Tag Archives: Detroit

Ferries make more sense than fast new trains.

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Per pound mile of material, the transport cost by ship is 1/4 as much as by train, and about 1/8 as much as by truck. Ships are slower, it is true, but they can go where trucks and trains can not. They cross rivers and lakes at ease and can haul weighty freight with ease. I think America could use many more ferries, particularly drive-on, fast ferries. I don’t think we need new fast rail lines, because air travel will always be faster and cheaper. The Biden administration thinks otherwise, and spends accordingly.

Amtrak gets $30 Billion for train infrastructure this year, basically nothing for ferries.

The Biden administration’s infrastructure bill, $1.2 Trillion dollars total, provides $30 Billion this year for new train lines, but includes less than 1% as much for ferries, $220 million, plus $1B for air travel. I think it’s a scandal. The new, fast train lines are shown on the map, above. Among them is a speed upgrade to the “Empire Builder” train running between Chicago and Seattle by way of Milwaukee. I don’t think this will pay off — the few people who take this train, takes it for the scenery, I think, and for the experience, not to get somewhere fast.

There is money for a new line between Cleveland and Detroit, and for completion of the long-delayed, and cost-over-run prone line between LA and San Francisco. Assuming these are built, I expect even lower ridership since the scenery isn’t that great. Even assuming no delays (and there are always delays), 110 mph is vastly slower than flying, and typically more expensive and inconvenient. Driving is yet slower, but when you drive, you arrive with your car. With a train or plane, you need car rental, typically.

New Acela train, 150 mph max. 1/4 as fast as flying at the same price.

Drive-on ferries provide a unique advantage in that you get there with your car, often much faster than you would with by driving or by train. Consider Muskegon to Milwaukee (across the lake), or Muskegon to Chicago to Milwaukee, (along the lake). Cleveland to Canada, or Detroit to Cleveland. No land would have to be purchased and no new track would have to be laid and maintained. You’d arrive, rested and fed (they typically sell food on a ferry), with your car.

There’s a wonderful song, “City of New Orleans”, sung here by Arlo Guthrie describing a ride on the historic train of that name on a trip from Chicago to New Orleans, 934 miles in about one day. Including stops but not including delays, the average speed is 48 mph, and there are always delays. On board are, according to the song, “15 restless riders, 3 conductors, and 25 sacks of mail.” The ticket price currently is $200, one way, or about as much as a plane ticket. The line loses money. I’ve argued, here, for more mail use to hep make this profitable, but the trip isn’t that attractive as a way to get somewhere, it’s more of a land-cruise. The line is scheduled for an upgrade this year, but even if upgraded to 100 mph (14 hours to New Orleans including stops?) it’s still going to be far slower than air travel, and likely more expensive, and you still have to park your car before you get on, and then rent another when you get off. And will riders like it more? I doubt it, and doubt the speed upgrade will be to 100 mph.

Lake Express, 30 mph across Lake Michigan

Ferry travel tends to cost less than train or plane travel because water traffic is high volume per trip with few conductors per passenger. At present, there are only two ferryboats traveling across Lake Michigan, between Michigan and Wisconsin, Milwaulkee to Muskegon. They are privately owned, and presumably make money. The faster is the Lake Express, 30 mph. It crosses the lake in 2.5 hours. Passenger tickets cost $52 one way, or $118 for passenger and car. That’s less than the price of an Amtrak ticket or a flight. I think a third boat would make sense and that more lines would be welcome too. Perhaps Grand Haven to Racine or Chicago.

Route of the Lake Express. I’d like to see more like this; St. Joseph to Milwaukee say, and along Lake Erie.

Currently, there are no ferries across Lake Erie. Nor are there any along Lake Erie, or even across Lake St. Clair, or along the Detroit River, Detroit to Toledo or Toledo to Cleveland. These lines would need dock facilities, but they would have ridership, I think. New York’s Staten Island ferry has good ridership, 35,000 riders on a typical day, plus cars and trucks. In charge are roughly 120 engineers, captains and mates, one employee for every 300 passengers or so. By comparison, Amtrak runs 300 trains that carry a total of 87,000 passengers on an average day, mostly on the east coast. These 300 trains are run by 17,100 employees as of fiscal year 2021, one employee for every 4 passengers. Even at the slow speeds of our trains the cost is far higher per passenger and per passenger mile.

The Staten Island ferry is slow, 18.5 mph, but folks don’t seem to mind. The trip takes 20 minutes, about half as long as most people’s trips on Amtrak. There are also private ferry lines in NY, many of these on longer trips. People would take ferries for day-long trips along our rivers, I think. Fast ferries would be nice, 40 mph or more, but I think even slow ferries would have ridership and would make money. A sea cruise is better than a land cruise, especially if you can have a cabin. On the coal-steam powered, Badger, you can rent a state-room to spend the night in comfort. Truckers seem to like that they cover ground during their mandatory rest hours. The advantage is maximized, I think, for ferry trips that take 12 hours or so, 250 to 350 miles. That’s Pittsburgh to Cincinnatti or Chicago to Memphis.

