If you’re following the story of the decline and fall of Detroit, then this Kevin D. Williamson article over on NRO is a must.
Some nuggets:
Detroit has the highest child-mortality rate of any American city, exceeding that of many parts of what we used to call the Third World. The rate of death before the age of 18 in Detroit is nearly three times New York City’s, and its infant-mortality rate exceeds that of Botswana. The main cause of premature death among the children of Detroit is premature birth — the second is murder. While the city’s murder rate among adults is nothing to be proud of, more horrifying is the fact that between 30 and 40 children are murdered in Detroit in a typical year.
Detroit represents nothing less than progressivism in its final stage of decadence: Worried that unionized public-sector workers are looting your city? Detroit is already bankrupt, unable to provide basic services expected of it — half the streetlights don’t work, transit has been reduced, neighborhoods go unpatrolled. Worried that public-sector unions are ruining your schools? Detroit’s were ruined a generation or more ago, the results of which are everywhere to be seen in the city. Worried that Obamacare is going to ruin our health-care markets? General-practice physicians are hard to find in Detroit, and those willing to accept Medicaid — which covers a great swath of Detroit’s population — are rarer still. Worried about the permissive culture? Four out of five of Detroit’s children are born out of wedlock. Worried that government is making it difficult for businesses to thrive? Many people in Detroit have to travel miles to find a grocery store. This is the endgame of welfare economics: What good is Medicaid if there are no doctors? What good are food stamps where there is no food? What good are “free” schools if you’re so afraid to send your children there that you feel it prudent to arm them first?
Detroit is what Democrats do.
Read the whole thing.
Tags: Crime, Democrats, Detroit, Kevin D. Williamson, National Review, Welfare State
It’s always nice when the folks writing about Detroit remember that the whole “Bankrupt!” thing is really more of a coda to the tragic tale of a city that’s been sliding downhill for 50 years. It was a hellhole when I was growing up there. It’s not really any more (or less) of a hellhole now, despite the municipal government’s inability to scrape together enough stolen cash to keep paying off the bureaucrat class (the ones who admit that they don’t work (“anymore”, they say, as if most of them actually did useful work every day when they were on the full-time payroll), the ones who pretend to work but actually don’t, and worst of all, the ones who actually _do_ work, and by doing so, actively make life even worse for the people who have to live in Detroit) at their previously-negotiated rates.
This sudden inability to keep paying off the leeches has made the city into a recurring item on the national news, but it’s not like there’s any surprise that the city which popularized arson as a recreational activity (rather than, say, an act of violence against one’s enemies or fraud against one’s insurance provider, as it typically is in other cities) was eventually going to run out of people to tax.
Detroit already sucked when my mother graduated high school. Its problems are only financial to the extent that ultimately _everything_ a collective entity does will cause financial consequences. The real problems are cultural and political. Fix those, and the city might eventually have a chance to recover. Ignore them, and no amount of tinkering with the pensions or the unions or the balance sheet is going to be any more effective than treating dismemberment with band-aids.