
Chicago, where rich live 30 years longer than the poor - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/23/chicago-latest-news-life-expectancy-rich-poor-inequality
======
clarkevans
There is a timely On The Media series by Brooke Gladstone on eviction. It's
directly related to the issues of poverty, especially among racial minorities
who have been historically targeted via redlining and other governmental
policies. The 2nd episode spends ~20 minutes on the challenges (present and
past) of housing in Chicago. When basic housing is a constant struggle, lots
of stuff, including reasonable health outcomes and economic opportunity are
often out of reach.

[https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/introducing-the-
scarlet-e-...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/introducing-the-scarlet-e-
the-media)

[https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/on-the-
media-40-acres](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/on-the-media-40-acres)

[https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/scarlet-e-part-iii-
tenants...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/scarlet-e-part-iii-tenants-and-
landlords)

~~~
dredmorbius
That's an excellent series which cannot be praised highly enough.

OTM is always good. This is transcendent.

Listen.

(Or read: yes, there are transcripts.)

------
tptacek
The context you want for this story is here (ignore the title if it raises
your hackles and just read for the factual content, which is quite detailed
and accessible).

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-
cas...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-
reparations/361631/)

In short: legal apartheid ended in the US in the 1960s, but economic
apartheid, some of it state-supported, continued through the 1970s --- that's
in many of your lifetimes. The form it took in Chicago was particularly
pernicious: redlining carved up the city like a scalpel, destroying the
economic and social fabric of neighborhoods, making it impossible for black
folks to productively own homes or create a base on which to build businesses.

It would have taken profoundly competent and principled leadership for the
city to pull out of the engine of despair that redlining created. We have not
had that.

------
jostmey
I lived in Chicago for 8 years. Here is my take on how it got so bad:

1) Decades ago, instead of raising taxes, the city started borrowing money and
issuing deferred payments, such as excessively generous retirement packages
(instead of raises, which would have required additional taxes).

2) Now the bill is due. Large amounts of taxpayer dollars aren't actually
being used to pay for police, libraries, and schools, but are instead paying
off deferred expenses from decades ago.

3) Without adequate funding, crime has skyrocketed as the city continues to
crumble, unable to provide basic services. This hits the poor
disproportionately.

I don't recommend anyone live in Chicago. I never want to go back. Every year
I lived there I hated it more and more. It's a scary place. Now I live in
Dallas. At first I hated Dallas, but every year I've been here I loved it more
and more.

~~~
rolltiide
What do you say about the people that love Chicago and swear by how much fun
it is [in college and for happy hour]

Just part of a privilege divide?

~~~
jostmey
I was riding on an airplane back to Chicago after visiting Dallas. As the
plane took off, the woman next to me started crying uncontrollably. Sometime
before takeoff, she had just learned that her husband was murdered. I got the
f_ck out of Chicago.

I was robbed in Chicago twice, once successfully, once not. A person was
murdered on my street corner, probably because the perpetrator thought they
could get away with it because of the victims skin color and the way they
looked.

I would say to those college kids that they probably don't get out enough.
Perhaps they live in a far northern suburb, removed from the problems of the
city

~~~
b_tterc_p
By don’t get out enough you mean... don’t venture into dangerous
neighborhoods?

------
sct202
So for people not from Chicago, Streeterville is a neighborhood that has a lot
of young college graduates working professional jobs and retired old people
who live near the hospitals on purpose.

~~~
svd4anything
As a Chicago native, just to add to this point, I also think there might be
some problems with how they are looking at the data. People move around, a
lot, and both those neighborhoods are at extreme ends of what conditions
people would move. Bad luck, lost job, troubles with law, health issues or
some other problem, your likelihood of moving to Englewood over Streeterville
is well ... a lot higher. Retired, done well in life, taken care of your
health, looking to live longer and have walking access to the top hospital,
the reverse obviously. So it seems likely the statistics they are using have
some major issues.

However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t agree Englewood is in bad shape and
anything that could be done to better the lives of it’s residents should be
attempted.

------
bedhead
I've lived in Chicago my entire life - the city is in a death spiral. When my
youngest kid graduates high school I'm out of here.

The finances of the city will inevitably end in some combination of bankruptcy
and ruin thanks to toxic pensions, the abuse of them, and the city's refusal
to prudently manage around them (though in fairness the pensions have been so
toxic that no prudence could keep up with them). It's just algebra. The city
(and state) is already insolvent and just resorts to various can-kicking
tactics.

Violent crime is tolerated and ignored by most. No one dare point out the
elephant in the room that it's committed wildly disproportionately by
minorities. A white kid trolls the Cubs with that bogus "okay" symbol and the
city goes berserk; 25 black kids shot over the weekend and it's a collective
shrug. Things tend to settle at the level of expectations, and a liberal ethos
has set expectations for the black community to be all but nonexistent.

The suburbs are dying, and this is reflected in real estate values. Follow the
Chicago Tribune's architecture columnist, Dennis Rodkin, on Twitter. Every day
this guy features a new home sale in the suburbs where it's sold for less than
what it sold for 20, even 30 years ago. It's depressing to see how Illinois'
failed policies have a massive tax against families' greatest asset.

The city is dying, as population loss continues at a rapid pace. Chicago has
lost more millionaires than any other city in the _world_ over the last
decade. The stats are all readily available with a quick search. The real
estate values will inevitably follow the path of the suburbs.

The new governor - a bored billionaire heir who's never accomplished anything
on his own merit in his life - is about to effectively double the state income
tax. The death spiral accelerates. When you tax something you get less of it.

The corruption of the city politicians is tolerated and even joked about as
The Chicago Way. Corruption has been normalized, just like it has for places
like Russia. These sorts of cultural rot are difficult to reverse.

Death spiral.

