Michael Shellenberger wrote the book, Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, where he blames wokism and progressive politics for the homeless and drug problems in some US cities, like San Francisco. You may have seen the video I put out here about the homelessness in San Francisco which was truly shocking.
Michael Shellenberger says he's a liberal, not a progressive, who he sees as very left. Like many people on the right, he blames the individual rather than society for the drug addiction, homeless, and crime problems in the US. Now there are certainly bad individuals who should be in prison, people I absolutely detest, but the Nordic countries have far less drug abuse and crime, so I put much of the problem down to neoliberalism. And these things don't just happen over night, and it may take a generation or two of people living in a harsh capitalist society before they, or their children, start falling down the slippery slope of despair, drink, and drugs. During the young age our brains are very neuroplastic and are shaped by the environment. If children are brought up in happier, less stressed environments, its not only good for them, but for society too as they are much more likely to grow up to become happy, hard working, law abiding people.
Tim Redland
Shellenberger tries to dismiss the role of the Reagan Revolution in creating homelessness, using only one metric—funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development—while failing to mention the transformation of HUD from an agency tasked with housing the poorest of the poor to one supporting market-rate developers and landlords.
To say he misses the point would be a rather profound understatement.
David Harvey, in his classic A Short History of Neoliberalism, brilliantly describes how the Reagan Revolution created a radically new approach to the social contract in the US. Heather McGhee, in The Sum of Us, equally brilliantly explains the racist history of how this country, in the same era, lost its ability to operate an effective public sector.
“Welfare” under Reagan became a racially-driven term used to convince white people that their taxes were too high. Under Paul Volker, the Federal Reserve in 1982 so shocked the economy that unemployment soared—at one point, more than 20 percent of Black Americans had no jobs—but inflation, which upset the bankers, fell.
The entire notion that human beings had basic rights to food, clothing, and shelter—which were built into the War on Poverty and Great Society programs of the 1960s—came under attack. And that approach to public policy hasn’t changed much in Washington, under either Democrats or Republicans.
Reagan also eliminated revenue-sharing, the program that guaranteed federal money to cities. In the meantime, the policies of racist, conservative post-war redevelopment agencies wiped out reams of low-cost housing that was never replaced; in San Francisco alone tens of thousands of units were lost.
Tim Redland - ‘San Fransicko’ Gets It Upside Down: It’s Neoliberals Who Ruin Cities
Michael Shellenberger
How the radical left turned cities into America's cities into slums
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The city of San Francisco is not helping the homeless.
ReplyDeleteGovernments at all levels are not helping the homeless.
When will the silly ideological sniping come to an end?
“San Fransicko” this guy stole that from Michael Savage …. Savage called it that over 20 years ago,,,
ReplyDeleteRemember the TV series "Streets of San Francisco" starring Karl Malden?
ReplyDeleteOverdue for a sequel...