Thread: The Death Of Detroit

The Death Of Detroit
By Michael, on October 21st, 2010

Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was one of the shining examples of America's industrial might. Some of the greatest companies in the world provided large numbers of good paying jobs for hard working middle class American workers. Back during the glory days of the 1950s, Detroit was a teeming metropolis of approximately 2 million people, but today the current population is less than a million and residents are leaving in droves. Instead of being a symbol for how great the U.S. economic system is, today Detroit has become emblematic of the deindustrialization of America. Many areas of Detroit now resemble a ghost town. Many once grand structures have been sitting empty for years and years. Unemployment is rampant and crime is rapidly getting worse. We are literally witnessing the death of Detroit. But what did we expect? We have been shipping our factories and our jobs overseas for decades, and now we are paying the price.

So just how bad are things in Detroit right now? Just consider the following statistics....

*At the height of the economic downturn, the mayor of Detroit admitted that while the "official" unemployment rate in Detroit was about 27 percent, the "real" unemployment rate in his city was actually somewhere around 50 percent.

*House prices of under $1000 are quite common in Detroit now, and there are some homes in the city that you can actually purchase for just one dollar.

*Detroit Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb recently announced a plan to permanently close 44 Detroit schools.

*According to one recent estimate, the city of Detroit has 33,500 empty houses and 91,000 vacant residential lots.

*So how do you possibly turn a city around that is dying right in front of your eyes? Well, the mayor of Detroit recently unveiled his radical solution - you bulldoze one-fourth of the city.

Yes, things really are that bad in Detroit. The city literally looks like a war zone in many areas. Just check out the following video....

But let's not jump on Detroit too much. The truth is that this is happening to once great manufacturing cities and towns across the United States.

So is there much hope that the U.S. economy is going to turn around and that things will soon get better in cities such as Detroit?

No.

Every single month, factories, jobs and an astounding amount of wealth continues to leave the United States. The global predator corporations that now dominate our economy have decided that U.S. workers are far too expensive and far too much of a bother and they are moving facilities out of the U.S. as fast as they can.

American workers are now in direct competition for jobs with the cheapest labor in the world. For many big corporations, it simply does not make sense to pay a worker in the United States ten times more than they would have to pay a worker in China.

So until some fundamental changes are made, factories and jobs are going to continue to leave the country and more cities are going to end up like Detroit.

http://thedebtweowe.com/the-death-of-detroit

I visited Detroit last month. Large portions of the city have been abandoned. Many of the "almost" abandoned ares are a real shxt hole.
A great many of Detroit's minority population has little opportunity for a good education, home, or job.

The old Packard assembly plant sits idle. It will never recover. How long ago did we stop making Packard cars ?

One area had already been bulldozed, for all the buildings were removed. This was now a small farm or garden.

This isn't bad enough. A large number of immigrants have located in Detroit and are competing with long term minorities for scarce tax payer funded resources. The signs at the local home depot are in Arabic, not Spanish.

I really wasn't surprised my car was broken into, despite being inside a security fence, with a constant patrol of the private security firm. Local gangs run wide. Police will NOT investigate a car break in, such as mine. I called it in. I called at 8:30 am and was on hold for 30 mins. A written report, if I need it, was available in two weeks.

Safety and security in many areas simply, doesn't exist.

Some of it is real nice, but much of it is lost.