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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

So Flint has failed to govern itself - hardly the first time - and now children are poisoned. The city apparently now expects the rest of the country to pick up the tab for the cleanup of their mess.

At some point it should become necessary to recognize and acknowledge that self-government has failed and must end. I'd suggest some form of a city death penalty - declare the city dead and give the locals a one-time offer of relocation assistance to an approved list of better places. The city government, and anyone who remains, are officially on their own.

We've known Flint (and many similar cities) are doomed for decades. Why do we keep them alive as zombies rather than just help the humans and let the municipalities die?

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The country will pick up the tab for Flint, because that is how the country works. The expectation that Michigan and then the federal government will provide assistance isn't something Flint invented: it's part of the deal.

Not enough money flows to places like Flint. Michigan just barely ekes out a return on dollars remitted to the IRS; they're in the bottom quartile of benecifiaries. Meanwhile, for every $1 a Floridian pays in taxes, they receive $4.50.

The historical reason Michigan is such a low drag on the USG has a lot to do with the businesses Flint enabled.

This is such a straightforward point to make, and so easily Googlable, that I feel like you have to have known it already. Some of your acerbic comments are interesting because they bring a perspective to these discussions that I (for one) wouldn't think to consider. This was not one of those comments.

Yeah, we should build some naval bases in Flint, MI to even things out.

The $1/$4.50 figure isn't due to military spending, for what it's worth.

Being pretty close to $1/$1 seems about the right, though. If a city can't support itself, it can't support itself, right? Why should it be subsidized?

Same goes for Florida, for whatever it's worth.

Because that's how the state/federal financial model works. Some states are a burden (usually poor conservative states), some states pay for more themselves (New York, California, to name the biggest).

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." as it were.

> Some states are a burden (usually poor conservative states)

Yeah, I'm not sure the math is simple enough to say that definitively. People from those states are disproportionately represented in the military, for example, and there's no way to add "deaths in overseas wars" to help balance the books.

There's also a tendency to count infrastructure projects for states as being for those states. But good highways through the Midwest, for example, are also used for shipping goods coast-to-coast. The locals in Podunk, WY certainly wouldn't choose a superhighway as their first infrastructure project if they were handed 10 million dollars.

> Yeah, I'm not sure the math is simple enough to say that definitively.

Its pretty well studied:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_taxation_and_spending_...

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-f...

> People from those states are disproportionately represented in the military, for example, and there's no way to add "deaths in overseas wars" to help balance the books.

Who weren't drafted, and voluntarily went.

> There's also a tendency to count infrastructure projects for states as being for those states. But good highways through the Midwest, for example, are also used for shipping goods coast-to-coast. The locals in Podunk, WY certainly wouldn't choose a superhighway as their first infrastructure project if they were handed 10 million dollars.

Goods can be delivered to New York and California far more efficiently by water than over the continental US. Flyover country influence continues to wane as citizens continue to migrate to major urban cores.

Well, he did say "Why do we keep them alive as zombies rather than just help the humans and let the municipalities die?"

Is it reasonable to simply pick everyone up and move them? That seems at least plausible, though I'd expect the cost to still fall on the Federal government.

Reread what I wrote. I didn't suggest we shouldn't help the humans in Flint. I suggested we should do so in a way that solves the problem for the humans once and for all.

The comparison to Florida is silly. Florida gets a lot of money that a) is for the national good (naval bases) and b) follows humans around (SS/medicare). The fact that humans work in NY and retire to Florida doesn't mean that we somehow owe Flint an infinite stream of subsidies.

I do oppose the variety of unfair subsidies that Florida does get, e.g. bailouts after hurricanes predictably destroy cheaply made houses.

No, once again, Florida's figure does not come from military spending.

I don't know where you are getting the data. Google suggests to me that Florida gets $2.02 per dollar invested.

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...

In any case, the specific source of federal largess to Florida is not relevant to my main point. Namely, help the humans rather than the municipality.

