The Decline and Fall of Urban America

As mobs take over major American cities, tax paying citizens vote with their feet. As noted here and elsewhere, the loss of a tax base will directly impact the lower income people who are rioting, looting and pillaging.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that an exodus out of New York City is underway. Of course anecdotal evidence is hardly the best. 

Daniel Henninger sees a coming urban exodus, and one is hard put to disagree. Evidently, the cities that are losing population are governed by leftists. Mayors who allow rioters to take control of their cities are responding to their constituents. For now, the hot new idea is to defund the police. After all, if minority citizens are committing most of the crimes, how better to obscure the fact and mask the shame than to remove the police from communities. Everyone knows that this strategy will merely make lawlessness a way of life in minority communities. And it will persuade families with young children to find safer spaces.

Henninger writes:

In just three months it has become clear that modern urban progressivism is politically incompetent and intellectually incoherent.

After the days and weeks of marches through cities, what has fallen out of it is basically one idea—defund the police. In New York, with blocks of stores boarded up and cherry bombs exploding nightly everywhere, the City Council has agreed to cut the city’s police budget by $1 billion, or one-sixth. How hard is it to connect the dots?

And, of course, a riotous gang of protesters have occupied part of downtown Seattle. It resembles nothing other than a rape of a great city. For the leftist mayor, it’s a “summer of love.” Leftist women think that rape is an act of love:

A shapeless mass declares multiple blocks of Seattle now belong to it, and when asked how long it could on, Democratic Mayor Jenny Durkan wanly offers: “I don’t know. We could have a Summer of Love.” The first one was in 1967, also accompanied by massive urban unrest.

New York Governor Cuomo, once touted as a presidential candidate, is waving the white flag of surrender:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the weekend issued a plaintive request to the daily street protests: “You don’t need to protest. You won. You won.” Then the kicker: “What reform do you want? What do you want?”

Not exactly a profile in courage.

Henninger makes a telling point. Namely, that the local media is not trying to mediate the conflicting forces. It is egging them on. For some reason young millennial employees are wedded to an apocalyptic narrative, wherein the fire will cleanse the nation of its bigotry and turn them into world class performers:

Historically, the media and press have served an arbitrating function among competing urban forces. No longer. Through the pandemic and now the protests, much of the urban-based media have become bizarrely invested in apocalyptic story lines, picking at scab after scab and problem after problem, with not much effort at sorting substantive policy alternatives other than heading deeper into the progressive frontier.

For those who prefer some date with their morning opinions, the Journal reports this morning about the current state of the San Francisco housing market. Apparently, it is not going too well. Companies are laying off employees or are leaving town:

Now, the pandemic is upending San Francisco’s workforce more than in most cities, remaking part of its corporate landscape. Several large, high-paying companies, including Yelp Inc., and Lyft Inc., have begun laying off workers in the city. LendingClub reported to the California Employment Development Department earlier this month that it was permanently laying off 306 San Francisco employees.

San Francisco-based startup Stitch Fix Inc., meanwhile, is looking to save costs by hiring or relocating staff to cheaper cities outside of California like Pittsburgh and Cleveland. PG&E Corp. said this month it plans to move to Oakland, ending more than 100 years in San Francisco.

Rents are down. Occupancy rates are down. The middle class is decamping for fairer climes. Leaving the cities to the protesters and rioters. Will the last to leave please turn out the lights.