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Can you quantify the transplant vs. native population? Is it a ratio of 50-50? Ratio of 60-40 or 40-60?
Since my comment about transplants was stemmed from WB's and IBF's comments on DC natives v. transplants in DC, we'll used their criteria of born and raised in DC.
2000 census data: Percentage of current residents who were born in the District of Columbia 39.22%.
Now that census data does not include the thousands who live in DC, but legally claim residency in other states due to their federal employment status.
Quote:
Originally Posted by coldbliss
Can you quantify how the transplants economic activity helps the poor, woeful "natives"? Maybe it is the natives that provide economic value to the transplants?
I don't disagree with that point. Plenty of people born here provide economic value to transplants. What happens to them when there is only 40% of the population left to provide economic value to?
You think it's common sense that there will be an entrepreneurial boom. I think it's common sense that the economy, and city services collapse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by coldbliss
Buying property is theft. Pure and simple. Land should have no monetary value. Ditto for food. Ditto for water.
I've said what I wanted to say about transplants being an essential part of the city, so I'm done. You're going to carry the racially charged marxist revolution, with even the DC middle class being urban bourgeoisie, conversation on your own.
Food with no monetary value? lol how do you propose we do that? Either you somehow convince a hell of a lot of people to farm produce and raise livestock out of the goodness of their hearts, or the government buys it all in order to provide it for free which would require incredibly high taxes.
A command and control economic system doesn't work, just look at the laughable failure that was the USSR.
1. We already have a model of what is being discussed. Detroit. The middle class and anchoring economy moved out to the suburbs (2 million population down to about 900,000 now). In a city with 300,000 MORE people than DC, there has yet to be an entrepreneurial boom in the past 50 years. In fact, the city remains strikingly similar in many ways to DC in the 1980s when it was riddled with disinvestment.
The reason Pittsburgh has turned around isn't because of small, impoverished people banding together but because of massive research institutions, health care institutions, and service institutions creating new jobs in the city and attracting qualified people (often transplants) to fill those positions.
2. Most of my friends here are black and I don't know any one of them that wants to be treated differently or given special privilege because of it. The Jesse Jackson era has passed.
3. You seem to have an almost caricature perspective of middle class white people that we all live in a blissful bubble of ignorance about the atrocities of the past. Some of us have pondered these concepts deeply and have worked to improve such communities from within. If I've learned anything, it's that problems with poverty run far deeper than a mere job and shelter. Most have that, and if they don't there are plenty of programs to provide free housing, food, and water.
4. I'm very confused how your system works when implemented. If all food is free, am I going to be forced to eat government processed chemical cheese or will I have the freedom to choose organic cheese to protect my health and longevity? Will I be forced to live in a concrete box identical to all others or will I have a choice to live in a modern highrise or victorian townhome? If I want to put money into changing it or improving it, will I be able to or will this government property be off limits?
These are serious questions. I honesty don't understand your vision. Thank you.
These are serious questions. I honesty don't understand your vision. Thank you.
Almost makes me miss Stars99. His view of DC may have been trapped in amber from 20 years ago, but it was at least understandable. Not really sure what to make of a vision of DC that includes ceding all ownership of land and everyone growing their own crops.
Almost makes me miss Stars99. His view of DC may have been trapped in amber from 20 years ago, but it was at least understandable. Not really sure what to make of a vision of DC that includes ceding all ownership of land and everyone growing their own crops.
I don't know. It's always good to know what the Baader-Meinhof Group is up to these days.
In fact, a few transplants I know from back in the days (who have since moved on) always remind me "DC IS GARBAGE NOW" whenever I see them.
They are 100% correct too.
You're certainly entitled to that view, but just understand that there are many here (myself included) who would disagree with you. The city is better-run, cleaner, safer and more amenity-filled than it has ever been. It's not coincidental that the decade your ex-transplant friends decry as "garbage" was also the first decade since the 1940s that saw the District add, rather than lose, population.
