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THE Detroit Thread (merged)
Re: Detroit Files For Chapter 9 Bankruptcy
by Lore » Sat 03 Aug 2013, 13:55:41
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'C')uriously, while the pensioners all resent the proposed cuts to their pensions due to Detroit's bankruptcy, none of them seem to connect the problem to the corrupt politicians that they and their unions help put into office to run Detroit for the last 30 years.
There are longtime "motor cities" in other countries. Do they have these problems or is it a US phenomenon?Detroit was the US epicenter of one centralized manufacturing industry. Destroyed by money flowing into too many corrupt hands, from the industrialists themselves, to the union bosses on down to the politicians. There was no decentralization of other wealthy manufacturers to leverage competing interests and diversify the local economy. These were kept out.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
... Theodore Roosevelt
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Re: Detroit Files For Chapter 9 Bankruptcy
by Plantagenet » Sat 03 Aug 2013, 17:41:36
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')
Detroit was ... Destroyed by money flowing into too many corrupt hands, from the industrialists themselves, to the union bosses on down to the politicians. There was no decentralization ....
')
Detroit was ... Destroyed by money flowing into too many corrupt hands, from the industrialists themselves, to the union bosses on down to the politicians. There was no decentralization ....
This isn't quite true. Detroit once had the highest wages in the country.
The problem with Detroit isn't that the car manufacturers and their workers made too much money ---- the problem is the incompetent politicians who ran Detroit for the last 50 years raised taxes so much they caused the middle class to flee the city, decimating Detroit's tax base.
For decades Detroit has been borrowing and spending more than it takes in----and now they are billions in debt with no hope of paying either their past debts to bondholders or their future obligations to their city government retirees.
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Re: Detroit Files For Chapter 9 Bankruptcy
by Lore » Sat 03 Aug 2013, 18:42:17
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')The problem with Detroit isn't that the car manufacturers and their workers made too much money ---- the problem is the incompetent politicians who ran Detroit for the last 50 years raised taxes so much they caused the middle class to flee the city, decimating Detroit's tax base.
For decades Detroit has been borrowing and spending more than it takes in----and now they are billions in debt with no hope of paying either their past debts to bondholders or their future obligations to their city government retirees.
')The problem with Detroit isn't that the car manufacturers and their workers made too much money ---- the problem is the incompetent politicians who ran Detroit for the last 50 years raised taxes so much they caused the middle class to flee the city, decimating Detroit's tax base.
For decades Detroit has been borrowing and spending more than it takes in----and now they are billions in debt with no hope of paying either their past debts to bondholders or their future obligations to their city government retirees.
You're late to the game of understanding what happened over the productive life of Detroit.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ixty years ago, car makers from Chrysler to Cadillac, Studebaker to Dodge had plants in or near the city limits. There were hundreds more parts plants, steel mills, foundries and parts depots, where the products built in Detroit factories were sorted and sent on to the vast networks operated by the auto companies across the country. People in all parts of the city could walk to work, or take a streetcar or bus. Some of them chose to drive, because they earned enough to afford to vehicles they were making (something their parents and grandparents might not have been able to do).
Professor Boyle says that in Detroit’s glory years, from 1910 to 1950, the city was a boom town, equal to any of the gold rush towns of the American West.
Now, there are just two big car factories left in Detroit, Chrysler’s Jefferson North Assembly Plant on the east side, and General Motors’ Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant just north of I-94. While some of those smaller factories remain, dozens are empty, their structures dotting the city’s landscape like dandelions on a spring lawn. All that presents an enormous challenge to Mayor Dave Bing in his efforts to reinvent the city.
Some of that job decline actually was due to the auto companies’ growth strategies. From the 1940s to the 1990s, the auto companies branched out across the country, pursuing a strategy of building vehicles closer to their customers. The jobs that might automatically have gone to Detroit, or in G.M.’s case, to Flint, Mich., instead went to places such as Doraville, Ga., Framingham, Mass., Tarrytown, N.Y., St. Louis, Fremont, Calif., and elsewhere.
Beyond the job loss, demographics played a role in the shift away from Detroit. A century ago, as planners were looking at where the city could grow, they envisioned three centers of commerce: downtown, the New Center area about 10 minutes drive north, and a third area in northwest Detroit, the area known as Palmer Woods.
The first two areas, and surrounding neighborhoods, filled in by World War II and the thought was that the third area, from New Center to the city’s northwest boundaries, would then come to life after the war.
But as veterans returned, and their families were born, the suburbs beckoned. Rather than move back to their city neighborhoods, they headed beyond Detroit’s borders. That demographic change, as much as the “white flight” so talked about after the Detroit riots of 1967, had an equally important influence on the city’s drop in population.
http://www.changinggears.info/2011/03/2 ... goes-bust/
All of this was underway before 2000. Again, in large result of putting all your eggs in one basket. The final downfall from the corruption at the top levels was a dystopian result of a city and industry convulsing.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
... Theodore Roosevelt
... Theodore Roosevelt
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