T.I., nГ© Clifford Joseph Harris, Jr., now invests in Opportunity Zones (OZ), a new place-based program created by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which offers targeted tax breaks to catalyze capital investment in distressed neighborhoods. Our geographic sclerosis has made the case for place-based policies better, but it is still possible to screw it up enormously.вЂќ Ed Glaeser, ChettyвЂ™s colleague, summarized the shift in economistsвЂ™ thinking at a 2021 Brookings conference: вЂњAmericaвЂ™s spatial inequalities have gone up. Public funds, the thinking went, should be spent on poor people, not poor places.Д«ut that prescription has begun to change, assaulted from the right by commentators and writers unsatisfied with what urbanism researcher Jason Szegedi has aptly labeled the вЂњU-Haul approach to public policy.вЂќ The center-left, too, has come appreciate the importance of investing in disadvantaged places, thanks in large part to research by Harvard UniversityвЂ™s Raj Chetty into the long-term impacts of neighborhood effects.

Increasing opportunity meant promoting geographic mobility and getting people out of declining areas, rather than throwing good money after bad. The approach typified by Williamson and lamented by T.I.вЂ™s friend has long been conventional wisdom among economists and policymakers. As he tells Brookings Institution senior fellow David Wessel, a friend of his once asked вЂњHey, man, why is it that the answer to the problems in our community is always for us to get rich and move out and never come back?вЂќ

may never have read Kevin WilliamsonвЂ™s infamous suggestion that struggling communities need вЂњreal opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul,вЂќ but he is clearly familiar with the mindset. Photo by stevepb on Pixabay Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age, by David Wessel (PublicAffairs, 352 pp., $14.99)

Gimme a break reminder