Is Another Blue City Falling Victim To A Doom Loop?

It looks like another blue city is being added to the ranks of those entering the so-called “doom loop”. Joining the list that includes places like San Francisco, Portland, and Detroit is St. Louis, Missouri.

First, we must as define ‘doom loop’:

A doom loop describes a situation in which one negative economic condition creates a second negative condition, which in turn creates a third negative condition or reinforces the first, resulting in a downward spiral.

How is St. Louis entering this condition?

“The office district is empty, with boarded up towers, copper thieves, and failing retail,” reports the Wall Street Journal of Democrat-run St. Louis, Missouri. “[E]ven the Panera outlet shut down. The city is desperately trying to reverse the ‘doom loop.’”

Let’s look at the mayoral history of the doom-looping St. Louis, shall we?

Oh, look, there hasn’t been a Republican mayor in St. Louis since — not a typo — 1949. For 75 years, the people of St. Louis have voted for More of the Same, so excuse me if I don’t whip out a violin over all this unavoidable doom looping.

“Cities such as San Francisco and Chicago are trying to save their downtown office districts from spiraling into a doom loop,” writes the Wall Street Journal. “St. Louis is already trapped in one.”

I think San Francisco is already sliding into a doom loop. If New York doesn’t change course soon, particularly in light of the sham of a trial against Trump, it too will enter a doom loop. It is already seeing falling commercial occupancy, one consequence of the overblown Covid ‘precautions’ as Work From Home which made going into the office less attractive, particularly since many office jobs can be done from home as long as the employee has a decent Internet connection. (The case could be made that the WFH precaution during Covid was the first negative economic condition that started the doom loop.) That has certainly been the case in San Francisco and Seattle. What’s worse is that the commercial vacancy rate keeps climbing in all three cities. It has certainly been that way in St. Louis and increasingly in San Francisco.

The question is will these cities do what is need to stop their descent into a doom loop, or will they keep doing economically stupid stuff that makes things worse?