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When the St. Louis Cardinals played the Detroit Tigers in the 1968 World Series, the whole nation was watching (it captured an astounding 57 percent of television viewers) and both cities — as well as both teams — were looking good. Detroit was still the unchallenged auto capital of the world, and St. Louis was home to a dozen of the nation’s biggest and best-known companies.

Since then, the two baseball teams have fared better than their cities. When they met again in the 2006 World Series, the rest of the nation yawned — 83 percent of viewers tuned out. Who cared about a baseball rivalry in two dying cities in flyover country?

From 1950 to 2010, Detroit’s population dropped from about 1.8 million to 714,000 — a 61.4 percent decline. Over the same period, St. Louis City dropped from 857,000 residents to 319,000 – a 62.7 percent decline.

Think of Detroit as a larger St. Louis — more than twice the size in area as well as population. Drive through north St. Louis and you see block after block of abandoned and boarded-up buildings; drive through Detroit and it is mile after mile of the same. It is the Empty Quarter of cityscapes — which partly explains why it takes an hour for Detroit’s police to respond to a 911 call.

Detroit leads the nation’s cities in violent crime, followed by Oakland and St. Louis. According to FBI statistics, your chances of being the victim of a violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, and assault) are not a whole lot less in St. Louis City than they are in Detroit. The incidence of such crimes is only 13 percent lower in St. Louis than Detroit. I worked in Detroit from 1976 to 1982 as a reporter and anchor at WXYZ-TV. Coleman Young was the city’s first black mayor, notorious for playing the race card (though most white politicians were no better). I once asked him about his girlfriend’s exorbitant salary as the administration’s PR person. That night, the station ran his response — an expletive-filled rant accusing me of racism for even raising the question. Later, many city employees — both black and white — thanked me for spotlighting the mayor’s favoritism.

Lee Iacocca took over a struggling Chrysler in 1978 and refused to meet union demands to match GM and Ford wage rates at $18 an hour. He told the union: “At $13 an hour, you can have 20,000 workers . . . at $18, you’ve got zero.” He understood the Big Three were on thin ice.

After 13 years anchoring and reporting at KSDK in St. Louis, I returned to Detroit for a year in 1999 at WDIV TV. I was astonished at how much worse the city looked. Gone were the well-kept, middle-class neighborhoods. The drugs and violence were so bad that city cops often would ride four to a squad car.

Therein, I think, is a principal difference between Detroit and St. Louis. Things in St. Louis never reached the same pitch of hopelessness.

St. Louis experienced its biggest out-migration of people in the 1980s, when the population fell 27.2 percent. From 2000 to 2010, the city’s population was down just 8 percent.

By contrast, Detroit’s population over the last decade fell a stunning 24.9 percent.

So, no, I do not think that St. Louis City is following Detroit down the road to ruin — or to bankruptcy, either. In a recent column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dave Nicklaus pointed out that with slightly more than twice the population of St. Louis, Detroit has six times as much debt.

What’s more, St. Louis has not experienced a massive breakdown in vital services. Far from taking an hour to respond to a call , St. Louis police, on average, are at a crime scene in 10.32 minutes. And where Detroit police cleared only 11.3 percent of murders and 12.7 percent of reported rapes through arrests in 2011, St. Louis police cleared 66.4 percent and 71.8 percent of such crimes, respectively.

Though far from perfect, St. Louis City still works for most people. Many old neighborhoods are flourishing again. Let’s hope that we are on the cusp of a real turnaround in the city’s fortunes.

Rick Edlund is the communications director at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Is St. Louis the next Detroit? (Not in my view) appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The topic of the paper was the looming financial crisis of underfunded public pensions.

Listen online here:

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Two different stories on Aerotropolis are now circulating. The first came out Tuesday and dealt with efforts in the state legislature to once again drive state tax credits to the project. It looks like House leaders may try to tuck Aerotropolis back into an economic development package that the chamber is preparing.

The second story was published this morning and is the more fascinating of the two. It reveals that Saint Louis County may apply $3 million in casino tax revenues to support the Aerotropolis project. If true, the funding source would certainly be apropos, given that Aerotropolis almost certainly is a gamble. Over the last year, Audrey Spalding and I (as well as Chrissy Harbin) have discussed at length the merits (or lack thereof) of Aerotropolis, a project that originally clocked in at a cool $480 million when it was first proposed. That figure is worth keeping in mind as proponents of the Aerotropolis plan pine for state money. Taxpayers have been told that Aerotropolis “needed” a half billion dollars to take flight; then $360 million; and then just $60 million. Maybe Aerotropolis should not receive any money from taxpayers?

