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