CHICAGO | Economic & Business Development

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego

There have to be reasonable limits on the dream of "growing our way out of it." Chicago is the capital of the Midwest, which is a relatively very stagnant region and has been for some time - there was a hard inflection point in the 1970s with the shift to fiat (fake) money and the growth of global trade in a low-tariff system, with a minor blip in the 1990s where at least much of the Midwest performed close to the national average. Otherwise, almost the entire region has seen growth (or decline) well below the national average, for the better part of 40+ years now.

The pension fiasco is largely an Illinois-specific problem - some other states have major messes as well albeit with differing important details and history - but the economic growth challenge one is super-regional.

A bipartisan Great Lakes caucus in Congress that was unified in advocating for things like (off the top of my head):

- Winding back imbalanced free trade. Trade with peers Canada, Germany, Japan etc. is good for the Midwest in high-value-add products and services. Trade with Mexico, China, SE Asia has largely decimated the value of much of the existing manufacturing base and its supporting infrastructure.
- Ending ongoing subsidization of the sunbelt, or at least make the subsidies equal. Why don't we get FEMA money after major snow storms and severe cold spells, which cause major damage to infrastructure and buildings and for which we need to eat the full cost? Sure it's a totally predictable weather event, but so are F'ing hurricanes and wildfires and coastal flooding that we're all supposedly obligated to chip in and pay for. Why do freeloaders in Galveston get a new roof every few years but we don't get new tuckpointing and bridge repairs paid for by daddy Fed and its infinite fake money? Cut the midwest in on that party, or cut them out from support for statistically inevitable and predictable events that should be addressed by the private insurance market.
- Re-orient federal infrastructure spending to be overwhelmingly about funding maintenance and renewal.
- A major federal safety and environmental housing retrofit program - to really tackle the legacy costs of old structures like lead paint, lead pipes, poor insulation and fire safety, etc - could be bipartisan, have national benefit, and would disproportionately concentrate on the Great Lakes and Northeast.

just quoting this because i think it is very good.