In much the same way, if it were a for-profit corporation that was failing horribly, I'd suggest giving the former human workers limited assistance designed to get them back into the workforce and letting the corporation die. That would be true even if other corporations get corporate welfare (which I also oppose).

Since you seem to favor the municipality over the humans, one might ask why?

To avoid status quo bias, lets ask why we shouldn't shift other programs to favor municipalities over humans, e.g. social security goes to the state where work was performed rather than the individual human who did the work?

Don't forget that it was a State-appointed emergency manager that made the water source switch (from Detroit's supply to the Flint River), and the State DEQ that didn't enforce the correct Federal EPA guidelines for water corrosiveness. It's true that Flint has been mismanaged at the local level, but the State has fouled things up pretty well too.

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/10/top_state_...

[edit to add link]

> So Flint has failed to govern itself - hardly the first time - and now children are poisoned.

To be fair, The State of Michigan took complete control of Flint (through the "Emergency Manager" law). The State of Michigan made the decision to poison Flint's water, not Flint itself.

The infrastructure for solid factory work is all still there. They just need a collection of companies from another industry to capitalize on the manufacturing assets there.

What makes this area so good for manufacturing? (I've never been and I'm curious)

There's no environmental protections or regulations of any meaningful kind, property is almost free, and there's a significant labor force of people willing to work for minimum wages.

It's not great for manufacturing. But it's not the worst place to do so.

>There's no environmental protections or regulations of any meaningful kind,

So it's either "have no money and get poisoned by lead in the water pipes" or "have money and get poisoned by the pollution of the factories?"

I agree completely. I don't defend it in any way -- it's terrible.

But that's what most people mean/imply when they say Flint is "set up for manufacturing".

I didn't mean to imply you defended it. Sorry that I wasn't clear enough.

It's false that Michigan lacks environmental protections. It isn't as strict as California, but the question of where to house factories isn't between California and Michigan; it's between places like Michigan and places like Vietnam and Thailand.

There is a lowest common denominator of environmental protection in the US that is higher than most of the other places manufacturers would consider new plants.

Curious, what are things you think are good for manufacturing? As proximity to the cheapest mode of transporting raw materials, access to raw materials and sources of energy don't seem to be on your list.

Historically, some of the big reasons were access to coal and iron mining (for steel making) and access to the Great Lakes for shipping heavy goods and materials.

As I understand it those industries are drying up pretty badly. (I live in Wisconsin so I hear stuff about Michigan pretty regularly)

Is there any other conclusion to these areas where ignorance is a badge of honor? Once you cross that line where you start rewarding people for standing up to "the man" no matter how reasonable and logical said man's actions are, you're already locked into the road to ruin. I don't see how you recover from it.

What are some of the other doomed cities you're talking about? And with what metrics?

I don't disagree with you that there are troubled towns and cities but it seems really difficult to decide when it's beyond salvage or even what that means.

This was done because of the Republican willingness to let this happen. The children are the victims. Gov. Snyder (R) let this continue because Flint is Democratic.

Even now the state is only offering:

"has also offered more than $10 million in financial assistance to pay for a temporary switch into the Detroit system while the connection to Lake Huron is being prepared."

Questions:

1. Why did the state even let this happen?

2. Why is the state only offering "financial aid" when it be paying for the switch - since the state failed Flint when it permitted the use of Flint River water in the first place?

3. Why did the citizens have to protest at all? Why wasn't the state proactively step in?

4. Why isn't the state providing emergency water supplies immediately?

These are Republican "values" at work.

"The City of Flint will also continually test the water being provided to residents."

http://wfnt.com/flint-officially-begins-using-flint-river-wa...

Multiple state and local departments approved of the quality. You might as well ask: why did Democrats and Obama let this happen?

No. Obama is not responsible for every bad thing that happens.

I would rather ask why right-to-lifers let this happen.

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