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Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

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Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#61

Post by auctiontheory »

[deleted] wrote: post #59
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #57

If I were the king, I would fix Camden (and dozens of other grim urban districts around the country such as Detroit, north St. Louis, etc.) with the following plan: 1. Legalize drugs. Allow local municipalities to regulate and tax recreational substances. Boom. You have an instant local revenue stream, the police are suddenly out of the business of arresting people for "possession", and can focus more on violent crim…

[deleted]

IF you get good teachers, etc. to live in your technocratic war zone, their high salaries jack up the cost of living

I've never heard of the cost of living anywhere going up because of an influx of highly-paid K-12 teachers.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#62

Post by grecy »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #57

If I were the king, I would fix Camden (and dozens of other grim urban districts around the country such as Detroit, north St. Louis, etc.) with the following plan: 1. Legalize drugs. Allow local municipalities to regulate and tax recreational substances. Boom. You have an instant local revenue stream, the police are suddenly out of the business of arresting people for "possession", and can focus more on violent crim…

> If I were the king, I would fix

I've always thought the troops should be brought home and all those trillions spent on infrastructure and community projects within America.

Unfortunately, it's more important to spend trillions on other countries than on America and Americans.

"If Americans knew what Swedes receive for their taxes, we would probably riot."

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?artic...

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#63

Post by yummyfajitas »

trailcable wrote: post #54
yummyfajitas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article Christie was unable to take over the schools in Camden, and took over the police force in 2013. Blaming him for not fixing the problems of Camden in less than a year is a little silly. Complaining that NJ didn't force Hoboken to subsidize Newark is silly - San Fransisco and Toronto didn't subsidize Camden either, but I don't see you blaming them.

I put in another comment. There is no Camden police force. It is now Camden County which encompasses a lot more than just the city. Camden schools were taken over. http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/13/06/05/camden-schools-t... Not sure what you're talking about.

My mistake, the original article suggested Christie could not take control:

But a big reason that Christie hit Camden's police unions so hard was simply that he could. He'd wanted to go after New Jersey urban schools...But a series of state Supreme Court rulings...

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#64

Post by djs123sdj »

mynewwork wrote: post #46
Raphmedia wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't upvote it if you don't want to see it. That's all. That's how it works.

That's also how reddit works, and in 6 years it's gone from technology, programming and world news to memes and cat pictures. When anyone can create an account and start voting, both moderation and reminders from existing users about appropriate content are needed to prevent or slow the move from specialized articles to general interest timewasters. It happened to digg and reddit, I'm perfectly happy with people voic…

Per your statement, how does this article cluster any less with "technology & programming" than the "world news" category you mentioned?

There have long been articles dealing with sociological and economic realities of our time on HN.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#65

Post by invalidOrTaken »

bluedino wrote: post #23

>> The police force alone in Camden costs more than $65 million a year. I'd be curious as to how much of that $65,000,000 goes towards funding things like pensions and healthcare for retired workers. All of the new cops are starting without pensions in most municipalities (at least the ones that are low on money) and a huge part of their budget is paying for long-retired cops.

I'd like to play devil's advocate for a bit: are we ignoring the value of credibility with cops? Cut off benefits previously promised, and you find potential workers no longer trust you.

This really is devil's advocate, because I think pensions are outdated and shouldn't be offered to new workers. But part of the bargain with the civil service has been, basically, lifetime employment + retirement. There are costs to backing out on that.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#66

Post by [deleted] »

bluedino wrote: post #21
rayiner wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rust belt was news and new and insightful in 1970 or so As someone living in a city gutted by de-industrialization and the drug trade (Wilmington, DE), I think it's news that 40 years later, these places are still in poor shape. The usual response to concerns about technology or globalization putting people out of work is that it just frees them up to work on something better and more useful. "New jobs will rep…

>> Fully a quarter of the U.S. population lives in the metro areas of just six cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, San Jose/San Francisco, and Boston. Chicago and Los Angeles are safe if you live in a upper-middle class white neighborhood. Chicago is the most dangerous large city in the US.

