{"id":67636,"date":"2024-04-26T18:51:28","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T23:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67636"},"modified":"2024-04-26T18:51:28","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T23:51:28","slug":"the-ghetto-ization-of-american-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67636","title":{"rendered":"The Ghetto-ization of American Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-header\">\n<h3 class=\"post-title unpublished\"><a href=\"https:\/\/charleshughsmith.substack.com\/p\/the-ghetto-ization-of-american-life\">The Ghetto-ization of American Life<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"subtitle\"><strong>Behind the facade of normalization, even high-income lifestyles have been ghetto-ized.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"\">\n<div class=\"available-content\">\n<div class=\"body markup\" dir=\"auto\">\n<p>Consider the defining characteristics of a ghetto:<\/p>\n<p>1. The residents can&#8217;t afford to live elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>2. Everything is a rip-off because options are limited and retailers \/ service providers know residents have no other choice or must go to extraordinary effort to get better quality or a lower price.<\/p>\n<p>3. Nothing works correctly or efficiently. Things break down and aren&#8217;t fixed properly. Maintenance is poor to non-existent. Any service requires standing in line or being on hold.<\/p>\n<p>4. Local governance is corrupt and\/or incompetent. Residents are viewed as a reliable &#8220;vote farm&#8221; for the incumbents, even though whatever little they accomplish for the residents doesn&#8217;t reduce the sources of immiseration.<\/p>\n<p>5. The locale is unsafe. Cars are routinely broken into, there are security bars over windows and gates to entrances, everything not chained down is stolen&#8211;and even what is chained down is stolen.<\/p>\n<p>6. There are few viable businesses and numerous empty storefronts.<\/p>\n<p>7. The built environment is ugly: strip malls, used car lots, etc. There are few safe public spaces or parks that are well maintained and inviting.<\/p>\n<p>8. Most of the commerce is corporate-owned outlets; the money doesn&#8217;t stay in the community.<\/p>\n<p>9. Public transport is minimal and constantly being degraded.<\/p>\n<p>10.\u00a0<em>They get you coming and going<\/em>: whatever is available is double in cost, effort and time. Very little is convenient or easy. Services are far away.<\/p>\n<p>11. Residents pay high rates of interest on debt.<\/p>\n<p>12. There are few sources of healthy real food. The residents are unhealthy and self-medicate with a panoply of addictions to alcohol, meds, painkillers, gambling, social media, gaming, celebrity worship, etc.<\/p>\n<p>13. Nobody in authority really cares what the residents experience, as they know the residents are atomized and ground down, incapable of cooperating in an organized fashion, and therefore powerless.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ghetto-ization of American Life Behind the facade of normalization, even high-income lifestyles have been ghetto-ized. Consider the defining characteristics of a ghetto: 1. The residents can&#8217;t afford to live elsewhere. 2. Everything is a rip-off because options are limited and retailers \/ service providers know residents have no other choice or must go to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24078,34386,587,827,834],"class_list":["post-67636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-charles-hugh-smith-2","tag-ghetto-ization","tag-of-two-minds","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67637,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67636\/revisions\/67637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}