This also may be a case of life imitating art, as this Show-Me Institute PSA (narrated by our own Rick Edlund) makes clear.

No doubt, a plethora of interest groups are still actively campaigning to resurrect Aerotropolis, but proponents have still failed to make the case that 1) the Aerotropolis plan will work, and 2) public money is required to resolve some market failure standing in the way of the project’s success. Last year, it looked like private parties just wanted to gamble with the public’s money. “A game changer at $480 million! A bargain at $360 million! Just $60 million will do the trick! How about $3 million?”

It sounds like we have a problem gambler on our hands. Maybe the best thing to do is to simply cut them off.

The post Place Your Bets: Proposed Aerotropolis May Be Funded In Part With Casino Tax Revenues appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

People in the Saint Louis area often talk about the problems associated with so many different governments and so many types. Those problems are real, but there are positive aspects of having a large number of small governments, too. One of the best aspects of having a high number of smaller governments (such as the 90 different municipalities in Saint Louis County) is the inability to enact comprehensive planning in the area. Government-directed urban planning is too often just an excuse for others to tell you how to live. We do not need growth boundaries in Saint Louis. We do not need higher density zoning (which should be allowed, of course, if that is what people want; it just should not be mandated by government). We do not need excessive impact fees for construction. We do not need — and more importantly, do not have — any number of other examples of land use rules governing our lives. What does that lack of mandated planning give us? More freedom and lower housing costs; two wonderful things.

Wendell Cox is uniquely qualified to comment on the affairs of Saint Louis. While his writings and lectures are international in scope, he resides in the Saint Louis area. The Show-Me Institute is excited to have him writing for us, and you can view his full policy study here. You can also enjoy a conversation between Wendell and Rick Edlund, Show-Me Institute’s director of communications, here.

The post Lower Housing Costs, Less Urban Planning, and the Positives of 90 Municipalities in Saint Louis County appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• A reminder call for the repeal of the earnings tax in Saint Louis and Kansas City.
• Executive Director Brenda Talent summarizes the trajectory of proposed Aerotropolis tax credit legislation.
• A summary of the Show-Me Institute’s recent policy study on the Saint Louis land bank, the LRA.
• A warm introduction for the Show-Me Institute’s new director of development, Elizabeth Lanier-Shipp.
• An invitation to attend the free-market book clubs sponsored by the Show-Me Institute, held in Saint Louis and Columbia.
• A look at the Show-Me Institute’s 2011 summer interns: who they are and where they’re headed.
• Recent and upcoming events hosted or sponsored by the Show-Me Institute.
• A profile of the Show-Me Institute’s new communications director, Rick Edlund.
• An article opposing the use of red light cameras.

The post Show-Me Newsletter: 2011, Number 2 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I hope all is well in “common sense radio” land. I heard you had John Beck, your senior vice-president, on with you this morning, and that you or he gave us a mention. I appreciate that, but I continue to be mystified that you and/or Mr. Beck won’t allow one of our policy analysts on your program to discuss the Aerotropolis proposal.

We here at the Show-Me Institute have studied and written about this bill for months. To simply claim, as I’m told Mr. Beck did, that we are against all tax credits is shallow, at best, and in this case, completely misses the point. The fact, as we have pointed out in numerous op-eds, papers, blog posts, videos and radio and TV interviews, is that Aerotropolis remains a massive tax credit giveaway program that may well leave Missouri taxpayers picking up the tab.

Mr. Beck, who is also a board member of the RCGA, clearly doesn’t see it the way we do. That’s fine, but isn’t this topic important enough that your listeners deserve to hear both sides of the debate? I repeat what has become a long-standing offer to have one of our policy analysts come on your program to talk about Aerotropolis.

I await your call.

Best,

Rick Edlund
Communications Director
Show-Me Institute
314-454-0647

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As promised, we got the video edited and uploaded — check it out!

Big thanks to our communications director, Rick Edlund, and videographer extraordinaire Josh Smith for helping me produce this video. Thanks also to Sarah’s Cake Stop and Cha Cha Chow for letting me interview them about their experiences in facing these local restrictions.

We’ll have another installment soon. Stay tuned to the Show-Me Institute!

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