| >Why should we sympathize with a minority of rent-seekers? I don't really think this is about sympathizing with rent-seekers. Cities invest in infrastructure to cover anticipated service delivery well before it's due, and the financing for doing so is a multi-decade affair. Before you complain, this includes things like providing running water, roads that are paved, etc. Really core essential pieces of making a city work. If your tax base moves to suburbs or just plain leaves the city, the city is still on the hook for those payments, so it results in dramatically cut services or increased taxes on residents. The flight of some of the tax base incentivizes the flight of many, resulting in further cuts to maintenance contracts, preventative work, and the general crumbling of infrastructure. Sometimes this can be gracefully managed by planned downsizing and renegotiating deals with vendors and financiers. In other cases, this doesn't occur and the city simply... dies. While the US is very young and doesn't have many large examples of this, Flint and Detroit come to mind. |
You mean “most of the rust belt”