New York’s Staten Island ferry leaves every 15 minutes during rush hour. Three different sizes of boat are used. The largest carry over 5000 passengers and 100 cars and trucks at a crossing.

A low risk way to promote ferry traffic between the US and Canada would be to negotiate bilateral exemption to The Jones Act and its Canadian equivalent. Currently, we allow only US ships with US crews for US travel within the US.* Cabotage it’s called, and it applies to planes as well, with exemptions. Canada has similar laws and exemptions. A sensible agreement would allow in-country and cross-country travel on both Canadian and US ships, with Canadian and/or US crew. In one stoke, ridership would double, and many lines would be profitable.

Politicians of a certain stripe support trains because they look futuristic and allow money to go to friends. Europeans brag of their fast trains, but they all lose money, and Europe had to ban many short hop flights to help their trains compete. Without this, Europeans would fly. There is room to help a friend with a new ferry, but not as much as when you buy land and lay track. We could try to lead in fancy ferries going 40 mph or faster, providing good docks, and some insurance. Investors would take little risk since a ferry route can be moved**. Don’t try that with a train.

In Detroit we have a close up of train mismanagement involving the “People Mover.” It has no ridership to speak of. Our politicians then added “The Q line” to connect to it. People avoid both lines. I think people would use a ferry along the Detroit river, though, St. Claire to Wyandotte, Detroit, Toledo — and to Cleveland or Buffalo. Our lakes and rivers are near-empty superhighways. Let’s use them.

Robert Buxbaum, January 2, 2024. *The US air cabotage act (49 U.S.C. 41703) prohibits the transportation of persons, property, or mail for compensation or hire between points of the U.S. in a foreign civil aircraft. We’ve managed exemptions, though, e.g. for US air traffic with Airbus and Embraer planes. We can do the same with ferries.

** I notice that it was New York’s ferries, and their captains, that rescued the people on Sullenberger’s plane when it went down in the Hudson River — added Jan. 6.

Two French generals who fought each other in 19 duels over 30 years, and the purpose of creation

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Humans are funny little creatures. I suspect that God keeps us around for our entertainment value. Each culture provides God its own entertainment. The British by invading basically every country on earth wearing tall, furry hats. We Americans provide grand stunts, like landing on the moon, or an automobile race around the world in 1908 when there were no roads or gas stations. And the French took love, dining, and dueling to a high, almost comic level. In France, the great and near great dueled well into the 20th century. The great French mathematician, Galois dueled to the death over love or politics. The great rationalist philosopher, Descartes, fought a duel, disarmed his opponent, and forgave him because of love. The science fiction writing philosopher, Cyrano de Bergerac, was famous for many duels, typically over the insults in his writing (or his nose).

In France, the great and near-great dueled well into the 20th century.

Instead of writing about those fellows, this post is about two Napoleonic generals, Pierre Dupont de l’Étang and François Fournier-Sarlovèze, who fought 30 duels with each other over 19 years writing a contract to kill each other whenever possible. They didn’t start as generals, of course, but rose through the ranks, though dueling was illegal, in theory, most of the time. They dueled on foot and horseback, mostly with swords, but also with pistols, and managed to wound each other at every meeting. They never quite managed to kill one another, or settle things, but they kept going at it till they became friends, of a sort. They were not that bad dualists, Fournier was a crack shot with a pistol and had killed others in duels. DuPont was better with the sword, but both were good at dodging death by blocking their vital organs.

The antaganism started with a duel, as one might expect. Fournier, a lieutenant at the time, had just killed a popular Strasbourg townsman named Blumm in a pistol duel. The townsman had no experience with pistols so this was sort-of murder, and resented. There was to be a party that evening, and Fournier’s commanding officer sent captain DuPont with a message to Fournier to keep him away until tempers subsided. Fournier attempted to attend anyway, and felt insulted by DuPont’s efforts to keep him out. Fournier challenged DuPont, and DuPont accepted, choosing military swords. Fournier would have challenged the commanding officer, but one does challenge so far above one’s station in France.

They met the next day at dawn. DuPont won the first duel, injuring Fournier by a severe cut to the shoulder. At this point, first blood, most American dualists would have called it quits, and might have become friends. In the duel between Thomas Hart Benton and Andrew Jackson, Benton put two bullets into Jackson but didn’t kill them, and they went on to become friends, and colleagues in congress. But for these two, one deadly meeting was not enough. They decided to duel again as soon as Fournier recovered. That took a month. Fournier rechallenged, they fought again with military swords. This time DuPont was injured. At the next duel, both were injured. Again and again, whenever they met, with swords, cutlases, lances, rapiers, and at last with pistols.

Fournier (left) and DuPont (right). Fournier fought for Napoleon in the Spanish and Russian campaigns, and went on to help write the military code of conduct. DuPont fought in the Austrian, Dutch, and Spanish campaigns, eventually becoming Minister of War for Louis XVIII and deputy of the Charente “The Dualsts” film was shot in and around Fournier’s home town. The painting at left hangs in city hall.

