So Detroit is now Bankrupt...

[papamudd]

Pipedream24 said:

No, this was not avoidable unless you could go back in a time machine and stop the riots back in the 1960's. it was the beginning of the end for Detroit. After the riots,the slow migration of all the decent hardworking citizens began. At its peak, Detroit had over 2 million people living in it around 1960...now it's down to around 800,000 with over 20% unemployment. My Grandparents used to tell me how beautiful the city was when they grew up...but when I was a kid growing up in the 80's, I couldn't believe them. The city was already a warzone. Buildings boarded up everywhere, drug houses all over the place, and nasty hookers littering the blocks. My grandparents were the only Caucasian people living on their street and they held out as long as they could. They bought there house in the late 40's and finally got forced out of their  house when bullets sprayed through their walls from the crack house next door. That was around 1990.

If you have never been there, Detroit is a massive city when it comes to the amount of area it covers. When you lose that many tax paying people and have to provide services to same amount of area cost will get out of control. Tack on 40 years of Coleman Young and Kwame Kiltzpatrick running the city and you have a recipe for disaster. Those two may have been the most corrupt mayors in the countries history and the people of Detroit just kept reelecting them...not  that they were helping the city, but because they were democrats and the color of their skin. Not that it really mattered. When you have a police force that was severely underpaid, a less than 50% high school graduation rate, and empty buildings everywhere, you have a recipe for disaster. It's a real shame because you have a real nice area developing around Greektown and the stadiums downtown. But if you stray a couple blocks watch out.

People have thrown out ideas about demolishing half the city that is abandoned and turn it into farmland. You could reduce the cities service bill, create jobs, and get rid of the abandoned parts of town all in one shot. But it was shot shot down instantly by the corrupt government and all the lazy welfare recipients that might actually have to work for a living.

As far as the auto industry goes, most of the factories have been in the suburbs for quite some time. So the recent downturn in the U.S. auto industry only had a minimal effect on Detroit's tax revenue. But as some of the above posters mentioned, you can blame that on the unions. When you have janitors making over $20 an hour, getting time and a half and double time on the weekends, you have a serious problem. The plants shut down for a month and all the workers still get 70% of their pay for the month....seriously??? And they still have all their vacation and sick days. Paying huge bonuses for years to people already earning 50k a year working the line with a high school education and they expected the industry to survive. I hope the UAW is happy. They destroyed the pride of Michigan. 

Detroit will not comeback in my lifetime. And unfortunately this is going to start happening more across the country. Oakland, California will be the next big city to file bankruptcy. It's another city that has been blue for 50 years and is in the same situation as Detroit. 

And what's even scarier is that our Federal Government is running the entire country the same way these cities have been run. How much longer can the Fed keep printing money before the U.S dollar is worthless. The whole system is broken. Things need to go back to the way our founding father's laid out. Have the Federal government deal with military and foreign concerns and let the states run themselves. Stop regulating, policing, and spying on your own citizens. But I fear it's too late and whether we like it or not we are no longer a democracy and are crossing the line into a solicialistic state run by corporations.

End Rant and sorry for bouncing around on my train of thoughts.

sorry for quoting a wall of text, but it does deserve a read twice :P... though I'm drinking and could only read once. Overall I think you outlined a lot of things that are important to this discussion. (as far as I can tell)