The “root” cause is always Electoral Fraud. ALWAYS
ALL “progressive/left” power originates from Electoral Fraud. ALL urban decline commences with electoral fraud. ALL OF IT.
The disenfranchised voters then leave...taking their money and their businesses..allowing the criminals to run the show.
Electoral Fraud ALWAYS precedes Leftism and Progressivism..because at the end of the day..Leftism is essentially a disordered mind/mental illness...and most people who can hold a job and are productive enough to be taxpayers are not mentally ill and reason just fine.
Those aiding and abetting local Electoral Fraud then get “theirs’ from the process starting in motion the urban declines. In the 50/60/70’s it was the bookies/the mob, by the 70/80/90’s the dope cartels, by now it has evolved into human trafficking with manifold different expressions as outlined in multiple places on the interwebs
Once the fraudulent processes are in place the networks of control assembled from decades of accumulated dirt and control crimes on one another in local and state and national politics layer and layer into a massive social/administrative/economic national mess. A slow “progression”into a nationwide dystopia.
Electoral Fraud is ALWAYS the root.
The root cause was de - industrialization.