As an aside to this discussion, it's interesting to read the views of the handful of posters who pine for the "old" DC. DC, as a city, has gone through many interations throughout its history. People may decry the cost of living in neighborhoods like Logan, Shaw, Columbia Heights and so forth, but it's worth pointing out that when those neighborhoods were built, they weren't built to house the poor and working class--many were developed as upscale, affluent neighborhoods. (It was, after all, the Howard professors and African-American elite, not Howard students and African-American working class, who used to populate the homes of Shaw and Ledroit.) The Victorian mansions that exist around Logan Circle, or along the streets of Ledroit Park, were not designed as blue collar, middle class housing. That a neighborhood such as Logan Circle was ever allowed to deteriorate to the point it reached in the late-70s and early-80s--derelict and rife with drugs and prostitution--represented a collosal failing on the part of the city and its leadership; their return to a status as affluent, upscale neighborhoods is in many ways a return to their original identities.
DC's story is that of an ever-changing, tremendously interesting and dynamic city, replete with peaks and valleys. There is no singular point in its history that can be considered the "real" DC, no more so than cities like New York and Chicago had periods that could be considered more "real" than others. Cities change. Demographics change. Cultures change. No one group or entity "owns" a city moreso than others. People may have disagreements as to whether the ongoing metamorphisis of a particular city represents a positive or negative change, but in the end it's simply another chapter in an ever-expanding book.
^
I concur, though, to be fair, the economic and social abandonment of cities in the 60s-90s was a nationwide phenomenon related more to the creation of the Interstate Highway System and the brief love affair metropolitan Americans had with the automobile than the leadership of any one city at any one time. Market forces will always trump government abilities.
Some more questions for Coldbliss: in this world where food is free, are we allowed to eat at restaurants? Can working-class / service-class people making livings as waiters, cooks, or busboys? If they must give food out for free, who pays their salaries? How do we know what to tip if there is no market value for that food?
If someone has a passion and talent for cooking food, say soul food, is that individual allowed to open a business in Anacostia and sell that food to other residents in order to make a living to a serve a neighborhood demand?
I'm always interested in new ways of making the world work better, so I do hope you've thought through this ideology you hold and can enlighten me.
You're certainly entitled to that view, but just understand that there are many here (myself included) who would disagree with you. The city is better-run, cleaner, safer and more amenity-filled than it has ever been. It's not coincidental that the decade your ex-transplant friends decry as "garbage" was also the first decade since the 1940s that saw the District add, rather than lose, population.
As an aside to this discussion, it's interesting to read the views of the handful of posters who pine for the "old" DC. DC, as a city, has gone through many interations throughout its history. People may decry the cost of living in neighborhoods like Logan, Shaw, Columbia Heights and so forth, but it's worth pointing out that when those neighborhoods were built, they weren't built to house the poor and working class--many were developed as upscale, affluent neighborhoods. (It was, after all, the Howard professors and African-American elite, not Howard students and African-American working class, who used to populate the homes of Shaw and Ledroit.) The Victorian mansions that exist around Logan Circle, or along the streets of Ledroit Park, were not designed as blue collar, middle class housing. That a neighborhood such as Logan Circle was ever allowed to deteriorate to the point it reached in the late-70s and early-80s--derelict and rife with drugs and prostitution--represented a collosal failing on the part of the city and its leadership; their return to a status as affluent, upscale neighborhoods is in many ways a return to their original identities.
DC's story is that of an ever-changing, tremendously interesting and dynamic city, replete with peaks and valleys. There is no singular point in its history that can be considered the "real" DC, no more so than cities like New York and Chicago had periods that could be considered more "real" than others. Cities change. Demographics change. Cultures change. No one group or entity "owns" a city moreso than others. People may have disagreements as to whether the ongoing metamorphisis of a particular city represents a positive or negative change, but in the end it's simply another chapter in an ever-expanding book.
I know you do not want to tell me where you are originally from.
But can you at least tell me how long you have been living in the area?
I am sure we have a lot in common.
I have lots and lots of stories to tell.
I am sure you do too.
I know you do not want to tell me where you are originally from.
But can you at least tell me how long you have been living in the area?
I am sure we have a lot in common.
I have lots and lots of stories to tell.
I am sure you do too.
As said many times on here, he's from Columbus, Ohio. It is irrelevant to his ability to understand this city and have informed perspectives on it.
Carry on.
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