“…how to improve human capital”
We have heard the knashing of Progressive teeth with their usual wails: We must spend more money to fix Baltimore”! The epitome of the Progressive / Socialist mantra – we must take more from those that have to give to those that have-not. After all, these poor oppressed people are oppressed by everyone else – thus, we will force everyone else to care.
$130 million was spent – a first tranche. Yet, what grabbed me was at the end – a few snippets to set it up first (emphasis mine, reformatted):
…The effort to revive Sandtown was massive. More than 1,000 homes were eventually renovated or built. Schools were bolstered. Education and health services were launched. But there were many obstacles along the way, according to Enterprise’s report. Some residents complained that the vision was too grand to execute. Others involved said the city’s bureaucracy stifled innovation.
The most significant problem, according to community organizers and the Enterprise report, was that new businesses and jobs never materialized. And as Baltimore’s decent-paying manufacturing jobs vanished — a problem shared by Detroit, Cleveland and other Rust Belt cities — there were fewer and fewer opportunities for Sandtown residents to find meaningful work.
Lesson 1 – just because you build infrastructure, there is no guarantee “they will come”
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