Thread by @WallsOther

1) Yesterday Chris Bray had a terrific piece on the paradox of blue cities/states still existing, yet constantly collapsing.

2)

3) It comes down to this: most of these states (NY, CA, IL) are big with large populations and long established economies.chrisbray.substack.com/p/what-blue-zo…

4) They don't just collapse as an out-of-style Las Vegas casino implodes. Rather, think of it like a slow spreading cancer.

5) As he points out, people move from the inner cities. Yep. We've seen that. But then they go to liberal enclave suburbs & those begin to decay.

6) He gave an example of a burb close to Groomer City (SF) that saw its fire dept cut by more than half. A single house fire didn't see a fire truck for 14 minutes, by which time it had spread to three more houses. The police forces in many of these burbs have dropped by half.

7) So, eventually those people move to still another burb and metastacize it.

8) Millions, however, have been slowly locked into place by high mortgage payments and fear they can't find a job elsewhere. Slowly they become captives in their own little (now unsafe) enclaves.

9) Needless to say, the public school element of all this is in more obvious collapse. Here in Chandler, AZ, a 250,000 burb of Phoenix, the school district estimated it would be down by 800 students next fall.

Try 1400.

10) Homeschool, charters, privates are soaring.

11) You are also seeing these burbs increasingly spend normal budget money for things other than what it was meant, thereby requiring constant new bond issues to fix potholes.

12) In other words, don't expect to see the equivalent of one of those glaciers breaking off and falling into the sea. Rather, it's more like a slow sinkhole.

13) When people say "enough" and rise up? I have no idea. Years of propaganda and numbing have had an effect.