Omaha gets inner-city grant

[ShawJ]

Omaha gets inner-city grant

http://www.omaha.com/article/20120315/N ... city-grant

Omaha is one of eight U.S. cities and 33 cities worldwide selected to receive an IBM grant to study how to improve the city's economy through inner-city redevelopment.

Specifically, Omaha officials said Thursday, IBM business consultants will spend three weeks in Omaha because of the Smarter Cities Challenge grant to scrutinize urban redevelopment efforts in east Omaha, which experiences higher poverty and crime rates than the rest of the city.
Development often moves towards vacant land in west Omaha in what are dubbed "greenfield" investments, said Alec Gorynski of the city's grant team.

But Gorynski argued such investment actually costs the city and taxpayers more in the long run by requiring services to be delivered to less densely-populated areas.

[iamjacobm]

[Big E]

Dammit. Thought this was about a basketball recruit named Grant.

[iamjacobm]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20130603/N ... 49960/1707

Omaha should cut down on suburban sprawl, restructure incentives for inner-city development and do a better job sharing data between government departments, according to a new report from IBM business consultants.

The city was one of 33 communities that received a grant last year for a study. A team of five consultants visited Omaha in October to assess the city's planning and development efforts and offer their recommendations.

[iamjacobm]

Here is the full report.

http://www.cityofomaha.org/images/stori ... Report.pdf

[nebport5]

I bet Stothert tries to turn it down to save money...after all Omaha "doesn't have a sprawl problem" and East Omaha is a "lifestyle choice".

[S33]

Did she really say that, or are you paraphrasing her out-of-context?

[RNcyanide]

Did she really say that, or are you paraphrasing her out-of-context?

Stothert, a former Millard school board member, made it clear that she did not think Omaha has an urban sprawl problem.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20130327/NEWS/703279859

Jean Stothert defended the push West saying people have a right to desire bigger houses with bigger yards (and higher tax bills which result in more revenue).

http://eyeonomaha.wordpress.com/

I found the denial of urban sprawl but not the lifestyle claim.

Although it is worth noting that neither of the things I found were direct quotes; paraphrases themselves... Make of it what you will. Personally, I do believe we have an urban sprawl problem. Not as bad as some other cities may have, but sprawl nonetheless. After you pass 144th St., you find endless fields of neighborhoods containing variations on the same model of house all costing more or less the same; punctuated by strip malls, gas stations and fast food, or corn. I think part of it may be a perception problem. I think people have created the idea that east of some arbitrary line, housing is old and rather poor and yards are small and not suited for playing or entertaining. The city and other groups within should try harder to break this perception.

[Greg S]

The Grow Omaha guys talked about this on KFAB. Basically said if you do too much to stop growth in West O, you will just drive that development to Sarpy County. Sarpy growth will just accelerate beyond where it's at now.

Greg

[RNcyanide]

So it's not really a policy issue, it's more of a state of mind issue?

[cdub]

The Grow Omaha guys talked about this on KFAB. Basically said if you do too much to stop growth in West O, you will just drive that development to Sarpy County. Sarpy growth will just accelerate beyond where it's at now.

Greg

You have to decide which part of the growth is the problem. If you can identify that (or if its everything) and you drive that away, so what? If its all great, dont worry, if there's some you don't want, say so.

[bigredmed]

People move west or south for a better quality of life. Better schools, safer, more predictable neighborhoods, etc. Want that to stop, make those things happpen in the mid city area.

[ShawJ]

People move west or south for a better quality of life. Better schools, safer, more predictable neighborhoods, etc. Want that to stop, make those things happpen in the mid city area.

Quality of life is pretty subjective.

[nebport5]

People move west or south for a better quality of life. Better schools, safer, more predictable neighborhoods, etc. Want that to stop, make those things happpen in the mid city area.

Investing in your community is the way to improve it, not moving away from it. Granted, moving is easier.

[bigredmed]

People move west or south for a better quality of life. Better schools, safer, more predictable neighborhoods, etc. Want that to stop, make those things happpen in the mid city area.

Investing in your community is the way to improve it, not moving away from it. Granted, moving is easier.

The problem is one of return on available assets.

One can improve one's home. One can support local businesses in your neighborhood so that they stay open.

One can not do much about heroin dealers living down the block. One can not do much about the city iron booting yet another scattered site house or parolee half-way house into your neighborhood. One can not do much about a swimming pool that is literally ripped from the ground while your kids watch by those same iron booted "city fathers".

