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I think Redddog is addressing the results of the problems, but we need to dig deeper as to what causes these problems of drugs and poverty. Looking at the cities and saying it's drugs, poverty and cops giving up is the easy part.
Looking at WHY are kids turning to selling drugs and WHY are people in mostly the cities still poor, is the hard part. Much of it IMO has to do with the family environment and or lack of family structure, non-involved dad's, and lack of opportunities for young people to make a living without going to college as MarketST said. Are there future opportunities for young people without degrees to work for these large tech companies? Warehouse work? Truck drivers for Amazon?
Also housing. I think these housing projects are a breeding ground for kids to grow up in and be surrounded by poor role models or even dangerous ones.
As IlovePhilly79 stated above, I don't think people are really discussing the main issues in public, they are just throwing a blanket on the problems by calling them systematic racism and that we should take from one group to give to the other.
I think Redddog is addressing the results of the problems, but we need to dig deeper as to what causes these problems of drugs and poverty. Looking at the cities and saying it's drugs, poverty and cops giving up is the easy part.
Looking at WHY are kids turning to selling drugs and WHY are people in mostly the cities still poor, is the hard part. Much of it IMO has to do with the family environment and or lack of family structure, non-involved dad's, and lack of opportunities for young people to make a living without going to college as MarketST said. Are there future opportunities for young people without degrees to work for these large tech companies? Warehouse work? Truck drivers for Amazon?
Also housing. I think these housing projects are a breeding ground for kids to grow up in and be surrounded by poor role models or even dangerous ones.
As IlovePhilly79 stated above, I don't think people are really discussing the main issues in public, they are just throwing a blanket on the problems by calling them systematic racism and that we should take from one group to give to the other.
Poverty, Drugs and Violence are all connected.
Job opportunities most definitely provide stronger communities.
The city should offer free community college.
And invest in its neighborhood libraries and open up pocket career centers to offer services for relevant skill building that will connect people with needed jobs and train them with the skills required.
This would probably lift a strong portion of the population out of poverty and reduce drug violence.
I would say drug violence is the number one reason why we are seeing the uptick in the murder rate from 2019 compared to 2020.
COVID has really devastated a lot of people financially, and why there has been some government lifelines, it has really hit the lowest income individuals the hardest.
Unemployment is only a small fraction of your income, and if you already were only making $10 an hour and barely able to survive on that to begin with.
Your unemployment is basically half of your income, so you are maybe getting $200 a week, if that.
Thankfully congress based the stimulus to increase the weekly unemployment pay.
Again, the uptick in crime is not isolated to Philadelphia. It has occurred in cities all across the USA.
It definitely is related to COVID, loss wages, increase in poverty, increase in substance abuse, social isolation which can lead to increased domestic violence, online learning really increases the younger generation from getting into trouble, it can keep going.
But I would say COVID is the main reason, and its due to increase in poverty from the COVID economic effects and the increase in drug use with COVID and therefore drug crime.
I actually just saw him on CNBC, haha. Handles himself well. Man, he hates Trump (not more than me, but it's close).
That's part of the problem. He handles himself well, but he's a promise maker that does nothing and doesn't seem to know how to run a city. He's also a machine politician backed by Johnny Doc. He's a figure head that keeps things the same, which is why nothing is happening. Personally, I don't care if I like the person, they just need to be effective (not alluding to Trump. I don't like Trump and he didn't make good things happen).
I'm not discounting the effects of poor parenting, which do extend far beyond the family of the child so mis-raised (to name one place they affect: schooling. Many of the problems we blame the schools for originate outside the classroom)....
...but you had me at "limited economic opportunities".
One subject I think our now-thoroughly-disgraced soon-to-be-ex-President was right in emphasizing was the atrophying of our manufacturing sector.
But that was actually a symptom of a larger disease, that disease being the disappearance of paths into the middle class for those without college degrees.
We used to have many more of those, including mining and heavy industry. I would not advocate for a revival of coal mining on environmental grounds, but I would like to see a comeback in manufacturing in general. Not everyone was meant for academic study, nor should that be the only route to prosperity. Unfortunately, we who have benefited from the meritocracy that gained ground starting in the 1960s have pretty much bent the economy so that this is the case (and I lay much of the blame for this on two sectors: finance and media. I work in one of those sectors).
We need to bend it back so that those who have neither the inclination nor the desire to pursue an academic degree, as well as those whose intelligence lies in other spheres*, have the same shot at the upper tiers as those who do have that academic bent. Trump talked a very good game on this subject, and in going after China on trade, at least moved the ball a little in that direction. But his actual accomplishments did not live up to his rhetoric.
I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of the politics of both parties as "traitorous," but inasmuch as both the Democratic and Republican Establishments have pretty much signed on to the neoliberal finance-driven global economic order (which I also support to some degree), we do have a problem in that there's really no one who can make an authentic case for letting the Forgotten back onto the prosperity merry-go-round.
As usual, you have a greatly insightful and balanced thought process. Both Clinton and Bush were selling this "service economy" idea 20 - 30 years ago as they were getting ready to sign NAFTA. I remember many people saying "oh, this will be great". Little did they know that big business was working global politics to replace quality-paying jobs with overseas slave labor and higher profit margins for business leaders. And all of this was orchestrated in a way to be able to sell back to the largest consumer market in the world, undercutting those that were more patriotic and wanted to keep operations here. What's the point in having cheap labor if you can't sell your products back to the market that matters?