They drew up a contract that they would try to kill each other whenever they were 30 leagues from each other (90 miles) and not otherwise occupied with a war. The duels would pause whenever one of them was promoted since one didn’t duel with someone of higher rank. The two proved to be excellent officers and advanced at a good rate, with occasional stops in prison because of the political turmoil of the time, but not because of their dueling. Fournier went to jail for financial mismanagement and for insulting Napoleon after the Russian Campaign, DuPont went to jail too, for losing to the Spanish, and later for supporting the Royalists. They were released because the army always needs good officers who are brave and successful (Read about their lives on Wikipedia, or here).

Sometimes they would meet by accident and try to kill each other in bars, restaurants, and hotels. Mostly they would meet by arrangement at appointed times in the woods, sharing a hearty meal and good insults before dueling. Sometimes they chatted with each other through the duels. They appreciated each others skill and complimented each other on promotions, especially when it allowed them to try to kill one another (there is a comic movie like this — Mr and Mrs Smith?). During one encounter, DuPont stuck Fournier to the wall through the neck with his sword, and Fournier requested that he move closer so they could continue fighting this way. Now that’s dedication.

Eventually, DuPont got engaged and they decided to fight to the death, hunting each other in a woods with pistols (two each). As it happened, DuPont disarmed Fournier, and forced him to agree to fight no more. It was a happy ending suitable to a movie. Actually, a movie made about them, “The Dualists, 1967.” DuPont became minister for War for Louis XVIII (released for being too royalist), and wrote poetry including “the art of war”. Fournier helped write the French code of military conduct.

Dueling didn’t stop here, but continued in France well into the 20th century. The last dual between members of the government was in 1967, see photo below. René Ribière, Gaullist speaker of the National Assembly fought Gaston Differe, Mayor of Marseilles and Socialist candidate for the French presidency. They used epees, long, sharp swords. Differe wounded Ribiére twice, both times in the arm, and Jean de Lipkowskiin called an end to the duel “. Several French duels of the 20th century, are caught on film.

Le député maire socialiste de Marseille et bon escrimeur Gaston Defferre (C) et le député gaulliste du Val d’Oise René Ribière s’affrontent en duel le 21 avril 1967 dans le jardin d’une maison de Neuilly sous le regard d’un des témoins M. Cassagne (de dos). René Ribière avait demandé réparation par les armes à la suite d’un différend survenu à l’Assemblé nationale au cours duquel Defferre l’ayant traité d'”abruti” avait refusé de lui présenter des excuses. / AFP PHOTO

The point of this essay, assuming there is one, is the love of God for us. A less loving God would have had the comedy of the generals end after only two or three duals, or after one killed the other. Here, He allowed them to fight till friendship prevailed. Also of note is that that French are not surrender monkeys, as some claim. They are masters of honor and history, and we love them.

Robert E. Buxbaum, December 28, 2022. In the US, dueling is more like gang warfare, I include here pirates like William Kidd and John Lafitte, the Hamilton-Burr duel with trick pistols, the western shootouts of Jim Bowie, Wyatt Earp, etc., the Chicago rivalries of the 1930s and the drug wars of Detroit. At present, Detroit has four shootings per day, but only one death per day. The movie “8 Mile” includes fights, shooting, and several rap duels, fought with deadly words. If you won’t fight for something, there is a sense that it isn’t worth much.

A high minimum wage killed Detroit, perhaps Seattle and NYC too.

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In July, eitght years ago, Detroit filed for bankruptcy protection. The US was well into an economic expansion, but the expansion had largely bypassed Detroit. The Detroit area unemployment rate was 9.7%, and the Detroit city rate was 17%, among the highest in the nation. Tax income was not sufficient to pay retirement or current employees. The city was riven by corruption and crime, and attendance in school was dismal, less that 25% in some districts, about 55% as an overall average. Kids no longer saw a value in education. After bankruptcy, things started to improve dramatically.

Detroit area unemployment rate, 2005 to 2021.

The largest cause of the problem, and of the solution, in my opinion, was a high Detroit minimum wage that applied before bankruptcy and that was voided by bankruptcy. It was called a “living wage”. In 2013 it was $16/ hour and applied to any business that dealt with the city and did not offer health insurance (see more on the specifics here).The stated purpose was to insure that all workers could support a family of four in some middle-class standard, by one wage-earner working 40 hours per week. It was a view of Detroit family life and economic need that didn’t match Detroit reality. In practice most of Detroit were not 4 person, one wage-earner households. It meant that most Detroiters could not find jobs, since most companies worked in some way with the city. The only workers who could find jobs were those with special skills or political connections. The alternative was criminal business including drug sales, prostitution and burglary. The unemployment rate was 70% among Detroit’s teenagers.

The high minimum wage bought loyalty for Detroit’s political bosses; they gave out jobs for kickbacks, and some went to jail, including the mayor. Most Detroiters could not find jobs, though, and this especially hurt those looking for their first job: the job that would demonstrate that math and spelling were important; that you had to show up on time, dressed clean, and that you were not to insult the customers. High unemployment meant low tax revenue, made worse by high city employment costs for basic services: janitors, secretaries, and mail room personnel. The city was a mess.

