Posted on 04/03/2014 9:43:51 AM PDT by Red Badger
CHICAGO (CBS) — The graphic that you are about to see is sobering, perhaps depressing, and you can’t take your eyes off it.
We have the exhaustive work of Daniel Kay Hertz, a masters student at the University Of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, to thank for that.
At the risk of sounding like an old carnival barker, step right up and watch the middle class of Chicago vanish before your eyes.
However, this is no side-show.
It shows the demise of the foundation of an American city.
Watch as the grey squares, which illustrate the middle class that dominated the most of the city’s neighborhoods in 1970s, quickly vanish over 40 years.
The poor, represented by the orange and red colors, explode across the map.
And watch what happens in the green areas representing the upper middle class and wealthy. Not surprisingly, it spreads from downtown to the north side, but not with the same ferocity as the reds and oranges.
Especially in 2000, the greens-the color of money–grow much darker. It seems the rich simply got richer. In later years, the wealthy pushed the poor out of the near West Side. It appears that area bypassed the middle.
The data comes from the U.S. Census.
In his blog, Hertz says he fears that the often-told story of segregation and income inequality in Chicago has led to apathy.
“These facts somehow seep out of the ground here, as much a part of the city as the lake, and that as a result there’s really nothing we can do about it,” Hertz writes.
Hertz says the work isn’t meant to be depressing. Not along ago, he reasons, there was a large vibrant middle class in Chicago, and it is possible to get it back.
The goal of the maps “is not merely to depress you (you’re welcome!), but to suggest just how dramatically the reality of Chicago’s ‘two cities’ has changed over the last few generations, how non-eternal its present state is, and that a happier alternate reality isn’t just possible, but actually existed relatively recently.”
Communists hate the middle class - the middle class represents stability.
Nuke 80% of the $4 TRILLION government beast that is eating up America like Godzilla.
It’s a doomed city. It’s Detroit in 10 years.
Exactly. I read this article and immediately thought of Detroit.
Not a chance. It might declare bankruptcy, but that’s about it.
Behold liberalism/socialism at work...
You mean like Detroit, right?
The green areas show tremendous growth....?
Actually, there isn't enough information to conclude that the “rich simply got richer” — unless you're using a strictly relative measure of “richer”.
According to the legend, the graphic is based on the median income in the metro area. If you lower that median income, by substituting middle income families, with low income families, then a higher-income family that remains, will have a higher relative income — without needing to actually have more income. They will be “relatively” richer — but, not necessarily having more income.
‘Income inequality’ is a lie but to the extent it exists it was accelerated by Obama and many other ‘community organizers’ in Chicago.
It seems the rich simply got richer. In later years, the wealthy pushed the poor out of the near West Side. It appears that area bypassed the middle.
Embrace the suck? You get what the wagon riders vote into office?
I never plan on living in an urban area again.
Most big city’s went from Republican mayor to Democrat mayor in the mid ‘60s. This is the result.
Did the middle class leave or did they just become poor? Or both?
Also, if your pay stays the same you are automatically more poor compared to price increases...so not sure how they allocate for that.
This is what the neo-feudal New World Order looks like. A tiny, unaccountable Ruling Elite serviced by a small technocracy and feeding off a huge population of poor and near-poor.
Never happen.
From the time Chicago helped elect JFK to the point at which OBamugabe was fully supported in his POTUS bid, Chicago will ALWAYS stand solvent.
Let all others fail around us, but Chicago will survive; even when Putin conquers the shores of the Great Lakes, Chicago will not fail.
Y’all think about that...MOLON LABE.
The middle class shrunk dramatically, the poor increased significantly, but the rich also increased significantly. It isn’t - as the article states - simply that the rich got richer, but that there are a lot more rich than there used to be, e.g., compare the 1970 green areas to the 2012 green areas. So the economic stratification has changed from a diamond (many in the middle, few at the top or bottom), to kind of a bottom-heavy female torso (heavy hips/thighs, average waist, moderate bust) - kind of a Michelle Obama profile.
The rich leftist elites hate the middle class -- the children of the middle class, who start businesses and invent new technologies, are competition for their own kids.
This is why they try to sabotage the public school systems, and make college so expensive that middle-class graduates are so burdened with student loan debt that they will have to work for big corporations rather than starting their own companies.
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