I have seen the repercussions of this in so many places; it's not just in dangerous neighborhoods like Kensington. This poverty has stabbed the hearts of many suburban and rural communities across the country. These places may have been more stable and diversified in terms of their economics and communities prior to the past 20 years, but they are falling apart as well. Drugs, violence, ruined family units, no stable jobs that can help families truly succeed in the long-run. My cousin is exactly my age, and she works in a warehouse packing boxes and as a bartender three nights a week. She makes $15/hr in the warehouse and with COVID, very little at the bar. They can't even fix their leaking roof. She grew up in the same neighborhood and her mother and father were much better off financially. Same education, different opportunities.
Philadelphia lives in the same "universe" as all other de-industrialized cities. Too many communities have been left behind with no real future. And, you probably know better than I do, but I suspect that many minority neighborhoods in a city like Philly had far fewer years of stable prosperity than my cousin's middle-class neighborhood had growing up. At least her parents and grandparents had multi-generational prosperity that ramped up their ability to educate, pass values, and grow their community over 30 - 50 years.
What I'm getting at is that our general public doesn't even know what is wrong at the core. They seem to think that rioting or protesting over the symptoms is going to give them change. And they think that if they make a loud noise that it is going to make change; didn't this fail in the 60s and 70s too? But our politicians in the city are going to go along with whatever the dialog is expected to be, but with silence about the major issues that exist. They want re-election and life-long political careers and you can't get that if you're labeled by the public or out of alignment with the major political parties. They want to keep their families on top of the wave that is crashing down on the middle-to-lower class. It's not actually about race at its core. It's about economics and the erosion of the American family unit and multi-generational prosperity. This is why I really feel for families of all colors that are frustrated with organizations like BLM that are not actually helping improve communities. And truthfully, BLM can only fight over the crumbs that are left for all of us.
Last edited by ilovephilly79; 01-07-2021 at 11:28 AM..
I included an asterisk in my previous post after "those whose intelligence lies in other spheres" but forgot to explain the asterisk. Here's the footnote:
*Actually, a somewhat corny joke I heard cuts to the core of the matter: the tendency of the college-educated to look down their noses at those who work with their hands.
Here's the joke:
"Any society that tolerates shoddy philosophy because philosophy is a noble calling, yet refuses to recognize excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a mere trade, will not long endure, for neither its theories nor its pipes will hold water."
I included an asterisk in my previous post after "those whose intelligence lies in other spheres" but forgot to explain the asterisk. Here's the footnote:
*Actually, a somewhat corny joke I heard cuts to the core of the matter: the tendency of the college-educated to look down their noses at those who work with their hands.
Here's the joke:
"Any society that tolerates shoddy philosophy because philosophy is a noble calling, yet refuses to recognize excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a mere trade, will not long endure, for neither its theories nor its pipes will hold water."
Philadelphia is at 11 murders. An 83% increase from last year this time.
Crazy enough though, I learned Columbus, Ohio is at a record high with 9 murders so far into the year, and that city is nearly half the size of Philadelphia.
What is going on across the nation?? This is crazy.
I know gun sales have been at an all time high, I can't say that does not have some speaking power.
Philadelphia is at 11 murders. An 83% increase from last year this time.
Crazy enough though, I learned Columbus, Ohio is at a record high with 9 murders so far into the year, and that city is nearly half the size of Philadelphia.
What is going on across the nation?? This is crazy.
I know gun sales have been at an all time high, I can't say that does not have some speaking power.
This is going to sound crass to some, but I never understood why the murder rate was the tell-all for crime analysis. I mean, the vast vast majority of murders (at least in this city) are between warring gang members, drug dealers or other nefarious individuals. There's a pretty easy way to not to get murdered in Philadelphia - don't partake in black market activities or go out looking for trouble in the underbelly of society. Of course there is collateral damage to innocents who are forced to live around this activity, but those occurrences are quite rare. More disturbing and impactful to society IMO is horrific domestic and child abuse, roving gangs of teenagers who are permitted to knock out random strangers in the middle of the city, and predatory assaults and rapes. These are the things (coupled with serious property crime) that will drive out the taxpayers; and if you think the murder rate is high now, if we lose even 10% of tax paying citizens in the city, buckle up. Murders will skyrocket.
I do agree though that the prevalence of guns needs to be addressed. Considering how pro-gun the Supreme Court is now, all of America could be in for a serious and sustained increase in shootings.
This is going to sound crass to some, but I never understood why the murder rate was the tell-all for crime analysis. I mean, the vast vast majority of murders (at least in this city) are between warring gang members, drug dealers or other nefarious individuals. There's a pretty easy way to not to get murdered in Philadelphia - don't partake in black market activities or go out looking for trouble in the underbelly of society. Of course there is collateral damage to innocents who are forced to live around this activity, but those occurrences are quite rare. More disturbing and impactful to society IMO is horrific domestic and child abuse, roving gangs of teenagers who are permitted to knock out random strangers in the middle of the city, and predatory assaults and rapes. These are the things (coupled with serious property crime) that will drive out the taxpayers; and if you think the murder rate is high now, if we lose even 10% of tax paying citizens in the city, buckle up. Murders will skyrocket.
I do agree though that the prevalence of guns needs to be addressed. Considering how pro-gun the Supreme Court is now, all of America could be in for a serious and sustained increase in shootings.
I agree with nearly all you said.
The vast vast vast majority of the murders in the city are from drug related crime. Random murder is actually rare.
The teenager gangs, domestic violence and assaults are all issues.
I think the whole eyes on the street mantra is playing into a tick too with increased crime.
Less business open. Less people out. Less eyes on the street. Which means people feel more confident to get away with crime.
Ive lived in this city for over ten years, and I actually feel more safe in my neighborhood currently than less safe, despite the increased murder rate. And I live in an up and coming part of the city.
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