So, one looks at their checkbook and decides, move to the new hotness neighborhood or deal with the |expletive| here? There are plenty of neighborhoods in eastern Omaha that are nice. They are often surrounded by sketchy or downright crime-ridden areas or industrial tracts that are less than appealing as neighbors. The area immediately south of UNMC between Leavenworth and Center comes to mind. Some very nice houses. Most are old, but serviceable, but they have UNMC to the north, the businesses along Saddle Creek to the west, and a "transitional neighborhood" to the east. Cool if you don't mind risking your property values on the outcome of their "transition". The neighborhood has an excellent Catholic school, but is served by Norris Jr High, which has a well earned reputation for problems. If you are with kids, and you are not interested in a Catholic education for them, you are going to have to deal with that school for your kids. Or, you could move to Millard.

The key to urban infill is to make areas of the city that can hold their own with the burbs in terms of the essentials of life. The subjective pluses and minuses are hard to do much about. Good schools, safe neighborhoods, neighborhoods that are built for the people who live there, and not so much for the people who hang there, places where kids are boundaried by busy streets rather than by unsafe neighbors.

Build those. You will get people to come into the city. Build hipstervilles and you will get what we have now, transitional housing for 20-somethings who are not yet parents, and 50 and 60-somethings who don't need assisted living yet.

[Dundeemaha]

Build hipstervilles and you will get what we have now, transitional housing for 20-somethings who are not yet parents, and 50 and 60-somethings who don't need assisted living yet.

Interestingly enough those are the two largest demographics in the US.

[/img]

[bigredmed]

My point is that individuals only can do so much. They choose the best life they can get with the assets they own. If you want to keep suburban expansion controlled, you need to build areas in the city where a couple could live for 40 years and raise their kids. These are the rooted people that build churches, join the club that plants flowers in the park, and the generally are responsible for making an enduringly nice neighboehood.neighborhood.

Omaha got away with it for a while in the 60's and 70's due to catholic schools. As their appeal declines, the reality of some f. The educational decay is more painful. This needs to be n ongoing priority of OPS. We need urban planners that can talk to people who dont drive volvos and get urban renewal projects that attract people to stay, rather than leave once they start their families.

[Uffda]

The educational decay is more painful. This needs to be n ongoing priority of OPS.

You have made a couple of comments similar to these before and I asked you what you see as a solution -- but you never answered.

What do you see as ways to improve the OPS school district -- please be specific -- no generalizations. Thanks

[bigredmed]

The educational decay is more painful. This needs to be n ongoing priority of OPS.

You have made a couple of comments similar to these before and I asked you what you see as a solution -- but you never answered.

What do you see as ways to improve the OPS school district -- please be specific -- no generalizations. Thanks

1. Magnet schools are great for kids that are in the program. The schools that have these tend to put lots of energy into them but if your kid has to go to the "music magnet", and isn't into music, well too bad. We need fewer special programs and more solid general studies programs. We are not training stars for the Met. We are training young minds who will be welders, nurses, IT people, etc. An appreciation for music is fine. Squeezing a 1000 kids into a school that is focused on a career track that 10 will follow is wasting resources.

2. Many schools have serious discipline problems. These have lead to people moving their kids out of OPS just to get a safe school. Break a rule, get a consequence. If the rule you break is minor, then your consequence is as well. If you commit a felony, you get felony punishment, even if Ernie Chambers doesn't like it.

3. We need the admin people out of TAC and the students back into TECH. We could make a lot lives better with solid course in industrial arts so that kids who don't have money could go there, get some training in a trade, and have something to fall back on if college doesn't work out.

4. When a principal accuses a kid of being a pothead, and he isn't one, he or she should not get to go to round 2. A dopey kid can be dopey for a lot of reasons, pot is one of many reasons. There should not be TWO law firms who specialize in suing OPS. The enforcement office of the Department of Education should not have OPS on speed dial. When we called to file a complaint about our kid's treatment, they knew all the OPS officials and were chomping at the bit to wail on them.

5. Popular kids should not get treated differently than other kids by the school. Popular kids get treated differently by other kids, that is the nature of popularity. That should not get you special handling in extracurriculars or other occasions when there are 50 people and 10 slots.

6. The SECOND biggest high school sports championship in Nebraska is Trapshooting. This is without a single OPS team in it. Somehow, the children in Bellevue can handle trapshooting, but the children in Omaha can't?

