Detroit - America's "Showcase"...

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."

Confucius

 

 

 

It is a beautiful city. It is a great place to raise kids and has job opportunities a plenty. It is a place to take foreign visitors when they visit America. It is fun to show how American ingenuity and manufacturing come together to produce products which are coveted by the world. Every Sunday night we would see a new commercial on T.V. with Dinah Shore sitting on a brand new Impala singing "See the USA, in your Chevrolet...". Yes, Detroit is truly an American success story.

 

Whoops! Wrong year - sorry. That was Detroit in 1959. How good was Detroit? During Khrushchev's historic visit to American in 1959, the mayor of Detroit wanted him to visit Detroit to show how "capitalism really works". I don't think we would do that now. Today, how bad is Detroit? There is a YouTube video comparing Hiroshima and Detroit.  The town which was all but wiped out by an atomic bomb, today is a busy metropolitan city. Detroit, on the other hand, once a center of American manufacturing success, looks like it just got nuked.

What happened? How did we here? How did Detroit become the "hollowed out" city it is today? The Detroit Free Press had an editorial in February of this year which addressed part of the problem:

"We've got a baby problem in Michigan. Too many babies are born to immature parents who don't have the skills to raise them, too many are delivered by poor women who can't afford them, and too many are fathered by sorry layabouts who spread their seed like dandelions and then wander away from the consequences. Last year, 43 percent of the babies born in Michigan were to single mothers. And even though Medicaid pays for birth control, half of the babies born here were to mothers on welfare. Eighteen percent were born to teenagers who already had at least one child. And nearly 1-in-5 new babies had mothers with no high school diploma."

Then there is this from a 2009 article in the Grand Rapids Examiner:

"To get into competitive shape would require major changes in the US auto industry, as far as outsourcing non-core capacity items, eliminating waste and unnecessary processes on the manufacturing floor to drive down production costs would be required to make Detroit lean and effective competitors. Since unions do not thrive in efficient and effective environments, as such a workplace is not conducive to their funding, the UAW and Teamsters would become one of the biggest hurdles Detroit faced in upgrading to compete in the 21^st century."

Next we have the tax situation. In 2011 the Detroit Free Press addressed the issue head on:

"Pay more. Get less. That's the social contract Detroiters endure with city government.
They pay more kinds of taxes, at higher rates, than any other citizens in Michigan.
And the services they receive in return -- police response and fire coverage, public education and lighting -- are shoddy and embarrassing. In most cities, taxes foot the bill for services, and in the most popular big cities -- Chicago, New York, Los Angeles -- it's common to pay more because of the amenities and social and cultural benefits of city life. But in Detroit, our extreme tax rates have the opposite effect. Sky-high taxes help drive people and businesses out, yielding less of the revenue needed to deliver quality services, which encourages more people to leave. It's a destructive cycle that's driving the city's livability index into the ground."

Finally, lets not forget corruption or inefficient government. This year we had the indictment of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and former Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers (She is the wife of Democrat Congressman John Conyers, the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee). In May of this year, the American Interest reported the following:

"The latest scandal, which leaves even hardened observers of the abysmal Democratic machine that has run the city into the ground bemused, involves a real estate firm which gave the felonious mayor massages, golf outings, trips in chartered jets and other perks as this enemy of the people went about his hypocritical business of pretending to care about the poor while robbing them blind. The firm, apparently run by a sleazy low class crook named by the reprehensible Kilpatrick to be the Treasurer of what was left of Detroit’s finances, used Detroit pension funds to buy a couple of California strip malls. Title to the properties was never transferred to the pension funds, and they seem to be out $3.1 million.  Overall, a Detroit Free Press investigation estimates that corrupt and incompetent trustees appointed by Democratic officials over many years in Detroit are responsible for almost half a billion dollars in investments gone wrong."

One last word about the former Governor, and darling of ABC talk shows, Jennifer Granholm. One of the local Detroit commentators had this to say about Ms. Granholm: "... those of us in Michigan forced to live under her for eight years of misery. She was the worst Governor in contemporary Michigan history, overseeing record numbers of lost jobs, closed factories, and people moving out of Michigan in droves."

In conclusion, what happened to make Detroit look like Hiroshima right after the war? 1) 43% of all children born out of wedlock and then into a life of poverty 2) Union greed and intransigence destroying the once powerful auto industry 3) Confiscatory city and state taxes and 4) Corrupt and inefficient government. Sorry Detroit, you deserved better. Chicago, don't rest too easy - I have not forgotten about you and your turn is coming up soon.