The question: Who killed Detroit?
The answer: Not necessarily who you think.
The Motor City once had over 1.8 million people living within its environs. Now the number making their homes in Detroit as a little over a third of that.
What happened to make large parts of Detroit look like a set from a movie about post-apocalyptic America? There are two groups with whom we must lay the blame for the city's misfortunes: the Democrat political machine and the UAW. There's plenty of blame to go around between these two groups.
The Democrats in power did everything they could to make it less attractive for businesses and residents to stay. The UAW did everything it could to make sure jobs with the Big Three automakers went away. Both groups succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, which is why Detroit is an ongoing economic disaster.
Business and neighborhoods are thriving in the outlying towns and cities, with foreign automakers locating technical centers in a number of them. At least they think there's a future near Detroit, even if they're avoiding Detroit itself.
The communities themselves also have the good fortune not to be under the sway of the destructive Democrat political machine that has so damaged Detroit. As one commenter writes:
Let us hope for the communities sake that they fail.
(H/T Instapundit)
The answer: Not necessarily who you think.
The Motor City once had over 1.8 million people living within its environs. Now the number making their homes in Detroit as a little over a third of that.
What happened to make large parts of Detroit look like a set from a movie about post-apocalyptic America? There are two groups with whom we must lay the blame for the city's misfortunes: the Democrat political machine and the UAW. There's plenty of blame to go around between these two groups.
The Democrats in power did everything they could to make it less attractive for businesses and residents to stay. The UAW did everything it could to make sure jobs with the Big Three automakers went away. Both groups succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, which is why Detroit is an ongoing economic disaster.
...a lot of the blame goes to a generation of bad management. But the main reason for Detroit's decline is the greed of the industry's main union, the UAW, which priced the Big Three out of the market.Reading the comments from the editorial linked above is telling as well, with more than a few giving prime examples of the differences between Detroit and some of the surrounding communities. The contrast is striking.
As recently as 2008, GM, Ford and Chrysler paid their employees on average more than $73 an hour in total compensation. The 12 foreign transplants, operating in nonunion states mostly in the South and Midwest, averaged about $42 an hour.
Guess which manufacturers are healthiest and expanding their market today? In 2008, the Big Three still made 59% of all cars in the U.S. But, according to recent estimates, their market share is now 46% -- with foreign companies selling the bulk of all U.S. cars. So Detroit's loss has been the South's and Midwest's gain.
Business and neighborhoods are thriving in the outlying towns and cities, with foreign automakers locating technical centers in a number of them. At least they think there's a future near Detroit, even if they're avoiding Detroit itself.
The communities themselves also have the good fortune not to be under the sway of the destructive Democrat political machine that has so damaged Detroit. As one commenter writes:
Come to Metro-Detroit and see the suburbs with Republicans in charge such as Novi - then see the suburbs with leftists in charge - such as Pontiac. You can literally tell the basket cases from the still-vibrant burbs by their leadership.Of course I have no doubt the Democrats have plans for the still-prosperous communities, making sure they are brought into the leftist fold and turned into dying towns, all in the name of some pie-in-the-sky leftist utopia that will never come to be. They'll play the envy card and the greed card and the racial card in an attempt to bleed those communities dry as well.
Let us hope for the communities sake that they fail.
(H/T Instapundit)
Middle class flight was all too common in the 70's and 80's. Even our local major metropolis - Boston - saw it, particularly after the court ordered busing to 'balance' the public schools began in 1974.
As the saying goes, if you give the people enough of an incentive to leave, they will. Detroit did that and then some. Is it any wonder it's a basket case these days? You know it's bad when the idea of bulldozing all of the empty neighborhoods and turning them all into 'urban' farmland and green spaces is considered an excellent idea.
I dimly remember my family checking out the house they were have built in Novi--Number Six on the train outside the Motor City--in the year 1972. They owned a home in East Detroit.
All the whites left, except for the elderly Italian neighbors. The first to go were the Spauldings with their five boys. They left for California. I dimly remember going over to play with them.
The neighborhood deteriorated very rapidly. Blacks moved in and it visibly turned into something ugly.
I was five. The subdivision was ridiculously small; now it's ridiculously large. Novi was largely a sleepy farming community with lots of land easily available. Now it has two malls larger than anything in NH.
It was the riots. Palpable fear. Blacks marauding. National Guard had to be sent in. Military men carrying around assault rifles to bring peace.
It initiated White Flight in earnest. Mayor Ed Koch calls it middle class flight. Fine.
But it was White Flight. Gotta have property and life under some degree of protection.
When my mother traveled to inner city Detroit in 1974 to pick up a Schwinn bicycle that could only be found there, a cop put on his lights and asked her what she was doing.
He ended up giving us a police escort, waiting outside while she made the purchase, and drove us back to the city limits. I guess my mom's 13" kitchen knife wouldn't have cut it.