7. Extracurricular activities are too focused on performance at the class A level across the state (not just OPS). Kids have to choose 1 sport to play all year. This is really unhealthy for the developing adolescent in terms of over use injuries and in terms of being a dolt as an adult because they spent all their time playing sport X and know nothing about sports Y and Z. We have big enough high schools that we could have 3 volleyball teams at many of the schools, we could have a couple of hundred going out for X country. We have 20 girls out of 500 on a Vball team now. Time to open it up or make them club activities and pull the schools out of them.


So here are 7 ideas. Bring 7 of yours.

[nebport5]

My point is that individuals only can do so much. They choose the best life they can get with the assets they own. If you want to keep suburban expansion controlled, you need to build areas in the city where a couple could live for 40 years and raise their kids. These are the rooted people that build churches, join the club that plants flowers in the park, and the generally are responsible for making an enduringly nice neighboehood.neighborhood.

Omaha got away with it for a while in the 60's and 70's due to catholic schools. As their appeal declines, the reality of some f. The educational decay is more painful. This needs to be n ongoing priority of OPS. We need urban planners that can talk to people who dont drive volvos and get urban renewal projects that attract people to stay, rather than leave once they start their families.

I think we're all familiar with the motivations of "white flight". And if the individual can only do so much (which I agree), then it's up too the government to facilitate urban renewal, right? Capitalistic developers (redundant as that may sound) mostly feed sprawl with no regard for community aesthetics. So do we need tough growth restrictions?

An Urban Growth Boundary!?

[bigredmed]

Don't like the term white flight. It has racist overtones and has been used by the left as a word grenade for so long that it stifles creative discussion.

I think you do more damage by having "growth boundaries" than you do by kicking in some realistic cost requirements Kr lane roads at time time of development, not ten years after all the land has been settled and congestion has peaked.)

You do more with requiring urban developers to stop with the arms race of cool little things and to start with an arms race of parks, safe routes to schools, public and private. Getting people to move downtown is the first battle. Getting them t o raise their kids there is the war.

[Uffda]

1. Magnet schools are great for kids that are in the program. The schools that have these tend to put lots of energy into them but if your kid has to go to the "music magnet", and isn't into music, well too bad. We need fewer special programs and more solid general studies programs. We are not training stars for the Met. We are training young minds who will be welders, nurses, IT people, etc. An appreciation for music is fine. Squeezing a 1000 kids into a school that is focused on a career track that 10 will follow is wasting resources.

Maybe you were just using 'music' as an example as I couldn't find one school where the major focus was only music. I think Beveridge and South have Performing Arts as just one area. Also as far as I have seen these magnet programs also have solid core subjects being taught.

2. Many schools have serious discipline problems. These have lead to people moving their kids out of OPS just to get a safe school. Break a rule, get a consequence. If the rule you break is minor, then your consequence is as well. If you commit a felony, you get felony punishment, even if Ernie Chambers doesn't like it.

I think you will find serious discipline problems in any school. BUT it seems OPS are the ones who get the 'press' MPS, Ralston and Papillion also have their problems.

I do agree there should be consequences and I have worked in schools where there was and I have worked in schools where there wasn't and also where there were lots of 'helicopter' parents' There child couldn't be in the wrong and must be the schools fault.
I look at it as if there is a disruptive child in a classroom that child needs to have consequences so the other children can have a good learning environment. I know lots of teachers feel the same way but it doesn't seem to work that way when it reaches building admin as there seems to be a lot of pressure to not suspend coming from upper admin/state and parents. I know one school in W Omaha toward the end of the year, a student should have been suspended for his/her offense BUT it almost always came down as "johnny is going to stay home for the rest of the year at parent request" Which meant Johnny would have been suspended but parent didn't want on record so they are keeping him home - also meant that school has a low suspension rate.

3. We need the admin people out of TAC and the students back into TECH. We could make a lot lives better with solid course in industrial arts so that kids who don't have money could go there, get some training in a trade, and have something to fall back on if college doesn't work out.

It always amazing me to see the size of TAC -- i know there are some classes being taught in the Career Center - doesn't Metro handle some of the trade type classes? How does the other metro school districts handle that?

4. When a principal accuses a kid of being a pothead, and he isn't one, he or she should not get to go to round 2. A dopey kid can be dopey for a lot of reasons, pot is one of many reasons. There should not be TWO law firms who specialize in suing OPS. The enforcement office of the Department of Education should not have OPS on speed dial. When we called to file a complaint about our kid's treatment, they knew all the OPS officials and were chomping at the bit to wail on them.

