Why is the inner-city so violent and why isn't it national news? Where is the outrage over thousands of young men killing each other??? I read daily on the local news out of Chicago and you're talking about 20-30 people shot per day. This is nuts.
I'm assuming that most of this violence is done by minority gangs. So is it accurate to blame the single parent families for not being there for their child? Making the child turn to these gangs...
I think this is the biggest problem facing this nation.
How do we uplift these people? I think we need to discuss the most important issue we face.
Let's invest more into education of our inner-cities and set up a program that helps these children get interested in business, science and innovation. KEEPING THEM OUT OF GANGS.
(My bold)
The inner cities are poor by gov. policy, although it may have been accidental. @ the end of WWII, there was a lot of pent-up consumer demand for cars, clothing, telephones, refrigerators (electric), powered washing machines (clothes), ovens & on & on. There was also a dream of a detached single-family home that was affordable.
This last meant near - not in - the existing cities. City land was too expensive (taxes for services) & not usually available in single lots. But there was lots of land potentially available as farms, woodlots, land in pasturage. There was also lots of money to be made - buy a big tract of land, subdivide, build single-family detached houses on spec (there were lots of returning military with money saved up, & the down payment on mortgages was ratcheting down steadily), banks & S&Ls were flush with money that had no outlet during the war years. Cities & suburbs got "free" homes, which meant a bigger tax base (which also meant rising demand for services, eventually.)
Cities are an efficient use of land - population density justifies mass transit, big public schools, police & fire is within easy reach. Contrast the suburbs, where you normally need a car & there isn't usually mass transit. Hell, there aren't usually sidewalks.
As the young couples with their young families left the cities, they wanted work, schools, fire, police, shopping, churches - the usual - @ or near their new location. The sunk costs - hospitals, K-12 public schools, universities, power plants, etc. stayed in the cities. But the suburbs wanted all that stuff, & the soon-to-be-big-box stores followed. The fed & state gov. encouraged these trends - mortgage write-offs, funds to extend electricity, telephone, freeways, utilities, schools. Over time, the cities were hollowed out, just as manufacturing capacity has been hollowed out in the US post-WWII.
The inner cities need to be redeveloped. With an eye to identifying & educating the next generation of doctors, skilled workers, engineers, scientists - whatever we will need. We've allowed a lot of waste of talent, because we drew a lot of foreign students & people fleeing political issues @ home to come to the US & prosper here. We can't count on that anymore, & we're making it difficult for foreign students to come here, earn a good technical education, & possibly settle here & start businesses.
We need a crash program, more or less comparable in scope to the Space Race - to ID & train talent in the inner cities, redevelop the land & buildings there, & make the space much more livable. Yah, it would be good to eradicate the culture of poverty too, if we can figure out a way to do that.
