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I told people the way to save Detroit years ago. Import a bunch of progressive hipsters.
They're the only folks willing to live among the underclass long enough to buy 'em out, revitalize the neighborhood and jack up their taxes to pay for the things they like.
Downtown Detroit was already being gentrified. The process would have been long, but less costly than the $100 million being spent on bankruptcy crap.
FWIW - I recommend folks look at a set of photographs posted on Weather.com. They are all of the ghost town that was Detroit. I have never, outside of pictures of war, seen a more depressing presentation.
I see this as a warning to all major industrial cities. Detroit did not diversify it economy in time to avoid collapse as the auto industry abandoned the city for lower cost workplaces. Similar things happened to other northern cities when the textile industries left the US south and them the orient. I expect the same will happen to currently prosperous cities unless they diversify.
I could say the same to you, who ignores facts in favor of pre-set ideology.
The fact is that the Detroit had one major industry, the U.S. auto industry. Fact: they faced major competition in the 1970s onward, from Japan. Fact: that decreased sales and GM, Ford, et al, responded by closing plants. Fact: they also moved plants to cheaper labor areas, including Mexico and Asia. Fact: as such, plants closed in Detroit and people fled, leaving the previous debts behind.
We know you are ideologically driven to blame it all on liberal policies but that's a false narrative. When oil fell to record low levels in the 1990s, Texas had a high unemployment problem that had nothing to do with government policies. Now that oil is over $100/bbl., oil pumping is driving the Texas economy and it isn't because of conservative Rick Perry. San Francisco is doing just fine, with a 5.4% UE level, while they are the most liberal city in America.
It is true that much of Detroit's economic well being was tied to the automakers. It is also true that Detroit's elected officials contributed to its race problems, its poor schools, and poor fiscal policies. Over a period of decades, these elected officials, all Democrats, failed to put in place the policies necessary to correct Detroit's problems. Two Detroit mayors were convicted of felony crimes.
As for Texas - it did suffer in the mid-1980s when the energy business weakened. Texas did not really suffer in the 1990s because of low oil prices. The early 1990s recession affected everyone, including Texas. Oil prices spiked in the early 1990s. Texas' economy is far more diverse than many think - and Texas learned some lessons from the 1980s. Texas' current boom and population growth is driven by several things - strength in energy (not just petrochemicals), technology (electronics, software), agriculture, and the relative weakness of other areas (such as Michigan).
Rick Perry will surely claim credit for many things. But I think reality is that he managed spending well, and didn't really change the course that Texas has been on for decades.
Detroit is what happens when a one-industry town loses its one industry.
There are lots of cities that were one industry town, like Pittsburgh. But Pittsburgh offered tax incentives and capital for businesses to relocate and expand while Detroit, and cities like Youngstown, decide that there isnt a need to entice businesses through these credits and would rather offer handouts to the poor.
hows that working out? It fails everytime...
People need jobs, not handouts, and those cities who handout welfare like candy, are doomed to die.
It seems these "successful" cities simply handed the “welfare" to the investors in the form of "tax incentives and capital" and not the indigent for food and rent.
How do you propose Detroit find the money to do the same?
focus on cities going down the same reckless path and change their behavior. NOW, and change it 180 degrees.
But we should concede that for Detroit, it is simply too late.
It's not "too late" for Detroit, but they will have to "change" - the city of Detroit got 'lucky' with Governor Snyder making the tough calls. 1. Send in Orr (who did some amazing work in 3 months) and 2. Pull the plug and send them to Bankruptcy. It's not going to be easy, but decades of graft, lies, incompetence, and pure Union Greed have led the City to this end. Now they have to Fix it. Not us, them. The Unions will fight this tooth and nail - exactly the way they fought the Governor of Wisconsin. The Federal Government and the US Taxpayers can not "bail out" Detroit or any other City - that would be acceptance/enabling of their poor practices and just invite more of the same.
The title of Orr's report on June 14 is a bit of a misnomer - it's more a "State of the City" than a proposal. It's pretty easy reading and paints how a great US City became more like a 3rd World city. This should be published in every large city in America as it exposes the underbelly of what happens in the dark that leads to the destruction of a City.
At it's core - Detroit has 21,000 retirees with only 9,700 employees to fund them (and their own pensions and benefits) - it's clearly unsustainable and has been that way for decades. Despite that unsustainability, they continued to paper over it and "hope" the gravy train would never hit the wall.
Pay attention folks - this could be your city and might become your city. I believe that it's a pretty sure bet that our Federal Government is even worse than Detroit and it's only a matter of time until it implodes.
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,329 posts, read 54,400,252 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by animatedmartian
Shame the Republicans and white-majority weren't powerful enough to stop them. Or maybe they were just being humble. Or apathetic.
Or smart enough.
But humble?
Nah, I don't think so.
I think they followed the Republican game plan of squeezing what they could from the oranges and split, let those who stayed worry about cleaning up the rinds.
The old saying of "take the money and run" is most effective if you control and have the money. The people with money ran and left a disaster in their wake. This is to be expected as that is the way to make and sustain wealth. Take the profit and leave the cost IS the American Way.
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Instead of Saving Detroit, we should