Sounds like a personal issue that you have had to deal with. Not sure what round 2 is.

5. Popular kids should not get treated differently than other kids by the school. Popular kids get treated differently by other kids, that is the nature of popularity. That should not get you special handling in extracurriculars or other occasions when there are 50 people and 10 slots.

I wondering on this one if you had a child who didn't make one of the 10 slots. There has always been a limited number of slots for activities. I was cut from the 7th and 8th grade basketball teams as they only took 12 players and that was in the early 70s. And I will say that is you watched who played through high school it was some of the same kids as they got the 'training' the rest didn't


6. The SECOND biggest high school sports championship in Nebraska is Trapshooting. This is without a single OPS team in it. Somehow, the children in Bellevue can handle trapshooting, but the children in Omaha can't?

Do you have a link that shows it is second largest? I know nothing about trapshooting in the high schools. Also do the student/athletes have to furnish their own trapshooting guns and ammo or is that provided by the schools?

7. Extracurricular activities are too focused on performance at the class A level across the state (not just OPS). Kids have to choose 1 sport to play all year. This is really unhealthy for the developing adolescent in terms of over use injuries and in terms of being a dolt as an adult because they spent all their time playing sport X and know nothing about sports Y and Z. We have big enough high schools that we could have 3 volleyball teams at many of the schools, we could have a couple of hundred going out for X country. We have 20 girls out of 500 on a Vball team now. Time to open it up or make them club activities and pull the schools out of them.

I will agree that students should not have to choose one sport to focus on and I know high school students who do more than one sport and other activities. What I have heard it isn't so much the schools but the outside sports clubs that require their athletes to focus on that one sport even to the point that some tell their athletes not to play on the high school team.

We do have enough high schools to have more teams BUT the the sports that need a court is where space takes over. There isn't enough gym space for these and some of the teams practice way beyond what I will call the supper hour to get all the teams in.


Cross country is a favorite of mine - no one needs to get cut and I know one middle school in OPS that had approximate 100 runners on its team last fall. BUT it isn't the glamour sport and never really has gotten the recognition on the sports pages.

So here are 7 ideas. Bring 7 of yours.

1 Discipline can be improved.

2 Parent involvement needs to be improved. Schools are some times looked as the drop off for the day by parents at all economic levels.

3 Standardized testing is out of control and proves nothing. There is no buy in for the students so many don't care

4 There needs to be needs some equity with in the schools. I know a school that's parents group raised over $25000 a year that that the school used for technolgy purchases, so they could spend their building funds on other things. Another school had over $100,000 last year in their budget to update their technology school wide and then I know of one school that's PTA was able to purchase just 2 iPads and that school's budget was cut this year and it has computers that are 2005 and 2007 vintage. There is a growing gap between the haves and have nots -- and it isn't all West vs East.

5 Let teachers teach instead of preparing students for standardized tests.

[Garrett]

Don't like the term white flight. It has racist overtones and has been used by the left as a word grenade for so long that it stifles creative discussion.

I think you do more damage by having "growth boundaries" than you do by kicking in some realistic cost requirements Kr lane roads at time time of development, not ten years after all the land has been settled and congestion has peaked.)

You do more with requiring urban developers to stop with the arms race of cool little things and to start with an arms race of parks, safe routes to schools, public and private. Getting people to move downtown is the first battle. Getting them t o raise their kids there is the war.

Like it or not, white flight is a legitimate term for how suburbs developed in the 50's, 60's and to some extent the 70's. Just because history isn't pretty and ideal doesn't mean we should ignore it or try to make it sound nice and fluffy.

[bigredmed]

Don't like the term white flight. It has racist overtones and has been used by the left as a word grenade for so long that it stifles creative discussion.

I think you do more damage by having "growth boundaries" than you do by kicking in some realistic cost requirements Kr lane roads at time time of development, not ten years after all the land has been settled and congestion has peaked.)

You do more with requiring urban developers to stop with the arms race of cool little things and to start with an arms race of parks, safe routes to schools, public and private. Getting people to move downtown is the first battle. Getting them t o raise their kids there is the war.

Like it or not, white flight is a legitimate term for how suburbs developed in the 50's, 60's and to some extent the 70's. Just because history isn't pretty and ideal doesn't mean we should ignore it or try to make it sound nice and fluffy.