~~~
deadwisdom
This is all, totally, flagrantly wrong. It's all to be provocative.

Firstly, Chicago is one of the top economic cities in the world. Pensions are
a big problem, but they are not going to wreck it. The algebra is fine.

Violent crime is another big problem, but it's a big problem _everywhere_ in
US. Cities, and Chicago isn't even near the top, per-capita. It's almost
entirely gang-related. The big problem, as everywhere, is the red-lining of
the past, drugs, and no opportunities. Illinois just legalized weed, will
release tons of people for drug-related crimes, and this might help the hood a
lot.

The suburbs are not _dying_. Real estate isn't great, but guess what, other
than a few markets on the west coast, this is what home prices are going to do
everywhere. The baby boomers got to have their houses triple, quintuple in
value, millennials will not.

The population loss of Chicago is only in areas that, frankly, need population
loss. There's no reason to live in some of these communities that are beset
with drug problems and have no opportunities. These days people have cell-
phones and the internet, they can move to better places all over the country.
It's the reverse of the great migration and it's because the country hasn't
helped these people ever in their entire history. Meanwhile middle-income and
high-income 20 somethings are still flocking to Chicago.

JB Pritzker is the new governor. He is the absolute opposite of a "bored
billionaire" who has never accomplished anything in his life. He has guided
the Pritzker funds in a huge amount of charity work all over Chicago
including, this audience might want to know, huge investment in startups in
Chicago.

We are nowhere even close to the normalization of corruption as Russia, that's
just stupid.

Edit: I also want to add that I've seen this narrative from three places --
journalists trying to be provocative; Chigoans that like to complain about
politics but not get involved (favorite pastime); and Hanity trolls trying to
stir up reasons why Democrat havens are poorly run / liberal policies
supposedly fail.

~~~
bedhead
The signs are all staring at you in the face.

Real estate values are some of the worst performing in the country. (see
Rodkin)

Taxes keep skyrocketing. (Thanks JB!)

Pension underfunding keeps increasing.
([https://wirepoints.org](https://wirepoints.org))

Population loss continues.

Violent crime continues.
([http://heyjackass.com/home](http://heyjackass.com/home))

Politicians keep getting arrested with almost comical regularity. (See Mick
Jagger's joke the other night?)

State/city assets keep getting sold. (Parking meters, Thomson Center, Skyway,
etc)

Debt keeps going up, often with usurious terms.

Credit ratings keep getting worse. (Illinois is worst in the US)

New sources of taxes enacted. (Weed, gambling)

It's all right there, man. I don't like it anymore than you but sadly every
warning sign, every symptom is right there staring at you in the face. If I
asked someone to generally describe a death spiral this is what they would
describe. And it's not like these are modest problems, we often rank DFL in
the country for most of these things.

~~~
deadwisdom
You clearly didn't read anything I said, so whatever.

~~~
bedhead
Oh I read it, you're just wrong, unconditionally wedded to politics. I can't
argue with people who insist the sky is red, why waste my time...it's a nice
day out.

------
ipnon
The one thing that I hope is obvious to everyone is that mainstream American
politics lacks a way to resolve this problem. Often political solutions make
the problem worse.

What's unique about Chicago, I think, isn't the discrepancy in life expectancy
but the visibility of it. Chicago's segregation of outcomes is much more
visible for historical reasons including being a Northern city, being a city
of millions and being a city in the Midwest. My hope is that Chicago's fix can
be applied to the rest of the country.

------
robertc2017
Raising a family in Chicago. We like it. Had a bike stolen. Not sure how best
to help the poorer areas of the city. Me moving out of state won’t help them,
I don’t believe.

------
RickJWagner
Wow, a 30 year difference. That is _crazy_.

One item to deeply consider: The same gun laws, yet there is a world of
difference in gun violence just a mile or two apart. The _same_ gun laws.
What's up with that?

I look forward to the day a difference like this isn't possible.

------
aurizon
Will the last person to leave Chicago please turn out the lights....

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

------
ForHackernews
Previously on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13973143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13973143)

~~~
flixic
It’s only remotely related. This article is about Chicago, not generally about
removing death.

~~~
ForHackernews
I think it's directly related: It's about helping rich people to live ever-
longer lives while the poor die from preventable diseases.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Yes, in the same way that Illinois is a part of the US or that Mars is a part
of the solar system or that the a moon orbits a planet.

However, a book about illinois, Mars, or one specific moon isn't really the
same subject _even if it is part of the larger subject_. Illinois is not
California any more than Mars is Earth.

------
krsrhe
There is a real story in here, but the headline is textbook survivorship bias
and selection bias.

------
boyadjian
It is perfectly normal : What is the use of having money, if it does not gives
you advantages ?

~~~
simonh
A 30 year difference is a very, very long way from being perfectly normal.
It’s an extreme outlier.

------
loxs
Before we start burning witches, I think it's "fair" (yeah, the same word used
in the title) to not only decide on fairness based on outcome but also on
reasons.

What percentage of being poor is your own doing or 'not doing'? What life
choices do you make? Do you smoke/drink/do drugs, are you obese, are you
physically active?

These things affect both how long you live and also how rich you are at the
time of your death. Yeah, I know it's a spiral and it's hard to break out
(been there).

Still, nobody will do it instead of every individual, no matter how "social"
the government is.

~~~
Retra
When I went to middle school, we went to an old, collapsing building that was
falling apart. Students (including myself) acted terribly. The very next year,
we went to a brand new school. Suddenly everybody acted in a much more
civilized manner.

Have you never been influenced by your environment? Or are you just not seeing
how it influences you?

~~~
koolba
There’s a name for this: “Broken windows theory”

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)