When Detroit went bankrupt, among the first changes was to eliminate the $!6/hour living wage for employees and others doing business with the city. This helped bring the city budget into balance, and it brought in residents, businesses, and developers. By January 2020 Detroit’s unemployment rate had fallen to 6%, and Detroit metro unemployment had fallen to 4.2%, the lowest rates on record. Employment gives a motivation to stay in Detroit and to stay in school: there are jobs to be had for those who could add and spell. I covered these improvements here.

Seattle are unemployment rate 2015 to 2021. Seattle’s unemployment rate is now higher than Detroit’s.

Meanwhile, Seattle voted to raise their minimum wage to $15, with the change law taking effect in stages. The law fully came into effect three months ago, in January, 2021. New York voted for similar changes more recently. It is hard to be sure of the effect of the high minimum wage but already it seems to have hit employment. By the latest data, Seattle’s unemployment rate has risen to 6.9%. That’s higher than in Detroit, a real reversal. While unemployment in New York City has yet to rise much, they have seen a drop in rent rates while Detroit has seen a rise. New York’s are also moving to be more out of balance, something that leads to corruption and bankruptcy. We’ll see how this works out.

Robert Buxbaum, March 25, 2021. Among my first blog posts were complaints about Detroit’s high “living wage”, see here for example. As Puerto Rico slid into bankruptcy, I complained about the same thing.

My two-mode commode.

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Our new, two-mode commode.

We just got a new toilet. Commonly called a commode, and it’s got a cool feature that I’d seen often in Europe but rarely in the US: two levels of flush strength. There is a “small flush” option that delivers, about 3 liters, intended for yellow waste, and a “big flush” option that delivers 6 liters. It’s intended for brown waste, or poop.

The main advantage of two mode flushing, in my opinion, is that the small flush is quieter than the normal. The quality of the flush is quite acceptable, even for brown waste because the elongated shape of the bowl seems better suited to pushing waste to the back, and down the drain. The flush valve is simple too, and I suspect the valve will last longer than the “flapper valve” of my older, one mode commodes. The secondary advantage is from some cost savings on water. That was about 1¢ per small flush in our area of Michigan, but the water department changed how they charge for water in our area and the cost savings have largely disappeared. Even under the old system, the savings in water cost amounted to only about $15 per year. At that rate it would take 15 years or more to pay for the new commode.

There is no real need for water savings in Michigan, and particularly not in our area, metro-Detroit. In other states there often is, but our drinking water comes from the Detroit river, and the cleaned up waste goes back to the river. It’s a cycle with no water lost no matter how much you flush, and no matter how big shower heads. I’d written in favor of allowing big flush toilets and big shower heads in our state, but the Obama administration ruled otherwise. Trump had promised to change that, but was impeached before he could. Even Trump had changed this, Biden has reversed virtually every Trump order related to resource use including those prohibiting China from providing critical technology to our water and power systems. Bottom line, you have to have a low-flush toilet, and you might as well get a two-mode.

Our commode has an elongated front, and I’d recommend that too. It can minimize floor dribbles, and that’s a good thing. The elongated shape also seems to provide a smoother flush path with less splatter. I would not recommend a “power flush” though for several reasons, among them that you get extra splatter and a louder flush noise. We’d bought a power flush some years ago, and in my opinion, it flushed no better than the ordinary toilet. It was very loud, and had a tendency to splatter. There was some slight water savings, but not worth it, IMHO.

Robert Buxbaum, February 8, 2021. I ran for water commissioner with several goals, among them to improve the fairness of billing, to decrease flooding, and to protect our water system from cyber attack.

1500 people shot in Detroit, 4/5 survive; some thoughts.

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There are two remarkable things about shootings in Detroit. One is how many there are. About 1500 Detroiters last year, about 0.2% of the city’s population. The other remarkable tidbit is that only about 1/5 of them died. More specifically, there were 1173 non fatal shootings. There were also 327 criminal homicides, but many shooting deaths in Detroit are non-criminal, as in self-defense, or police interventions, and there are also many criminal homicides that are done with knives or poison. Put this together and it seems that only about 1/5 or those shot, perhaps 327 out of 1500 total. The headline from June 21, 2020 reads: 1 fatal, 11 non-fatal shootings in Detroit overnight. You almost feel like getting these guys marksmanship lessons, but there seems to be more at play.

Even in photography, a fair percentage of shooters miss simple head shots.

The number of shootings are way up this year, and drugs – alcohol is to blame, here and in other cities. People have lost their jobs to COVID and globalization, more in Detroit than in most cities, but the government has offered checks that are used for alcohol and drugs. Most Detroit shootings begin as arguments that turn violent. There is also some gang shooting, enhanced by a bout of prison releases, because of COVID.