Legitimate only because the haters that coined the term got to write the history books.

Insults are still insults, whether lefty history professors approve or not.

White and all the other races left crappy areas of town en mass as soon as they could. The fundamentals of why Clifton Hill went from a normal middle class school like Rose Hill to a crappy school during the 66-69 era affected everyone in that area of OPS regardless of color. The Black Panthers and other trouble makers did as much damage to middle class African American families as any other in that neighborhood. Might as well call it Black flight when people left when my parents did. How about Hispanic flight when they left the crappy areas of town?

Again, word grenades are like land mines. Their users end up fragging themselves when the people they need to persuade simply stop engaging with them at all and they lose whatever chance they had at getting the outcome desired.

[Garrett]

Legitimate only because the haters that coined the term got to write the history books.

Insults are still insults, whether lefty history professors approve or not.

White and all the other races left crappy areas of town en mass as soon as they could. The fundamentals of why Clifton Hill went from a normal middle class school like Rose Hill to a crappy school during the 66-69 era affected everyone in that area of OPS regardless of color. The Black Panthers and other trouble makers did as much damage to middle class African American families as any other in that neighborhood. Might as well call it Black flight when people left when my parents did. How about Hispanic flight when they left the crappy areas of town?

Again, word grenades are like land mines. Their users end up fragging themselves when the people they need to persuade simply stop engaging with them at all and they lose whatever chance they had at getting the outcome desired.

Lovely partisan blaming, since the left is naturally the spawn of all evil and the right is some saintly group of real Americans who have never done any wrong in this country.

Anyway, let's take a little history lesson. Tell me, what were race relations like in the United States like during the 50's and 60's? I mean it's not like the racism that permeated the country in those times could have any effect on the way cities developed. Ohhhhhh wait. The thing about history is, everything affects everything.

Now then, nationally there were things like redlining, mortgage discrimination, and even federally guaranteed mortgages that were only available to whites. Some neighborhoods even made exclusionary covenants. Beyond that, there was the whole practice of blockbusting. Today, most cities in the United States remain segregated, some of it due to these factors from the past.

Now, if you look at even Omaha's own development, it's a sketchy thing. Take the North Freeway and the Double Tree as the largest examples. The freeway destroyed and separated entire neighborhoods, and the Double Tree cut off 16th street, the main thoroughfare for North Omaha. That would be like cutting off Dodge street for West Omaha. There are other examples beyond this, but to just say that there was never any racism in Urban development is to ignore a real part of our past.

[bigredmed]

Legitimate only because the haters that coined the term got to write the history books.

Insults are still insults, whether lefty history professors approve or not.

White and all the other races left crappy areas of town en mass as soon as they could. The fundamentals of why Clifton Hill went from a normal middle class school like Rose Hill to a crappy school during the 66-69 era affected everyone in that area of OPS regardless of color. The Black Panthers and other trouble makers did as much damage to middle class African American families as any other in that neighborhood. Might as well call it Black flight when people left when my parents did. How about Hispanic flight when they left the crappy areas of town?

Again, word grenades are like land mines. Their users end up fragging themselves when the people they need to persuade simply stop engaging with them at all and they lose whatever chance they had at getting the outcome desired.

Lovely partisan blaming, since the left is naturally the spawn of all evil and the right is some saintly group of real Americans who have never done any wrong in this country.

Anyway, let's take a little history lesson. Tell me, what were race relations like in the United States like during the 50's and 60's? I mean it's not like the racism that permeated the country in those times could have any effect on the way cities developed. Ohhhhhh wait. The thing about history is, everything affects everything.

Now then, nationally there were things like redlining, mortgage discrimination, and even federally guaranteed mortgages that were only available to whites. Some neighborhoods even made exclusionary covenants. Beyond that, there was the whole practice of blockbusting. Today, most cities in the United States remain segregated, some of it due to these factors from the past.

Now, if you look at even Omaha's own development, it's a sketchy thing. Take the North Freeway and the Double Tree as the largest examples. The freeway destroyed and separated entire neighborhoods, and the Double Tree cut off 16th street, the main thoroughfare for North Omaha. That would be like cutting off Dodge street for West Omaha. There are other examples beyond this, but to just say that there was never any racism in Urban development is to ignore a real part of our past.

No argument here.

