Striking differences between success for the low income in affluent counties !

[GoCUBS1]

Originally Posted by chet everett

Poor families that relocate to places like DuPage Co give their kids a HUGE boost compared to those who stick around in Cook Co.

Even though I have long advocated for folks that can figure out a way to move into the best area they can to give their kids access to the far better schools and benefits of motivated classmates I have to admit I was shocked that there is such a HUGE difference in counties that literally are adjacent -- DuPage is #1 with a positive impact of over $4k on future earnings while Cook Co is an abysmal 8th from bottom, actually hurting folks income by over $3k. That is an ENORMOUS swing and it really highlights just how much impact there is when folks run schools for the benefit of ALL the kids vs perpetuating a system that overwhelming favors poltically connected insiders...

Where Poor Kids Grow Up Makes A Huge Difference : Planet Money : NPR

I greatly respect lower income parents who do the homework/take the initiative/scrimp and save to relocate to wealthier areas for their kids education. I personally know quite a few kids who grew up in a poorer enclave that feeds into a wealthier school district (e.g. by renting small house or apt, living with extended family, etc.), go on to achieve great educational/career success. Being surrounded by better educated/more affluent kids/families can definitely stoke the fires within and provide motivation and mentors for proving oneself.

[chet everett]

I got nothing against folks that run pizza places or any other kind of carry out / delivery food business paying folks a little more or helping out with benefits. The thing that happens when politicians mindlessly mandates a "living wage" is that you sort of short circuit the normal functioning of the labor market. There is a domino effect that messes up the whole market for rentals and everything else.
See, the folks that do decide to open a little business can't really afford to sell 2-for-$20 specials if their labor costs are so high that they're losing money anytime an order goes out for less for $50. Ultimately that results in smaller pool of folks with higher paying jobs and a larger mass of folks that nobody is gonna hire. The folks making $15/hr or whatever magic number the do-gooders deem acceptable probably are NOT going to stay on the clock for 40 hours a week, the shop owners will cut hours and only have staff when they absolutely have to... Lots of households could see their total income fall AND be scrambling between various employers to cover expenses...

There is currently no "wall" separating DuPage Co from Cook Co. -- little reason to think that decades of behaviors that result in folks largely selecting crummy areas because of family or social ties will be suddenly enlightened and move someplace that will result in a better future for their kids. And there is neither a limitless supply of Sec 8 vouchers nor apartments that accept them. Movements are unlikely to really spike in any noticeable way due to these reports.

CPS is not serving enough middle-income families and does an even more atrocious effort for too many lower income families. The efforts to limit charter schools and such seem a desperate move not to shore-up the schools that almost certainly need to be shaken-up but rather yet effort to further the dependency that has been shown to leave people with reduced opportunity.

There probably are lots of parallels between folks that left the "old country" for new opportunity decades ago and the more adventurous / clued-in lower income families fed-up with the near feudal degree to which CHA / HUD managed complexes keep people surrounded by poverty. There are probably legitimate further questions worthy of research to determine if folks that may have modest homes in poverty stricken part of Cook Co are better off selling and becoming renters in DuPage Co, or if there are ways to cover any shortfall from selling a home in a collapsing part of Cook Co to get the least costly home in the roughest part of DuPage, or perhaps such largess would foster dependency and dampen the gains seen by relocation. Think back to the "Ellis Island generation" and how so many came across the Atlantic with no assets. They did not have some "program" to ensure their own success. The did have lots of employers willing not just to pay them but to actually exploit them and that led to the need for labor laws that are enforced uniformly across the country. A good thing. Those folks that came through Ellis Island also had access to public schools that mostly were a legitimate path to a better life for the kids of immigrants. The break down of that system has been looked at for decades and few solutions to really re-build the whole system have even been suggested let alone tried. Clearly the premise of using magnet schools and similar efforts to alleviate racial segregation has been ineffective in too much of Cook Co where even the suburbs that have tried such efforts, like those that are part of Proviso school district, continue to see an outflow of non-minority students...

Some politicians with more skills in seeing the big picture, addressing concerns in a serious (not pandering...) way, and honestly addressing the issues of continuing to foster special treatments for insiders are desperately needed in Cook Co. -- in contrast the majority of even DuPage Co's most affordable areas still have plenty of dedicated volunteers that are not so stupid as to threaten to slash spending on schools and treat cops, firefighters and other municipal workers as "bad guys". The message that comes from idiots that literally go to jail for raiding the town treasuries in the unfortunate suburbs and cities with voters dumb enough to elect these crooks is sadly under our form of democracy the uninformed and apathetic get the elected officials they deserve, not those they need to turn things around...

[tommy_407]

Originally Posted by chet everett

That said, the kinds of jobs left inside Chicago for folks that do not have the skills to work in the largely white collar, high paying Loop based firms are so few that if you do not have an "inside connection" it probably means you'll never get a shot at such employment. For these low skilled potential workers they almost certainly do better grunting it out at a low level service sector / retail job in some non-descript strip mall or industrial park in DuPage Co.

If the O.P. had included this paragraph along with the original post I would imagine more minds have been swayed. This is probably, the best paragraph regarding the city I've read on here in months, and it's the cold hard truth. I myself am educated, young-ish, but solidly middle class and I was reverse commuting for my work for the longest. Just recently I've found a job doing construction/carpentry in Lincoln Park and still have yet to work in 'the Loop'.

Okay I think everyone should back off the O.P. a little bit; he is certainly not implying that 1.5 million people should relocate to DuPage County in the same fashion as Early 20th century migration to Ellis Island. With the avocation of the above quote, he really brings to the light the fact that ALOT of the impoverished people were referring to need a wake up call - look yourself in the mirror and ask "Do I REALLY need to be IN Chicago? AM I GOING TO GET ANY JOB RELEVANT TO THE CITY? LET ALONE THE LOOP? DO I PLAN ON GETTING ANY JOB AT ALL PERIOD?" And I PERSONALLY know a large handful of South, West, and North siders that have told me "I plan on selling drugs for the rest of my life in Chicago, no I am not getting a job".

Crossing arbitrary political boundaries between counties is certainly not the answer to these issues, agreed. And America was not the land paved with gold that the Ellis Island immigrants perceived in 1902. And HEY, now that you mention it...

Dutch Schultz (Public Enemy No 1, "menace to society")
Jack "Legs" Diamond (Bootlegger, Murderer, Extortionist)
Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll (psycopath; hitman; murder of 5yo)
"Lucky" Luciano (murder; rackateer; criminal enterprise)
Albert Anastasia "The Mad Hatter" (oversaw 400-1000 murders)

And the rest of "Murder, Inc" were ALL products and direct results of mass immigration into slummy, overcrowded conditions, from ONE crappie place to ANOTHER. While we like to watch movies about these people, being alive while they were around and witnessing their effect on urbanites would give us the harsh reality of their existence.

If 1.5 million people moved to DuPage, I'm sure characters like these would develop simply from the rejection by its current residents and the general social system. So no, the answer isn't a mass relocation, and I doubt the O.P. truly wants that either.