Drugs and alcohol help explain the low death rate. It’s hard to shoot straight when you’re drunk or stoned, and hard even if you’re not, as Alexander Hamilton found. In Detroit, many of these hit were hit in non-vital areas (I tell folks to avoid those areas :). But another part of the low death rate is lower caliber bullets. Military caliber bullets were in short supply this year, and as best as I was able to tell, a fair number of shootings were with 22 and 25 instead of the military cartridges, 9mm and bigger that were popular years ago. A 9mm cartridge is shown as the center picture below, between a 22lr and a 45. Big bullets make for big holes and high death rates.

Per capita, the Detroit shooting rate is about 15 times that of New York City. New York saw roughly the same number of shootings as Detroit, 1,531 in a city 15 times bigger, and 462 criminal homicides The cause does not appear economic. but social. When Detroit’s unemployment rate fell, the murder rate did not. Thanks to COVID, Detroit’s unemployment rate is lower than New York’s. My only thought is that the culture is the difference, that the culture in New York is such that arguments do not turn violent as regularly.

Size comparison; 22, 9mm, 45. Big bullets leave big holes.

Stricter gun laws will not help, I think. Michigan’s gun laws make it hard to own pistols with barrels less than 16″ long. The net result is that most crime in the city is done with illegal guns. In general, countries with strict gun laws have more violent crime, not less. I would like to encourage private citizens to choose smaller bullets for self defense though, 22 or 32, and not military grade, 9mm. As a private citizen, you have to bring in the criminal, or storm a building. Your only goal is to get the criminal to stop without harming yourself. A 22 will get the criminal to stop. It will killl too, just less often. A 22 caliber bullet killed Bobby Kennedy, and Reagan was nearly killed with one. A small caliber bullet is less likely to kill you in an accident, or to kill people standing behind the target. This year, some 11 police forces came to a consensus report on use of the minimum of force necessary; read it here. For a private citizen, that’s a 22. Besides, speaking from my own limited experience, I find it easier to aim a small bullet.

Robert Buxbaum, January 10, 2021

Speed traps penalize the poor

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On a street corner about 1/4 mile from my house, at the intersection of the two busiest of the local streets, in the center-median of the street, is parked a police car. He’s there, about 18 hours a day, looking to give out tickets. The cross-street that this officer watches is where drivers get off the highway. In theory, they should instantly go from 65 mph on the highway to 35 mph now. Very few people do. The officer does not ticket every car, by the way, but seems to target those of poor people from outside the city limits. The only time ai was ticketed, I was driving a broken-down car while mine was in the shop. As best I can tell, he choose cars for revenue, not for safety. It’s a speed trap. It’s appalling. And our city isn’t alone in having one.

Speed traps are an annoyance to rich, local folk who sometimes get ticketed, but they’re a disaster for the poor. Poor people are targeted, and these people don’t have any savings. They don’t have the means to pay a suddenly imposed bill of $150 or more. Meanwhile, the speed-trap officer is incentivized to increase revenue and look for other violations: expired registrations or insurance, seat-belt violations, open alcohol, unpaid tickets. Double and triple fines are handed out, and sometimes the car is impounded. A poor driver is often left without any legal way to get to work, to earn money to pay the fines. Police officers behave this way because they are evaluated based on the revenue they generate, based on the number of tickets they write. It’s a horrible situation, especially for the poor

Speed traps to little and cost much.

An article on the effect of speed traps. It appears they do little good and cause much pain, especially to the poor. Here is a link to the whole article.

The article above looks at the impact of speed traps on poor people. The damage is extreme. The folks targeted are often black, barely holding it together financially. They are generally not in a position to pay $150 for “impeding traffic,” and even less in a position to deal with having their car impounded. How are they supposed to pay the bill? And yet they are told they are lucky to have been given this ticket — impeding traffic, a ticket with no “points.” But they are not lucky. They are victims. Tickets with no points is are money generators, and many poor people realize it. If they were to get a speeding ticket, they would have the opportunity to void the penalty by going to traffic school. With a ticket for impeding traffic, there is no school option. Revenue stays local, mostly in that police precinct. Poor people know it, and they don’t like it. I don’t either. After a while, poor people cease to trust the police, or to even speak to them.

In what world should you pay $150 for impeding traffic, by the way? In what world should the police be taken from their main job protecting the people and turned into a revenue arm for the city? I’d like to see this crazy cycle ended. The first steps, I think, are to end speed traps, and to limit the incentive for giving minor tickets, like impeding traffic. As it is we have too many people in jail and too many harsh penalties. 

Robert Buxbaum, April 10, 2019. I ran for water commissioner in 2016, and may run again in 2020.

Detroit 1967 to 2017: unemployment comes down, murder rate doesn’t.

