WHITE FAMILIES SUCKED THE SUBURBS DRY
Original article: https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/01/benjamin-herold-disillusioned-suburbs/677229/
That’s not how that works. Suburbs can’t be a ponzi scheme. Get the fuck out of here with that click bait bullshit.
Suburbs can’t be a ponzi scheme
Genuine question: Why not?
While the article indeed barely touched on its headline, the way I’ve seen the “suburb infrastructure upkeep problem” described seems indeed reminiscent of a ponzi scheme.
The way I understand it:
Suburbs have a relatively low initial cost (for the city) compared to the taxes they generate. However, their maintenance cost is relatively high because Suburbs are huge.
Thus, US cities have long had a policy of paying the rising cost of their older Suburbs by creating new Suburbs - which is pretty analogous to a Ponzi scheme.
I think you misunderstand what a ponzi scheme actually is. It’s a type of “investment” that’s actually a scam where new investments are used to pay out older investors until the funds run out. It is named after the guy is famous for being the first to run one, Charles Ponzi.
In large chunks of this country the suburbs are comprised of hoas that bear a good chunk of the maintenance cost. And I would like to see actual proof that a suburb road needs more maintenance with passenger vehicles than a downtown road with large 3+ axle vehicles on it all of the time. If those roads do need more maintenance then that is likely a quality control problem that happens when you hire the lowest bidder for a job.
Don’t feel bad. You are one of the hundreds if not thousands that I have interacted with that don’t actually understand what a ponzi is and isn’t. Not everything that doesn’t work out or work out for everyone is a scam or a ponzi.
Oh and I did just skim the “article” and nothing it says leads me to the conclusion that ponzi is the right word here.
I’m not sure at the moment what the right term would be for what they are trying to describe but it’s most definitely not ponzi.
It’s just another shell game, robbing Peter to pay Paul. That traditional, red blooded, all American apple pie, run of the mill basic corruption we’re all so accustomed too by now
No it’s not, not at all, not if I understood what I skimmed well enough to infer what the whole thing is about. It’s about suburban live being pushed as this ideal way to live and then generations later it turns out that suburban design for living is way less efficient than people living in apt complexes or in high rises in downtown and surrounding. No one schemed this up decades ago as a way to skim, steal and embezzle. Imo this is one of those things that seemed great at the time but no one took the time to forecast how it affects everything going forward.
You have the gist of it. It was heavily promoted, yes, but the cost of bringing city amenities out, so piping water and sewage instead of making everyone dig a well and have a septic, well those costs were almost universally kicked down the line, essentially paid for on bonds and bonds are now coming due, right when we they all need major refurbishing, so double whammy on the current generation.
It also started a fairly craven class warfare tactic. The chosen few who could afford too bought the new development, lived there for 7 years, and then sold it, took the $150,000 or whatever equity they didn’t do anything to earn, and bought another brand new development. The 2nd owner tho, just bought into a house when the 30yr roof needs an “unexpected” $8000 repair, the basements started flooding because the garage settled wrong and busted pipes…you get the picture. Unless you’re the chosen few, you’re stuck carrying the bag and doing all the lifting. No matter what you do. Any complaining tho, and watch yo ass busted down to desolation. Murica.
None of that makes it a ponzi though. That’s my whole point here.
A ponzi scheme is getting new people to pay out the old. See also, social security, health insurance, any and every MLM. See also, fractional banking.
It’s unsanctioned fractional banking and the big boys don’t like being called out for the crooks they are.
The same idea, playing out over time, can describe the credit industry. Really, why split hairs, we’ve been told for thousands of years that the money lenders are worse than murderers. Using current resources to pay off yesteryears resource use. That inversion describes all the above.
Perhaps poison pill is the more succinct packaging. Words are important, and clarity should always be attempted, surely, but semantics aside, everything I’ve written here are all different shades of the same thing, the evil of dehumanization caused by greed, predation and exploitation. A pox on society.
The article is fine. Blame the sub-editor for picking up one of the two metaphors in this quote:
Marohn suggests that what’s happened in places such as Ferguson and Penn Hills is the equivalent of a Ponzi scheme. It’s “the development version of slash-and-burn agriculture,” he tells the author. “We build a place, we use up the resources, and when the returns start diminishing, we move on, leaving a geographic time bomb in our wake!”
Race bait
It’s a class issue, not racial.
Yep. White families didn’t suck it dry. The suburbs were largely always unsustainable and came at the cost of disadvantaged groups.
Fuck off.
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