One thing that continues to amaze me is how city officials in Southern California (and other cities, perhaps) continue to squander city dollars and tax credits to attract development projects to attract “upscale” residents and visitors when the history of the region has proved time and again that the most spectacular growth has always come about by supplying middle class jobs, homes and developments.

In the recent past, the highly publicized (and highly subsidized) Hollywood and Highland Complex, near the Mann Chinese Theater, and the renovated Paseo Colorado in Pasadena have been huge busts. The parking at the Hollywood and Highland Center was ridiculously expensive (a problem made worse by a parking receipts embezzlement scandal) and originally the development was filled with ultra expensive and ultra exclusive upscale shops. Paseo Colorado had similar issues with upscale shops and expensive parking.

City officials strangely, but predictably, ignored the central fact that residents and tourists who came to see stuff like the movie star footprints and the Movie Star Walk of Fame, were overwhelming middle class and working class, and were shocked senseless by the expensive prices for food and services. Meanwhile, the self-styled elite, the snobs and the people looking for the next hot thing, stayed away in droves because the new shops did not offer anything that they could not get in their familiar hangouts. Predictably, upscale shops began shutting their doors, but leases were too high to attract more suitable tenants. Apart from the new Kodak Theater, where the Jimmy Kimmel Show and the Oscars are held, there is not much to recommend the new complex.

Paseo Colorado had similar issues with upscale shops and expensive parking. The sad thing is that the previous mall at the site did a pretty good job of appealing to local residents, who now have fewer choices and go to the movie theater in the mall, but avoid the pointlessly expensive shops and restaurants.

Have city officials learned anything from these debacles? Nope.

The LA Times recently ran a story about the upcoming debut of the Nokia Theater, near the Staples Center and the L.A. Convention Center, crowing about how the theater will be the anchor for a massive development including a Ritz Carlton Hotel and an upscale retail center all designed to bring the affluent to downtown. While there are a number of businesses, government offices, and parking lots in the area, the corridor is economically depressed.

What the writer, the developers and the city fathers continue to forget is that upscale destinations such as Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive, Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and the Westside Grove mall and theater complex are set in the midst of existing, viable middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods.

Architecture buffs may note that the photos and sketches of the new theater suggest that it is very undistinguished. An additional oddity is that it appears that an electronic marquee at the front of the theater appears to be set too high in a tower, and might be of little use to people walking around the complex. The article also notes how the theater is designed to be “acoustically sophisticated,” but offers little to indicate whether music and speech will actually sound good in the space. Both LA and New York have a history of theaters and music spaces that looked good, but which were plagued with poor acoustics (e.g., Avery Fisher Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Cerritos Arts Center).

A link to the LA Times story can be found here-- registration might be required to view the full story (“The Nokia Theatre is built, now will they come?” by Geoff Boucher, October 11, 2007).

A good Wikipedia article on Avery Fisher Hall and its acoustics problems can be found here.

Next up, some LA city fathers want to throw money at the NFL to guarantee a new stadium that will bring a football team to LA.

By the by, I think that stuff like this connects to potential larger economic train wreck in that for some reason, neither the present Republican Administration or the challenging Democrats seem to believe that a viable middle class is important to the continued prosperity of the country. Even more puzzling is why “the base” and the true believers in both parties continue to support people who demonstrate every day that they do not care in the least about their supposed constituents best interests.

Posted by: Alec on October 13, 2007 10:33 PM

I agree with Friedrich above on healthcare, if nothing is done. The desire by the current democratic candidates to socialize medicine makes me think they have no solutions either. One thing that needs to be done is put some sort of cap on the amount that can be awarded in malpractice suits, but congress stomps on tort reform legislation whenver it comes up because of the strong legal lobby. As a result of the threat of malpractice suits, all sorts of extra costs are piled on the average hospital visit as doctors perform all kinds of tests to cover their backside. The other thing is an aging population. Everyone dies of something, that is, most will spend part of their last few weeks or months in the hospital getting very expensive care that merely prolongs their life for a short time. Somehow that is have to going to be capped and that is going to be so politically unpopular its hard to see it ever happening.

Posted by: pat on October 13, 2007 11:54 PM

Do I read Pat correctly? He seems to think that the major problems with health care in this country are [a] the slow movement on the part of congress toward making medical care a right we all share rather than a privilege of those who can afford it; [b] that patients who suffer from bad medical services should not be able to sue; and [c] end of life decisions should be taken away from the patient or family in conjunction with their doctors and should instead be made by applying a cost benefit ratio formula. Wow! Why not simply add euthanasia for those too sick or too poor to properly contribute to the GDP?

I am more convinced that most of the problems with health care in this country are precisely because it is structured as a system of interlocking (primarily profit making) private enterprises rather than being "socialized." The profit incentives are almost all oriented away from patient needs and covering everyone toward maximizing investor returns by limiting coverage to the healthiest and wealthiest. Insurance companies make profits by limiting or denying payments; Big Pharma by selling pricy new drugs under patent protection; and doctors are better off choosing lucrative specialties and avoiding primary practice. I'm always perplexed by the presumption in certain quarters that government employees managing health care is a terrible idea but a system based on employees of HMOs and insurance companies whose job security is tied to minimizing the amounts spent on care is a great idea.