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Almost 50 years ago today, July 23, 1967 white policemen raided an unlicensed, “blind pig” bar in a black neighborhood, the 12th street of Detroit, and the city responded with four days of rioting, 43 killings (33 black, 10 white), 2509 stores looted, and over 1000 fires. In 2017, at last the city is beginning to show signs of recovery. By 2015 the city’s unemployment had gone down from about 20% to 12%, and  in the first six months 2017, the firs six months of the Trump presidency, 2017 it’s gone down again to 7 1/2%. It’s not that 7 1/2% unemployment is good, but it’s better. Per-hour salaries are hardly up, but I take that as better than having a high average salary at very low employment. As a point of reference, the unemployment rate in Detroit in 1967, before the riots was 3.4%. Within weeks, 150,000 jobs were lost, and anyone who could leave the city, did.

Detroit Unemployment rates are way down, but the city still looks like a mess.

Detroit Unemployment rates are way down, but the city still looks like a mess.

Another issue for Detroit is its uncommonly high murder rate. In the mid-80s, Detroit had the highest murder rate in the US, about 55 murders per 100,000 population per year (0.055%/year). As of February 1, 2017, the murder rate was virtually unchanged: 50 per 100,000 or 0.05%/year, but two cities have higher rates yet. At present rates, you have a 3.5% of dying by homicide if you live in Detroit for 70 years — even higher if you’re male. The rate in the rest of the US is about 1/10th this, 0.005%/year, or 5 per 100,000, with a dramatic difference between rural and urban populations.

Murder rate in 50 cities with Detroit highlighted. From The Economist, February 2017.

Murder rate in 50 cities with Detroit highlighted, from The Economist.

One of the causes of the high murder rate in Detroit, and in the US generally, I suspect, is our stiff, minimum-penalties for crime. As sir Thomas Moose pointed out, when crime is punished severely, there is a tendency to murder. If you’re going to spend the next 20 years behind bars, you might as well try any means you can to escape. Another thought — the one favored by social liberals — is that it’s the presence of guns in the US encourages murder. It may, but it also seems to prevent crime by allowing the victim to defend himself or herself. And the effect on murder is not so clear, if you consider suicide as a form of murder. In countries like Canada with few guns, people kill themselves by hanging or by throwing themselves off high buildings. My hope is that Detroit’s murder rate will drop in 2017 to match its improved economic condition, but have no clear reason to think it will.

Robert Buxbaum, July 20, 2017. Here are some suggestions I’ve made over the years.

Puerto Rico’s minimum wage and statehood

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Puerto Rico is in deep trouble and it’s getting worse. Unemployment is at 12%, double the next worst state or territory (Alaska), tourism is down, and poverty is at 41%. Tourists have begun to go elsewhere in the Caribbean: Bermuda, Haiti, Jamaica and Cuba. The island is effectively bankrupt and would have filed for bankruptcy last year except that they legally can’t. But neither can they pay their bills. The territory will go into default in less than 2 weeks, on July 1, 2016 unless congress creates a new funding mechanism for them before then. Statehood would allow Puerto Rico to go bankrupt, but there is no way for statehood to be achieved by July 1.

Puerto Rico's minimum wage is vastly too high; here it is compared with other US states.

Puerto Rico’s minimum wage is vastly too high for its median wage. From Preston Cooper, Economics21.

While bankruptcy might help Puerto Rico short-term, as would a new line of credit, it is worthwhile to ask why Puerto Rico is in this bad shape. Why are they worse off than Guam, for example; Guam is far more isolated. Puerto Rico isn’t run particularly well, but it’s no worse than Guam or  Illinois. My first thought of what Puerto Rico should do differently is that they need to lower their minimum wage.

As the chart on the right shows, the wage of the average working Puerto Rican is very nearly the minimum wage. This is because, Puerto Rico’s economy is essentially tourism, and it competes for tourists with lower-wage Caribbean countries, Jamaica, Haiti, and Cuba. Neither Alaska nor Guam compete for tourist dollars with low cost alternatives. And Guam, in particular has a strong military presence; those are their main tourists. Competing for tourist dollars is a disaster for Puerto Rico that they could solve if they could lower their minimum wage. And a lower minimum would not cause people undue suffering because Puerto Rico is a place one can live cheaply. A single person may need to earn $8.50/ hour to live minimally well in Michigan, but his Puerto Rican cousin can get by on far less in Puerto Rico. With a lower minimum wage, tourism would be more attractive, and the government would not spend so much because they could pay their minimal-skill workers less. The net result is more Puerto Ricans would be able to find jobs, and the government would have a better chance to balance its books.

What prevents the territory from lowering its minimum wage is that it’s part of the US, and we set the minimum at $7.25/hour. Many people might prefer to work for less, but they can’t unless the federal government grants them an exemption. Without it, there is no obvious way for Puerto Rico to ever pay its bills.

Four years ago, in my first blog post, I suggested that Detroit should lower its $15/hour ‘living wage‘, a wage unduly burdened the city budget, and added to Detroit’s rampant unemployment and corruption. A year later, the city removed this barrier as part of bankruptcy, and saw significant improvements. I’m not alone in suggesting a lower minimum wage. The alternative is state-hood followed by immediate bankruptcy.

Robert Buxbaum, June 19, 2016.

Detroit emerges from bankruptcy. Not quite.

