[handsomechad]

"It is my perception that, at least in America and I suspect in many other places, competition pressure centered around places with strong "second place" (Job) opportunities combined with decades of civic mal-planning and treating symptoms (for some) rather than root causes (for all) have combined with a regressive tax/compensation structures to destroy the middle class and upward mobility. "

i literally cannot parse this sentence. i tried - i am a native english speaker but it's just confusing to me what the proposition being made here is. i tried reading it a few times.

it is late but if someone could clarify it would be much appreciated.

[bloomca]

I am not a native speaker and not an author, but from my understanding, they mean that we focus on jobs, not on communities (as society), and then try to patch it later (e.g. go to specific clubs, gather in some places, etc). Moreover, it is hard to jump between social classes, therefore hard to change place of living/your surroundings.

So, in a nutshell, making our lives around job makes it hard (for majority) to live a fulfilling life outside of your job.

[spiralx]

First place is home, second place is work, third place is communal areas - sometimes the media is referred to as a fourth place.

He's saying that homes are built/valued almost entirely with access to jobs in mind and not communal spaces, and that this has not been helped by zoning laws that enforce this problem, nor by a lack of political will to tackle either this issue or any other deep-seated causes of the problem - things like housing costs for instance, which is part of a wider issue of increasing wealth disparity across the US.

Or perhaps more succinctly, the problem is a focus on fixing the surface problems of an increasingly well-off minority, instead of trying to tackle the underlying structural problems so as to benefit everybody.

[naibafo]

Maybe according to OPs perception, the reasons destroying the middle class and upward mobility are a combination of: competition pressure centered around places with strong "second place" (Job) opportunities, decades of civic mal-planning, treating symptoms (for some) rather than root causes (for all) and regressive tax/compensation structures

But I am not sure what that actually means. And I am not a native speaker.