Posted by: Chris White on October 14, 2007 9:22 AM

We could easily give everybody a 1985 standard of care. The problem comes with trying to give everyone gold plated health care right up until the day they die.

Heroic government assistance should be limited to keeping families intact. If a father or mother of small children gets cancer and dies, that is a massive disruption to a whole bunch of people's lives. But, if someone dies at 85 instead of 90, that is not. Keeping children alive and good health, who have not had a chance to live their lives, who cannot make decisions on their own, and in whom their parents have invested so much of themselves, emotionally and financially, has to be a priority too.

My idea is that once your kids are all 30 or once you turn 65, whichever comes first, you should be responsible for your own health insurance and no one should be given anything except older treatments and palliative care if they cannot pay for it themselves. 30+ years is long enough to plan for these kinds of things, and if you don't that is your responsibility. Adults without children would also be responsible for their own health care and would receive only older treatments if they could not pay for it themselves

The comparison to euthenasia is a low blow. Death is natural. Not spending ourselves into oblivion to save someone who has already had a long life is not the same as killing them. The public at large does not have the obligation to keep you alive as long as possible.

Remember, there is always rationing, whether by prices or by waiting lists, like we have in Canada, where everything is socialized. (The system here is headed for a crash too.) In the end, there is no magic solution. We have to make choices.

Posted by: Thursday on October 14, 2007 4:43 PM

Problems on the horizon in no particular order:

1) Peak Oil. Life will become unfun for a whole lot of people. We might make it till 2012 with rising prices but no peak until 2012. Or the peak might already have happened. We need better battery technology to shift away from liquid fuel for transportation.

2) The retirement of the baby boomers combined with low IQ immigration driving the demographic shift toward a lower IQ workforce. Thank you immigration enthusiasts. May you rot in hell.

3) The Chinese pollution disaster.

4) The ecological disaster of lost jungles. I was watching a TV show about how in 800 AD the Mayans had torn down all their forests and their civilization collapsed. They ended up by describing how some Central American country will have no jungles left by 2020 or thereabouts. The drive for biomass energy when production declines will make this problem even worse.

5) The electoral effects of masses of dummies voting once the smarties retire and die in large numbers.

Posted by: Randall Parker on October 14, 2007 5:49 PM

Next up, some LA city fathers want to throw money at the NFL to guarantee a new stadium that will bring a football team to LA.

At the risk of getting off-topic ... We're not likely to see an NFL team in Los Angeles anytime soon because a team-less Los Angeles is far more valuable to the league than any team in the city would be. You see, whenever a team owner wants his city to build him a new stadium at taxpayer expense, full of luxury suites that make SCA's flip with joy, all he has to do is tell city officials that if they don't kowtow to his wishes he'll just pack up and move to Los Angeles. These threats make sense because Los Angeles is a natural location for an NFL team, being the country's second-largest city and all. Threatening to move to Las Vegas or Orlando wouldn't have the same credibility.

Posted by: Peter on October 14, 2007 9:54 PM

Chris White covered most of my answers to Pat.

However, Pat wrote, "One thing that needs to be done is put some sort of cap on the amount that can be awarded in malpractice suits,..."

California's state legislature did that years ago and it hasn't reduced health care insurance premiums here, in one of the largest insurance markets in the country. Your suggestion that people who reach age 60 (or was it 65) become forced to provide their own health insurance will simply leave most of them with no health insurance. Getting into a private plan at that age, especially with preexisting conditions, is either impossible or staggeringly costly. And the alternative for seniors, HMOs, is nearly as bad as no insurance. I saw this first hand with my father in the late '80s.

Posted by: Peter L. Winkler on October 15, 2007 5:23 AM

They wouldn't have no insurance. Thats a canard. They just wouldn't have access to the most up-to-date treatments.

They would have access to a standard of care that would have been top of the line a few years ago, and which is infinitessimaly better than most humans have had for most of history.

Posted by: Thursday on October 15, 2007 4:52 PM

I think a Democratic presidency would make a lot of these stories go away. Not the issues themselves but the stories about them.

If Hillary is elected the MSM will wake up to find that things are not as dire as they have been telling us for the past 8 years.

Posted by: Pat Hobby on October 15, 2007 6:41 PM

Chris White writes: "I am more convinced that most of the problems with health care in this country are precisely because it is structured as a system of interlocking (primarily profit making) private enterprises rather than being "socialized." The profit incentives are almost all oriented away from patient needs and covering everyone toward maximizing investor returns..."

But Chris, most goods and services in the US are provided by for-profit entities and these services regularly provide excellent and satisying products to their customers. So the problem isn't with capitalism - it has to do with the system of incentives that affect health care.

Posted by: jult52 on October 18, 2007 6:15 AM

And to the rest of the disaster-mongers here: get a grip. Look at the size of the problems the world faced in 1935 and 1955 and compare them with today's issues.

The Singularity is Near.

Posted by: jult52 on October 18, 2007 6:17 AM






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