Will Bare-Knuckles Capitalism Turn Urban America into a Shithole?

Here are excerpts from NYT stories published a couple of days apart...

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VERNON, Calif. — Vernon is a bleak, 5.2-square-mile sprawl of warehouses, factories, toxic chemical plants and meat processors that looks like the backdrop for “Eraserhead,” the David Lynch movie set in an industrial wasteland. It has a population of 95 — and 1,800 businesses, drawn by low taxes, lax regulations and cheap municipal power.

Willets Point, in Queens, is a 61-acre expanse of junkyards and auto-repair shops so squalid that local business owners compare it to Iraq. City officials estimate that Willets Point is home to 255 businesses, which employ about 1,700 people, some in sheds made of tin or cinder blocks. On a recent afternoon, as garbage cans burned, Mexican norteño music wailed from boom boxes on the hoods of cars. Large pools of swirling dirty water overwhelmed unpaved roads. Locals complained that the police handed out tickets for parking cars on the sidewalk, even though there were no sidewalks. “I don’t want to leave,” Mr. Nicolescue said, “but I have nowhere to go. This may look like the third world, but it is my world.”