Raising the income levels of a neighborhood means making those people rich. Not rich with very high income levels, just rich enough so they don’t have to worry about having enough money to get by with a bit more than they need to just get by. The problem is government can’t do anything about raising the economic levels of the individuals in Ferguson unless government takes money from other people and gives it to the people of Ferguson.
But the private sector is the way to create meaningful jobs and good middle income jobs just aren’t available in Ferguson. They aren’t there for many reasons but using government to pay businesses to locate to Ferguson costs too much. So part of the answer is to get government to back off of the private business sector in Ferguson. Make it easier for a producer to manufacture something in Ferguson. That’s easier to do than it seems. Get government to back off. That’s all that needs to be done. If government backs off by lowering certain classes of taxation for new manufacturing businesses that locate themselves in Ferguson the cost to make something is automatically lowered. If someone who is skilled in the art of the deal, a deal could be made that would benefit the residents of Ferguson so much that the welfare takers would work instead of collecting welfare.
Sounds far-fetched of course because most people aren’t skilled in the art of making a deal but if the right deal can be made Ferguson could be useful as a model of how to turn around a failed city. If that’s successful in Ferguson it should be duplicated in Detroit and a dozen other cities. It’s not asking government to give business a break in Ferguson. It’s just getting government to back off enough for the idea to work. It’s worth a shot.
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