25 Facts About The Fall Of Detroit

From theeconomiccollapseblog.com (July 20):

One of the greatest cities in the history of the world is just a shell of its former self.  The following are 25 facts about the fall of Detroit that will leave you shaking your head...

1) At this point, the city of Detroit owes money to more than 100,000 creditors.

2) Detroit is facing $20 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities.  That breaks down to more than $25,000 per resident.

3) Back in 1960, the city of Detroit actually had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.

4) In 1950, there were about 296,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit.  Today, there are less than 27,000.

5) Between December 2000 and December 2010, 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost.

6) There are lots of houses available for sale in Detroit right now for $500 or less.

7) At this point, there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.

8) About one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.

9) An astounding 47 percent of the residents of the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.

10) Less than half of the residents of Detroit over the age of 16 are working at this point.

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Wasting away in Progressiveville as the singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffet might sing.

In March 2005, Lawrence W. Reed wrote an essay called “Detroit's Flirtation with Economic Suicide”. In this essay he writes:

The political establishment in Detroit is statist to the core. No failure of government is too big to prevent that establishment from throwing more public money at it.

By a vote of 7–2 last September, the Council endorsed a paper titled “A Powernomics Economic Development Plan for Detroit’s Under-served Majority Population.” It spent a reported $112,000 for the document, written by a former low-level apparatchik in the Carter administration. It called for the creation of an “African Town” within the city, to be implemented by an overtly racist policy of dispensing city-financed loans and grants exclusively to black applicants.

So, it seems that Detroit is done flirting. It is married to economic suicide. Hopefully, it can get a divorce.

Progressivism—coming to a town near you. Or maybe your town. Who knows. God I hope not.