New and Old #146
Friday roundup and commentary
Why American cities are squalid, UnHerd, Chris Arnade, January 17, 2024
This is a great piece, because it makes many of the same points as the law-and-order folks, but without the (often) barely-veiled contempt and (sometimes) implied racism. Many other countries are far poorer than the U.S., and have their own underclasses, but…somehow things just work better:
I thought about Sofia, where the subways and buses — and other public spaces and resources — are so much cleaner, safer, and smoother. Where workers simply wanting to get to their jobs don’t have to deal with navigating the mentally ill, addicted and desperate every day. For context, the GDP of Manhattan alone is about nine times that of the entire nation of Bulgaria. But NYC’s problems only seem to be getting worse, especially for those who have the least. I don’t have to take the subway; I have the cash for an Uber. But I try to see, and to understand a little, the world as most people see and understand the world.
And what I see is that, in the US, larger cities are basically two-tiered. A wealthy downtown professional class relies on inexpensive labourers who can’t afford to live near their workplace or drive a car; who are forced into long commutes on public transport systems in terminal decline.
Arnade points out what should be obvious: that treating public spaces and public transit as “poor people stuff” or “homeless people stuff”—whether by permitting them to become such, or by stripping them of all amenities in order to prevent that result—isn’t kind to anybody or in furtherance of anybody’s interests.
This is his higher-level thesis:
To get big-brained about it, something like La Sombrita [tiny, expensive bus stop concept in LA] could only happen in a high-regulation/low-trust society like the US. If regulations massively limit both bottom-up and top-down solutions, and if those solutions are expected to protect against all sorts of bad behaviour, you end up building the least to mitigate the worst — building things the majority doesn’t want, or doesn’t find useful.
There’s a more detailed hashing out of this regulation/trust thing, which is interesting. These are absolutely issues that people who care about cities need to be willing to acknowledge.
99% of Americans live near a Mexican restaurant, Axios, Russell Contreras, January 11, 2024
The proliferation of Mexican restaurants — once staples only of the Southwest and parts of the Midwest — highlights the growing influence of Mexican Americans on U.S. culture and the effects of increased migration from Mexico over the last 30 years….
Mexican restaurants are found in a large majority of U.S. counties (about 85% have at least one of them).
How many maps would plot other larger stories, like immigration, class, income? I can think of one, which I wrote about once: the ratio of Google to Yelp reviews for restaurants in an area. Or the proximity to, say, a Rural King (a neat store I’m planning to do one of my little photo essays on) versus a Whole Foods.
This map, however, tells you only that Mexican food, and by implication/very likely, Latino immigrants, are pretty much everywhere in America (I’ve seen restaurants that are really Central American, often Salvadoran, call themselves “Mexican,” with a mix of dishes on the menu). It’s very hard to argue that something is “foreign” or unwanted when it reaches these kinds of numbers. Mexican restaurants for the win!
Anger Is What’s Driving the US Economy, Bloomberg, Betsey Stevenson, November 13, 2023
Economists tend to believe actions over words. You can insist that you prefer a vegetarian diet, but if you keep eating hamburgers, we will conclude that you actually prefer an omnivore diet. So if you say the economy is terrible but spend like it’s 1999, some economists will tend to trust what you do over what you say — and question the reliability of the polls.
Many pundits think what’s happening is basically partisanship; the bad-economy chorus is so loud because people who don’t like Biden are amplifying it. I have my own theory as to this, which I’ll be writing about soon. The article offers this:
People love to wax nostalgic about the good old days when everything was cheaper. Of course, wages were a lot lower back then too — but people rarely wax nostalgic about that. This kind of selective memory illustrates a concept called money illusion, which is the habit of judging some transactions based on nominal values rather than real ones. Money illusion makes people really hate inflation, even when it benefits them: It has contributed to the increase in the value of homes and investment portfolios, for example.
In other words people say “Remember when a slice of pizza was $.75?” but not “Remember when I was making $20,000?” (I don’t know what the exact numbers should be.) But Stevenson’s real thesis is this:
Much of the economic anger expressed in the polls may be less about current economic conditions and more about the economy the US has built over the past 40 years: one of high and rising inequality, with greater economic fragility due to higher income volatility and a reduced safety net. A deep-seated anger about how the economy is “rigged” has been simmering since long before the pandemic.
Of course, neither political party has a monopoly on this trend, nor does politics itself. This is something advanced economies in the era of globalization are all dealing with to some extent, though the form this discontent takes differs.
The World’s 13 Most Unique Bowling Alleys, Architectural Digest, Elizabeth Stamp December 15, 2023
These are all awesome, but I’m partial to the American ones, especially the one in LA.
Bonus, here’s a sign from a retro (i.e. old) bowling alley in Riverdale Park, Maryland:
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"A deep-seated anger about how the economy is “rigged” has been simmering since long before the pandemic."
Oh year, for sure. This is definitely driving the rise in populism. It's been happening since the early 1980s and is a result of in the insane income inequality in the US. Lot's of reasons for that and solutions can be all over the place, but so much of our economy revolves around this, it's going to be hard to change.