The Economic Innovation Group has an interesting report on Distressed Communities.
The study notes “America’s elite zip codes are home to a spectacular degree of growth and prosperity. However, millions of Americans are stuck in places where what little economic stability exists is quickly eroding beneath their feet.”
Distress is based on an evaluation of seven metrics.
Distress Metrics
- No high school diploma
- Housing vacancy rate
- Adults not working
- Poverty rate
- Median income ratio
- Change in employment
- Change in business establishments
Economic Prosperity Quintiles
Change in Distress Quintiles
Underwater vs. 2000
Percent Living in Distressed Areas
Performance Averages
Population Statistics
Key Findings
- Over half the population in distressed communities are minorities, compared to only about a quarter of the population in prosperous ones.
- Asians and whites are more likely to live in a prosperous zip code than any other type of community.
- Blacks and Native Americans are more likely to live in a distressed zip code than any other type of community, while Hispanics are most likely to reside in an at risk one.
- Blacks and Native Americans are three times more likely to live in a distressed community than a prosperous one.
- Majority-minority zip codes are two times more likely to be distressed than the average zip code.
Political Distribution
- Republicans dominate at the very top of the distribution, representing nine of the 10 most prosperous congressional districts in the country. Most of these are suburban enclaves around fast-growing metropolitan areas, for example on the outskirts of Dallas, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Washington, DC. Expanding to the entire top quintile, Republicans represent 63 percent of the country’s prosperous districts compared to Democrats’ 37 percent.
- Conversely, six of the country’s 10 most distressed congressional districts are represented by Democrats. Eight of the 10 are located in the South, with Ohio’s 11th (Cleveland) and Arizona’s 7th (Phoenix) as the two exceptions.
Report Conclusion
“It is fair to wonder whether a recovery that excludes tens of millions of Americans and thousands of communities deserves to be called a recovery at all.”
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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So which came first, the poverty or the politics, or did they arrive hand in hand?
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Surely you jest?
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Well it depends if we are looking at modern politics, or the result of colonial influence. For example a lot of people arrived poor to America.. was the potato blight a policy error, or did the policy of allowing slavery somehow morph into modern liberalism? Aha aha.
Shirley.
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Mish, another great article and very credible conclusion. The recovery is a mirage. In my family I get a great deal of criticism for spending within my means and avoiding unnecessary debt. I am called overly conservative.
Some day, in the not so distant future, the real economy is going to appear and many are going to be disappointed. I may be disappointed but I will not be surprised.
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You of course mean not taken by surprised. In other words, because of conservative thinking you might be down but you won’t be out like so many others certainly will be. The question you have to ask yourself now is how will you ensure your safety when the liberal grasshoppers feel winter coming on and come begging to the conservative ants to save them. What if you say “no”. Will they just go off and perish because that is the fate they deserve? No. They will justify killing you to take what is yours. That is liberalism 101: I/my needs are more important than anything else. I was amused by the 2017 version of this as seen in the movie, “Guardians of the Galaxy” wherein Rocket Raccoon when speaking about taking from others by force and upon being told it was wrong said (paraphrased) “but what if I want what you have more than you do?”.
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really?? so it sounds like your ‘circle of friends and family’ are trend whores that live in trendy neighborhoods and pay $5,000 or more a month on rent.. Do they use the subway to get to work and keep two BMW suvs in a garage (parking space in NYC is now over $500 a month).
BTW, my iphone is a 7plus and I am using ‘last years’ macbook. sounds like your friends and family would look down on me
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How different would the map have looked 20-30-40-50 years ago? I see the improvements since 2000, which looks mostly like shale exploration. But most of the poverty areas I think were poverty areas during most of the last 50 years. Culture?
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Agreed. The South and Appalachia were always poor. It’s plantation culture. A town has one, rich white guy who is usually the banker and major land-owner. Small white business owners barely scraping by. And poor black tenant farmers and day laborers struggling to eat from their girlfriend’s welfare. Drive west from Atlanta to Little Rock and you see it over and over.
Florida has escaped that mostly due to massive immigration from Northerners. Texas has escaped due to oil. But the rest of the South still struggles with it. And yep, it’s culture. God, guns and grits.
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And from the stats, sounds like Democrats happy to keep them down on the plantation.