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missing homes Detroit

While Detroit’s central core comes back, surrounding, homes burn at 220+/month, leave Detroit streets looking like the teeth of an aging hillbilly.

Detroit went bankrupt last year, the largest US city to do so since New York in 1970. As with New York’s bankruptcy, Detroit’s was used to cancel old debts and rewrite ill-thought contracts. Detroit also got to jail some crooked politicians including mayor Kilpatrick, described as “a walking crime wave.” But the city and county have no easy path out of bankruptcy as both city and county are likely insolvent. That is, they spend more than they take in despite massive out-state funding, and high taxes, 10% above the state level. To make matters worse, they are losing population at the rate of 1% or so per year. It’s hard to fund a city built for 2 million on the tax revenue of 1/3 as many, especially when they are mostly unemployed. Unless a lot changes soon, another bankruptcy is almost inevitable — likely this time at the county level.

We got in this state, largely as a result of a 50 year war between the black, solidly Democrat, somewhat anarchist, political establishment of Detroit, and the white, stayed, mostly Republican out state. The white population fled following the riots of the 60s and the richer black population soon followed. The remainder stayed, trapped in slowly decaying neighborhoods as the city went broke. White flight allowed the black community to develop its own, Motown culture, but except for the music industry, it has not benefitted from this culture.

Detroit's murder rate, 45/100,000, is the highest in the US. It's coming down but not that fast.

Detroit’s murder rate is the highest in the US. It’s come down 10% in the last 2 years, but has far to go.

Detroiters have poor health, poor savings rates, high murder rates, and a fire rate of about .22% per month, 2.6% per year. The city lacks basic city services like reliable fire fighting and street plowing. Police at one point erected signs that said, “enter at your own risk.” There is a lack of small businesses and the services they would provide too: laundromats, grocery stores, and taxis (though no lack of bars and marijuana maintenance clinics). Employment in the auto-industry is down. And it’s not being replaced by home-grown small business – perhaps hampered by the low savings rate. A surprisingly large fraction of the Detroit homes are in foreclosure, see map, and with it a high abandonment rate and a high fire rate. As pheasant and dear return, non-core Detroit is beginning to look like farm country.

Detroit foreclosures near me. Blue is occupied homes, red is unoccupied, yellow unknown, and green is destroyed homes or vacant, foreclosed land.

Detroit foreclosures near me. Homes in dark blue are occupied foreclosed, red is unoccupied, and green plots are destroyed homes or vacant, foreclosed land.

It’s not clear what political leaders should do. The city council would like to return to their pre-bankruptcy ways where they could borrow as much as they felt they needed and spend on whatever they saw fit — often on fast friends, fast cars, gambling, and vacation homes outside of the city. But the out-state population has been reluctant to give them the credit card. Is this racist or is it prudent — probably both, but this can not continue. The city and county pension funds were ransacked for ill-advised investments and consulting fees to cronies and their power-lawyers. Either the money is replaced from out-state or there will be some unhappy retirees in the not-too-distant future. My guess is that the state will have to pick up the tab for this mismanagement, but that they won’t want to hand over management control afterwards.

Rand Paul, a potential GOP presidential candidate, has proposed rebuilding business and property values by a method that the city will almost certainly reject. His solution: cut services to low-population density areas and cut taxes on business and earned income. While this would likely bring in new people and new businesses, the people would likely be white, and the businesses white-owned/ white-serving. Black-Detroiters have too little savings, organization and income to directly benefit from this plan. Detroit’s Democrat politicians will claim, not without merit, that this is welfare for rich whites: a way for them to become yet-richer while doing nothing for the poor blacks of the burning neighborhoods. They are likely to demand control as the elected officials of the town: regulating business and raising the minimum wage to create “equality.” I suspect this is a bad idea.

Detroit hunger games

Detroit suffers from two populations and a divide.

To some extent we’re already seeing the return of white-owned, white-serving businesses. Classic buildings in the core of the city have been purchased by white developers – notably Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans leading to gentrification and an influx of single, white hipsters. The newcomers are viewed as half-saviors, half-carpetbaggers. They dwell in a whiter city core with hipster bars and expensive restaurants. Does a poor city with massive debt, crime, and unemployment benefit from a core filled with high-priced, gourmet coffee and fern bars?

The author, Robert Buxbaum, enjoys a day at an artificial beach in central Detroit.

The author, Robert Buxbaum, enjoys a beer at an artificial beach-cafe in central Detroit with some, few black folks, none poor. Is this good for Detroit?

The new hipsters put a squeeze on city services too — one that’s hard to deal with fairly. Detroit can not afford to plow all the streets after a snow. Should the new high-tax white folks get plowed streets, or should they suffer equally with everyone else? Detroit education is abysmal, but the high tax-bracket folks want better. Should they get it, or suffer equally? They want extra street lights and police protection. Should they get it, or suffer equally? Is this the way up?  A solution I’d proposed some while ago was to divide the core city from the now-rural outskirts so that each could be managed more sanely. It’s not a grand a solution like Rand’s plan, but less likely to be rejected. One way or another, we seem destined to have a Detroit with a rich core and abandoned neighborhoods. I suspect it might as well be managed that way.

