Detroit tries downsizing

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100308/ap_ ... ng_detroit

They refer to it as a "rusted out" city. They might say something about the city leaking oil and littering the countryside with fallen mufflers too if they want to complete the automobile analogy. GM might yet redeem itself by coming out with some new models, such as an SUV named the "Menace", advertised with the jingle "Buy a Menace, be a menace!", and a sedan called the "Whaler", advertised as "an Exxon-Valdez behind every driver's seat" which, designed to leak oil and various other fluids, is so named because if everyone drives one, all that leaked oil will find its way into the oceans and kill all the whales!

I looks like an abandoned city, I know people live there but any picture I have seen of
that city only shows the worst parts, all I really know about Detroit is the Red Wings.

Detroit and the State are beyond broke, the city government was on the FBI most wanted list. 50% unemployment, and a cleanup would take billions.

Even if it was done, the restored land would become the property of friends of city government.

The pattern has been that the old was torn down to build new, but when no one wants it anymore, who bears the cost of cleanup?

At an imminiant domain level, say paying $1,000 a lot, that is $8,000 an acre, then a hundred thousand to clear it, $10,000 here to demolish and fill a lot.

That comes to $100,000 an acre, when good clean farmland sells for $350 an acre. Plus all of the money would first have to make it's way through Detroit City Government. Double or triple that for removing the streets, power lines, cutting the water and sewer lines out of the system.

The whole area came up in the days of many small Cadmium and Chrome plating shops, it was leaded, so nothing grown there should be eaten, and that cleanup cost is much higher. No Organic farming, no fruit trees, and all of upstate is forests with a crash in the demand for lumber and paper.

Then there is the Ullma, the largest Islamic community in America.

Detroit makes the news, but the Rust Belt runs all across south of the Great Lakes into New York and New England.

For the cost of cleanup we could build a national high speed train system, power grid, new cities, and buy Canada.

For that kind of money we could pay off the National Debt, all mortgages, consumer debt, and have free education and medical care.

So we will do nothing, but blame each other for the problem.

In the last decade our economy has declined by a third, our debt risen by 1,000%, and we have been invaded by 30,000,000 illegals. Most industry has been given tax breaks to relocate to China, Mexico, and the new money is in shorting America.

Half of the employed work for government, and the other half, about 25% of America, is expected to pay for it all. 45,000,000 War Babies are coming up for retiring. There are three to pay for their Social Security Medicare, but only a third works.

This is why all government has private retirement and health care. They will sell bonds to fund it, and let the future deal with being owned by China. Napoleon sold the people of Lousiana to Jefferson, the Russians sold the people of Alaska, it is the way governments work.

State and local governments will be thrown to the wolves, and their death will be the reason for declaring Martial Law, to preserve order.

I have feeling that if there is going to be an American Phoenix, it will be Detroit. There is also a movement to practice Urban Gardening within the city in the place of lost industrialization.