Lots of people blame people in my parents' generation for racist motivation for their choices in homes. I find this generalization to be offensive as it was not just the whites in their generation that wanted out of craptastic east Benson. Anyone who could scrape together enough money to move to Country Club, West side, or Millard did so (regardless of color). They did this because the schools were going south in a big way, the Black Panthers openly threatened the lives of our principal and the other white teachers at Clifton Hill (imagine being a third grader and hearing that, and processing what these guys would do to you if they were going to murder the principal) and the neighborhood was getting sketchier by the day.

Racism existed. It was a huge problem, but it was not the only problem and it was not the only motivator of people's migration from the east to the west of Omaha. Using that term paints a lot of people with a racist brush. That is not fair to them, and it is not fair to history, or to the practical aspects of trying to get people to move into east Omaha again.

[S33]

Lovely partisan blaming, since the left is naturally the spawn of all evil and the right is some saintly group of real Americans who have never done any wrong in this country.

Congrats, you've figured out politics, young lad.

[Garrett]

Lovely partisan blaming, since the left is naturally the spawn of all evil and the right is some saintly group of real Americans who have never done any wrong in this country.

Congrats, you've figured out politics, young lad.

Heil Reagan.

[joeglow]

So it's not really a policy issue, it's more of a state of mind issue?

In as much as someone arrogantly thinks THEIR state of mind is the only acceptable one and they need to convince everyone else of that.

[joeglow]

Build hipstervilles and you will get what we have now, transitional housing for 20-somethings who are not yet parents, and 50 and 60-somethings who don't need assisted living yet.

Interestingly enough those are the two largest demographics in the US.

[/img]

Really. How do you come to that conclusion from this graph.

[S33]

I'm still trying to figure out how 80+ female bar skyrockets.

[Coyote]

Because there are more women between the ages of 80 and 120 than their are between 75 and 79?

[Garrett]

Build hipstervilles and you will get what we have now, transitional housing for 20-somethings who are not yet parents, and 50 and 60-somethings who don't need assisted living yet.

Interestingly enough those are the two largest demographics in the US.

[/img]

Really. How do you come to that conclusion from this graph.

That graph was made using 2000 Data. Add 13 years to each number present. Voila.

[RNcyanide]

Even with 13 years, it shouldn't make too much of a difference...

[Dundeemaha]

To:

Really. How do you come to that conclusion from this graph.

Even with 13 years, it shouldn't make too much of a difference...

If you shift the graph by 13 years, the 2 bulges in the graph baby boomers (49-64 years old now) and their children (echo boom/generation y/millennials ~ 18-31 years old now). Fit exactly with bigredmed's quote.

Build hipstervilles and you will get what we have now, transitional housing for 20-somethings who are not yet parents, and 50 and 60-somethings who don't need assisted living yet.

and my response:

Interestingly enough those are the two largest demographics in the US.

[RNcyanide]

Oh. I just assumed that everything shifted up an age group lol.

[joeglow]

To:

Really. How do you come to that conclusion from this graph.

Even with 13 years, it shouldn't make too much of a difference...

If you shift the graph by 13 years, the 2 bulges in the graph baby boomers (49-64 years old now) and their children (echo boom/generation y/millennials ~ 18-31 years old now). Fit exactly with bigredmed's quote.

Build hipstervilles and you will get what we have now, transitional housing for 20-somethings who are not yet parents, and 50 and 60-somethings who don't need assisted living yet.

and my response:

Interestingly enough those are the two largest demographics in the US.

Why not visit the 2010 Census website and look at age breakouts? As expected, there is little to no change in the age break-outs by your age classes. According to your terrible logic, in 110 years, the 160 year olds will be the largest group. Sorry, but demgraphics don't work that way. Over the 10 year time horizon, there was some shifting, but nothing near as dramatic as this.

[Dundeemaha]

Why not visit the 2010 Census website and look at age breakouts? As expected, there is little to no change in the age break-outs by your age classes. According to your terrible logic, in 110 years, the 160 year olds will be the largest group. Sorry, but demgraphics don't work that way. Over the 10 year time horizon, there was some shifting, but nothing near as dramatic as this.

So, apparently you didn't actually go to the census data before making your false statement about the age break-outs. They basically exactly shifted, and your horrible analogy is deeply flawed given that the life expectancy of someone aged 45years in the United States (from 2008 census estimation) is just over 80 years old, which makes projecting demographics 10 years into the future far more reliable than 110 years.

[1]

[1]: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/brie ... 0br-03.pdf

[RNcyanide]

...so everything does just shift up...

[MadMartin8]

...so everything does just shift up...

More or less.