I didn’t realize there were plantations in Appalachia. Hard to grow cotton or most stereotypical plantation crops there, though I suppose maybe that new mostly illegal cash crop?
And didn’t know that grits were popular in Appalachia, maybe to make that other stereotypical product — moonshine?
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they are white so they don’t count. If you are white you are assumed to be affluent. The white underclass in Boston disappeared around 15 years ago (check out what southie looks like now vs. pre 2000), same in NYC where $100,000 a year is the new $40,000 a year for most
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Hey Jon. So what is the most appropriate remedy? Should you bring in skilled immigrants, which has worked in Florida, or train the existing residents?
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Training won’t help. There has to be jobs at the end of that training. And the folks doing the immigrating in this area are Central Americans who just push down already depressed wages. So I don’t know.
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Hey Jon. What’s the best remedy, training or immigration?
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Lots of guns and God in the upper midwest. They’re doing well according to the stats, especially Utah.
Must be the grits?
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Don’t suggest to the residents of Utah that they are in the “upper midwest”, they would not like that!
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🙂 from the PoV of the 2 extremist strips along both coasts (not the 3rd coast), it’s all flyover country.
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I don’t see why it’d be THEIR fault, bless their hearts. The men are gonna do what they want to do, or not.
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The US is indeed a land of opportunity for those who acquire the necessary education, skills, and work ethic. Many jobs go begging for lack of suitably skilled workers. I suspect that the reconstruction in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico will take over a decade, due to a lack of skilled workers. New Orleans is still being rebuilt 12 years after Katrina.
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My engineering group has three manager positions that are open. No one in the company wants those positions because of the person to whom they would report.
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in in
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AI and new technology in the assembly lines will not help,status quo will explode.any attempt to help the masses is considered evil socialism unless it is for the rich.
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Right now (in 2017, not 2015 when this study happened…) Thousands of Googlers and Apple employees cannot afford to live near their place of work — they make six figures but housing costs are out of control.
Now lets think about what the situation will look like as yesterdays dot-coms are supplanted by today’s unicorns that depend on bogus advertising metrics…
The northeast is bankers and socialists, and the socialists are “winning” (destroying the local economies). Bostonians have taxed themselves out of Boston and are working hard to F up New Hampshire.
Texas is where all the people from California are fleeing to escape the tax-and-spend utopia they insisted on forcing on everyone else.
About the only place that is really “winning” (benefiting themselves) is Washington DC, and its bedroom communities in Maryland and Virginia. Overpaid politicians, overpaid staffers, overpaid lobbyists — absolutely zero productivity.
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Could be fun times for the FANGs as companies realize that digital ads are as ineffective as traditional ads, as P&G and others are learning.
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It would be VERY interesting to see how those maps change about every 10 years, especially back to when LBJ’s “War on Poverty” began about 50 years ago. I suspect things have only gotten worse for the ‘po folk.
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Here is the only map I could find, not sure if it relates clearly to the above but it gives a view of sorts
http://www.newgeography.com/content/004852-50-years-us-poverty-1960-2010
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Mission accomplished… It’s taken much longer for the place to fall apart than I thought it would.
How the Kurdish Independence Referendum Could Spark a Civil War or Worse
The vote on whether Iraqi Kurdistan should be independent will have far reaching impacts no matter the outcome.
BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK – SEPTEMBER 25, 2017
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/14615/how-the-kurdish-independence-referendum-could-spark-a-civil-war-or-worse
Excerpt:
On Sept. 25, 2017, the Iraqi parliament adopted a resolution demanding that Abadi order the Iraqi military into Iraqi Kurdistan to prevent any attempts by the Kurds to break away. The Iraqi president subsequently authorized the deployments. In particular, Iraq’s central authorities dispute the KRG’s control over the Kirkuk governorate and its immense oil resources, as well as parts of the Nineveh, Diyala, and Salaheddin governorates.
At the same time, observers have seen Shia militia rushing into the area and there are reports of Turkmen armed groups massing for a possible confrontation. There are reports suggesting that non-Kurdish ethnic groups had largely boycotted the polls in protest of the referendum. Adding to the concerns, Najmiddin Karim, a member of the PUK and governor of Kirkuk, reportedly said that Kurds should refrain from any celebratory gunfire and save their ammunition for when it was necessary to defend the city.
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Fall apart? Who is to say that it isn’t going according to plan?
