The failure of the blue social model

Walter Russell Mead on the failure of the blue social model in northern cities like Chicago and New York. Blacks are leaving these areas with the multicultural lifestyle is supposed to favor them. But in a new Great Migration they are heading for the suburbs and moving South. Here are a few good quotes:

One would think that the Blacks who choose to stay in the cold, unwelcoming North would cluster in the cities where more liberal and humane governance models mandate such generous policies as “living wage” laws and where all the beautiful features of the blue social model can be experienced at full strength.

But one would be wrong.  Blacks across the North are fleeing the urban paradises of liberal legislation and high public union membership for the benighted suburbs.  The Times interviewed a professor to get the straight scoop:

“The notion of the North and its cities as the promised land has been a powerful part of African-American life, culture and history, and now it all seems to be passing by,” said Clement Price, a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark. “The black urban experience has essentially lost its appeal with blacks in America.” [bold italics added] . . .

The Census tells us that in the eyes of those who know best, these well intentioned efforts failed.  Instead of heaven, we have hell across America’s inner cities.  Blue economic policy has cut the creation of new private sector jobs to a trickle in our great cities, while the high costs of public union urban services (and policies that favor government employees over the citizenry at large) impose crippling taxes and contribute to the ruinously high costs that blight opportunity.  All the social welfare bureaucracies, diversity counselors and minority set-asides can’t make up for the colossal failure of blue social policy to create sustainable lower middle class prosperity in our cities.