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#Cities might not bounce back and other commentary

#Cities might not bounce back and other commentary

August 11, 2020 | 7:23pm

Urban beat: Cities Might Not Bounce Back

Major centers such as New York, San Francisco and Seattle — which have “lost a larger percentage of jobs” and seen “wealthy people fleeing” because of the lockdowns and disorder — can’t be complacent about that “exodus,” advises Bloomberg Opinion’s Noah Smith: “Cities don’t always grow.” New York lost population from 1950 to 1980, and many big cities saw “particularly rapid outflow” in the 1970s. Might it happen again? “Production, consumption and public goods” in cities were all “under threat” even pre-pandemic, with “politically powerful homeowners” limiting “the amount of housing and transit that can be built,” leading to higher prices and “dysfunctional transportation systems.” Remote interaction has allowed online services such as Zoom to replace offices and let people connect with others “without meeting in physical space.” If cities don’t “shore up their weaknesses” now, they may “find themselves facing an evaporation of their tax bases.”

From the left: Why Is Biden Insulting Blacks?

Democrats “drastically” need black voters to win the presidency in ­November — but “every other statement” Joe Biden makes about black people is “outright racist, if you’re being honest,” Benjamin Dixon declares at The Guardian. A Biden victory is “by no means a shoo-in,” and he needs “the votes of black people who, quite frankly, do not like him.” So why does he keep making statements such as his recent claim Latinos have more “diverse” attitudes than blacks? He “seems to think a mythical ‘special relationship’ with the black community allows him to get away with offensive comments” — but they only make President Trump’s re-election more likely.

Econ watch: Andrew Cuomo, Supply-Sider?

Gov. Cuomo’s response to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “demand” for a billionaires’ tax sounded “downright Republican,” marvels The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn. Disagreeing with his fellow Democrat, the governor claimed he has “personally been begging” the wealthy to “move back to the city,” even offering to cook for them. He hasn’t really converted to supply-side economics, though: He just knows “New York revenues would take a big hit if even just a handful” of billionaires left. In fact, the pandemic has “exposed how vulnerable overtaxed states and cities are” when the wealthy reconsider paying “more for the high value” of living in them. If Cuomo wants to persuade billionaires to stay put, “he’ll have to offer them more than a home-cooked dinner.”

History desk: Bernard Bailyn’s Revolution

“The death of Bernard Bailyn represents the passing of a cohort of scholars,” laments National Review’s Richard Brookhiser, “who revolutionized the teaching of the American Founding in the 1950s and ’60s.” They took “the ideas of the revolutionary generation seriously, overthrowing the previous paradigm of progressive historians who saw American patriots as motivated by their investments and their balance sheets.” The title of Bailyn’s 1968 masterpiece, “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” “says it all: Men think, and sometimes they follow where their thoughts lead.” He “and his peers kept this quadrant of history safe from the storms of theory that battered the other humanities” in the decades to follow. With their departure, “it looks as if popular interest in the Founding must protect it from the newest wave of leftist disdain.”

Libertarian: Teacher Unions Protect a Monopoly

The Los Angeles teachers’ union is “exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to prevent competition from charter schools, which are seeing a surge of new applicants,” reports Reason’s Zach Weissmueller. The school district announced “its public schools wouldn’t be reopening for in-person instruction in the fall,” leading “desperate parents” to reach out to charters. United Teachers Los Angeles, though, wants “a moratorium on all new charter schools and private voucher programs” — and may get it, thanks to a recent “union-backed” law. And the California Teachers Association successfully lobbied the state to freeze school budgets recently, preventing charters from receiving additional funding, despite surging enrollment. The silver lining: Families are realizing the district has “no good reason to fund the system” rather than spending on students directly.

— Compiled by Karl Salzmann & Kelly Jane Torrance

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