politically,
since the prevailing Puritanical world view sees a living as something that
must be earned.

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frgtpsswrdlame
>Uncouple these two, via Basic Income or something like it, and joblessness in
and of itself is no longer a problem.

I don't think that's entirely true and I think equating contrary views with
Puritanism is a cheap way to make it seem so.

Lots of people do take pride in their work, when we look at people who have
lost their jobs in industries which aren't going to return there's not just
the loss of income there's the loss of usefulness. There is a value to people
in having a skill which you're good at, having a community (the workplace)
which places some level of authority or trust in you to execute that task and
then the ability to actually go and do that skill to recertify that
trust/authority. Steel workers in Pennsylvania aren't just looking at a
smaller paycheck for the rest of their lives, they're faced with potentially
never being good enough at a useful task to ever get that sort of trust again
and that itself can be corrosive to the human spirit.

~~~
cbhl
If a UBI was big enough, steel workers could go back to work. They could run a
factory and make steel, at a loss, but it wouldn't matter because doing
something useful (making steel) is decoupled from their livelihood.

And for the people who want to get that sense of usefulness another way
(raising kids, teaching others how to make steel, playing video games,
building houses) they would have the financial freedom to do so.

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SamReidHughes
This is what Walmart does and all they get is people complaining about it.

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jmgao
[https://www.brookings.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2018/03/3_austi...](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2018/03/3_austinetal.pdf) for the actual paper

~~~
pm90
Fair warning: its 98 pages (!) long. It looks interesting though.

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forapurpose
Compare the romantic concepts attached to rural poor, "heartland" we should
"save", compared to the urban poor (I won't bother to list the terms). And
note that for the urban poor, the solution is to erase them or get them out of
sight, via gentrification, zoning, and other means.

I know that's not universally true and there are programs to help the urban
poor, but it's hard to think of anyone romanticizing them.

~~~
closeparen
At the extreme ends, anti-gentrification activism romanticizes concentrated
poverty and class segregation.

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youdontknowtho
I don't personally think that Brookings is a non-partisan actor. Maybe they
were at some point. I'm really distrustful of their research and the people
involved.

If it weren't presented as non-partisan, then I wouldn't feel the need to
comment. I would just ignore it, like I ignore most center or right wing
economics. (I know! What happened to the free exchange of ideas, right?)

As to the point of the article, I think my critique is just a general critique
of marginal technocratic adjustments to taxes and means tested programs. I
support universal programs and redistribution.

~~~
forapurpose
> I don't personally think that Brookings is a non-partisan actor.

"I don't think youdontknowtho is a non-partisan actor." What makes that more
meaningful than just a string of UTF-8 encodings? What is the partisan bias
that's being asserted? Much more interestingly and importantly, what basis is
there for it?

~~~
youdontknowtho
You are correct. I'm not non-partisan.

Brookings is a think tank that provides intellectual cover for the capital-
owning class. Just because it isn't paleo-conservative doesn't mean that it
isn't a right wing group.