Maybe The plan IS the Falling apart…
“Kurdish officials confirming that Manafort is helping them in their campaign ahead of an independence referendum, a vote that the Trump administration opposes.”
Selected quote from “MANAFORT HAS A NEW JOB: HELPING THE KURDISH REFERENDUM, A VOTE THE U.S. OPPOSES” http://www.newsweek.com/paul-manafort-working-promote-kurdish-referendum-vote-washington-opposes-668736
Kurdish officials must have been fans of Manafort’s work in Ukraine…
“What Did Ex-Trump Aide Paul Manafort Really Do in Ukraine?”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-did-ex-trump-aide-paul-manafort-really-do-ukraine-n775431
“Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out
They leave the West behind”
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People can move if they like. They are not required to stay in areas where there the economy is bad.
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We can’t move as readily as in times past. Land use , zoning, low-income set asides and all sorts of housing and building regulation have made housing unaffordable. Occupational licensing has exploded, inhibiting interstate migration for many.
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+ a whole lot.
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“Republicans dominate at the very top of the distribution, representing nine of the 10 most prosperous congressional districts in the country. ”
I doubt that very much, especially after looking at the map. Many of the coastal areas – Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Miami, New York, New England – are prosperous yet are Democrat strongholds. The DC area is probably tops in the country with almost no Republicans except a few RINOs.
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Even in Cali, there are suburban enclaves that lean Republican. Generally behind pull up the ladder zoning curtains. While the famous pro Chavez Hollywood set live in the cities. Where whatever prosperity they enjoy, is being cancelled out by the lack thereof amongst the niggas they keep around for moving their lawn, clipping their toenails, and giving them BJs.
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Pingback: There Are Large Parts Of America Being Left Behind… – Independent News Media
How does this compare to the EU (including UK and excluding UK)?
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Why is it that around here there are thousands of illegal aliens and they all seem to have jobs? Mowing lawns, blowing leaves, painting/roofing houses, plucking chickens and much more. They have uprooted themselves from the backwater villages in Guatemala, made their way here and have made the effort to get work…not high paying work, but work.
The USA kid next door with a Master’s Degree and $100K debt can’t find work and spends his time in parents’ basement smoking weed.
What’s wrong with this picture?
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Pingback: There Are Large Parts Of America Being Left Behind… – Real Conservatives Unite
These maps are always a joke. As others point out, the 30,000 ft view of flyover county doesn’t have much detail. Denver and Boulder counties in Colorado are shown as “prosperous.” Yea, purely when looking at paychecks the people in the rat colony are doing pretty well, until you look at the price of a house or even a rental. You can rent a house in Vail for about the same price these days (if you can get a job there).
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The chart shows that president Lincoln actually did not unite this country, he divided us, ever since.
Assets collapsed in the south and entered a prolong depression. It was not for a 40 years depression until 1886 ==> for over 150 years half of the country did not really recovered, through 2017.
Some north east intellectuals make very good income selling their “delicious” battle
field stories full of sacrifice, to please the invisible hand.
But they also provide a legitimate inspiration for the possibility of the next round, under the flag of slavery.
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Would you also recommend that the North separates from the South, likewise Catalunya which you are backing the referendum for similar economic reasons ?
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Did you ask about Barcelona/ Catalunia iron man race on Sept 30, or the Oct 1st Catalunia referendum?
All the data on the two charts tell me, and I might be wrong :
1) the 1st chart shows the Lincoln divide. A ==> A. Lincoln $ 5,000 loan to the distressed city of Charleston could, perhaps, prevent a civil war. He decided to pave for the Wilmot Proviso 1845 high way.
2) the next chart shows the Nixon divide.
For 100 years the invincible unions stomped everything standing in their way, because
Karl Marx was on their side.
Until Nixon visit to China. Chart #2 shows the Nixon industrial belt, spread from W. Pa
to IL & KS.==> the new up & coming poverty line.
3) for over 100 years black leaders (not people) got their extra privileges, because
Lincoln is on their side. In few years belt #3, a new belt of destruction, will be created, shown
on an updated chart, probably stretching from DC to NYC and the rest of the northern east coast, with
few portion of the northern crest in the mid of the country, with few liberal college towns anywhere on the chart.
The new belt will exclude James Polk west all the way to new Catalunia.
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