[deleted]

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#67

Post by rayiner »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #57

If I were the king, I would fix Camden (and dozens of other grim urban districts around the country such as Detroit, north St. Louis, etc.) with the following plan: 1. Legalize drugs. Allow local municipalities to regulate and tax recreational substances. Boom. You have an instant local revenue stream, the police are suddenly out of the business of arresting people for "possession", and can focus more on violent crim…

I'm not sure about the impact of drug legalization on the local economies of these areas. Right now, the drug trade is actually one of the few sources of remunerative work available for unskilled people in these cities. You mention police arresting people for "possession" but the fact is that they have little time for that around here. There's enough dealers and traffickers to keep them busy. You think all those guys are going to go straight when drugs are legalized? I think legalization would help, don't get me wrong, but I think the positive impact would be a lot less than many opponents of the drug war would like to believe.

These areas are already very cheap to build in. Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey practically give away abandoned industrial sites hoping to find companies to take them over. Getting rid of regulations can be iffy. After all, the outputs of polluting activities in Camden flow down the Delaware River to a whole bunch of other people.

Fixing education in these communities is intractable. You can't teach kids in a community where gang leaders have more authority than parents. You have to fix the community before you can make a dent in the education problem.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#68

Post by mindslight »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #57

If I were the king, I would fix Camden (and dozens of other grim urban districts around the country such as Detroit, north St. Louis, etc.) with the following plan: 1. Legalize drugs. Allow local municipalities to regulate and tax recreational substances. Boom. You have an instant local revenue stream, the police are suddenly out of the business of arresting people for "possession", and can focus more on violent crim…

Drugs are the entire basis of their dysfunctional economy. The resources that drive the aggressiveness are supplied by the extremely profitable drug trade. Most people don't want or respect the cops because they benefit from the autonomous zone, and so would rather support their non-state-sanctioned force monopoly. Stop persecuting drugs and we're left with a city that's just poor and would appreciate the official police for providing net safety instead of the current chaos. Only then can the poverty itself be addressed.

(As an aside, can we stop with this "regulate and tax" boot-kissing of politicians? We all know that's how they stick their grubby fingers into everything and ruin it; there's no need to encourage it)

Also, while this article focuses on the progress being made by the police, if you switch your perspective and imagine yourself living there, it pretty much sounds like the beginnings of a standard sci-fi dystopia.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#69

Post by ReadyCollective »

auctiontheory wrote: post #61
[deleted] wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

IF you get good teachers, etc. to live in your technocratic war zone, their high salaries jack up the cost of living I've never heard of the cost of living anywhere going up because of an influx of highly-paid K-12 teachers.

You pay for those teachers typically with property tax revenues. Their pay goes up; your taxes go up. At least, that's how it works in many locales.

Re: Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town

#70

Post by r00fus »

grecy wrote: post #62
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #57

If I were the king, I would fix Camden (and dozens of other grim urban districts around the country such as Detroit, north St. Louis, etc.) with the following plan: 1. Legalize drugs. Allow local municipalities to regulate and tax recreational substances. Boom. You have an instant local revenue stream, the police are suddenly out of the business of arresting people for "possession", and can focus more on violent crim…

> If I were the king, I would fix I've always thought the troops should be brought home and all those trillions spent on infrastructure and community projects within America. Unfortunately, it's more important to spend trillions on other countries than on America and Americans. "If Americans knew what Swedes receive for their taxes, we would probably riot." http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?artic…

> Unfortunately, it's more important to spend trillions on other countries than on America and Americans

Clarification (I agree with your gist), that money gets funneled through the military industrial complex back into "construction companies" (i.e., haliburton), security companies (i.e., Blackwater/XE) and various other US-based corporate socialism babies.

Very little of foreign development money is actually seen by the countries we "occupy" or "assist". Please see Confessions of an economic hit man for more details:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_...

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