Robert E. Buxbaum, February 10, 2015. I don’t have solutions, but write about the city’s problems, and the partial solutions I’ve heard as a way to clarify my thinking — and perhaps yours too.

High minimum wages hurt the poor; try a negative tax

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It is generally thought (correctly I suspect) that welfare is a poor way to help the poor as it robs them of the dignity of work. Something like welfare is needed to keep the poor from starving, and the something that’s generally chosen in a living wage — a minimum wage set high enough that even a minimally skilled worker should be able to support a family of 4. This may be better than welfare, but I’d like to propose something better still — and a way to pay for it — a negative tax.

I suspect that a high minimum wage hurts the poor and middle class in a few ways. For one, by flattening the wage structure, it hurts the ego of higher skilled workers and reduces their incentive to improve. A senior worker should make more than an unskilled beginner, but a high minimum wage dampens this. What’s more, a high minimum wage cuts the lower rungs off of the employment ladder, making it harder for young folks, and unskilled folks to be productively employed. There may be some worthwhile minimum, but not everyone lives independently (or should) and not every job deserves to support a family of four, if only because not every unskilled worker is supporting a family of four. Many minimum wage earners are living at home or are heads of double-income couples, and only a few have the skills to justify the wage on a value added basis. A high minimum wage is thus needlessly costly for many workers. People accept the cost because it’s borne by the company (and companies are seen as evil). But passing the burden has limits, and a high minimum wage creates high unemployment in low skill areas, as employees are reluctant to pay a lot for low skill work. In Detroit before bankruptcy, the living wage was set so high that companies could not compete. Many went bankrupt and the others hired so selectively that the unskilled were basically unemployable. Even the city couldn’t pay the wage and its bills.

Even with the highest minimum wage, there is always a need for welfare, as some workers will be unemployable — because of disability, because of lack of skill, or from an ingrained desire to not work. The punishments a community can mete out are limited, and sooner or later some communities stop working and stop learning as they see no advantage.

The difficulties of taking care of the genuinely needy and disabled while the lazy and unskilled has gotten even some communist to reconsider wealth as a motivator. The Chinese have come to realize that workers work better at all levels if there is a financial reward to experience and skill at all levels. But that still leaves the question of who should pay to help those in need and how.  Currently the welfare system only helps the disabled and the “looking” unemployed, but I suspect they should do more replacing some of the burden that our minimum wage laws places on the employers of unskilled labor. But I suspect the payment formula should be such that the worker ends up richer for every additional hour of work. That is, each dollar earned by a welfare recipient should result in less than one dollar reduction in welfare payment. Welfare would thus be set up as a negative tax that would continue to all levels of salary and need so that there is no sudden jump when the worker suddenly starts having to pay taxes. The current and proposed tax / welfare structure is shown below:

Currently someone's welfare check decreases by $1 for each dollar earned. I propose a system of negative tax (less than 100%) so each dollar earned puts a good fraction in his/her pocket.

Currently (black) someone’s welfare check decreases by $1 for each dollar earned, then he enters a stage of no tax — one keeps all he earns, and then a graduated tax. I propose a system of negative tax (red) so each dollar earned adds real income.

The system I propose (red line) would treat identically someone who is  incapacitated as someone who decided not to work, or to work at a job that paid $0/hr (e.g. working for a church). In the current system treats them differently, but there seems to be so much law and case-work and phony doctor reports involved in getting around it all that it hardly seems worth it. I’d use money as the sole motivator (all theoretical, and it may not work, but hang with me for now).

In the proposed system, a person who does not work would get some minimal income based on family need (there is still some need for case workers). If they are employed the employer would not have to pay minimum wage (or there would be a low minimum wage — $3/hr) but the employer would have to report the income and deduct, for every dollar earned some fraction in tax — 40¢ say. The net result would be that the amount of government subsidy received by the worker (disabled or not) would decrease by, for 40¢ for every dollar earned. At some salary the worker would discover that he/she was paying net tax and no longer receiving anything from the state. With this system, there is always an incentive to work more hours or develop more skills. If the minimum wage were removed too, there would be no penalty to hiring a completely unskilled worker.

At this point you may ask where the extra money will come from. In the long run, I hope the benefit comes from the reduced welfare rolls, but in the short-term, let me suggest tariffs. Tariffs can raise income and promote on-shore production. Up until 1900 or so, they were the main source of revenue for the USA. As an experiment, to see if this system works, it could be applied to enterprise zones, e.g. in Detroit.

R. E. Buxbaum, June 27, 2014. I worked out the math for this while daydreaming in an economics lecture. It strikes me as bizarre, by the way, that can contract with someone for barter, e.g. to help you move for a pizza, but you can’t contract for less than the minimum wage $7.45/hr. If you hire the worker for less you can go to jail. In Canada they have something even more bizarre, equal wages for equal skills — a cook and a manager must earn the same, independent of how well the cook cooks. No wonder violent crime is higher in Canada.