Turn Out The Lights - Largest U.S. Cities Becoming Cesspools Of Filth, Decay And Wretchedness

The Economic Collapse ^ | 05/24/2012 | Michael Snyder

[SeekAndFind]

Once upon a time, the largest U.S. cities were the envy of the entire world. Sadly, that is no longer the case. Sure, there are areas of New York City, Boston, Washington and Los Angeles that are still absolutely beautiful but for the most part our major cities are rapidly rotting and decaying. Cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis and Oakland were all once places where middle class American workers thrived and raised their families. Today, all of those cities are rapidly being transformed into cesspools of filth, decay and wretchedness. Millions of good jobs have left our major cities in recent decades and poverty has absolutely exploded. Basically, you can turn out the lights because the party is over. In fact, some major U.S. cities are literally turning out the lights. In Detroit, about 40 percent of the streetlights are already broken and the city cannot afford to repair them. So Mayor Bing has come up with a plan to cut the number of operating streetlights almost in half and leave vast sections of the city totally in the dark at night. I wonder what that will do to the crime rate in the city. But don't look down on Detroit too much, because what is happening in Detroit will be happening where you live soon enough.

A recent Bloomberg article described Mayor Bing's plan to eliminate nearly half of Detroit's streetlights....

Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating almost half its streetlights.

As it is, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed board, can’t afford to fix them. Mayor Dave Bing’s plan would create an authority to borrow $160 million to upgrade and reduce the number of streetlights to 46,000. Maintenance would be contracted out, saving the city $10 million a year.

What this means is that there are going to be a lot of neighborhoods that will have the lights turned off permanently.

So which neighborhoods will those be?

According to one top Detroit official, "distressed areas" are going to be on the low end of the totem pole....

“You have to identify those neighborhoods where you want to concentrate your population,” said Chris Brown, Detroit’s chief operating officer. “We’re not going to light distressed areas like we light other areas.”

City officials know that they cannot force people to move from "distressed areas", so they are going to encourage them to leave by cutting off services.

But turning off the lights is not the only way that Detroit is trying to save money.

Recently, officials in Detroit announced that all police stations in the city will be closed to the public for 16 hours a day.

It is so sad to see what is happening to what was once such a great city.

Back in the old days, Detroit had a teeming middle class population.

Today, 53.6% of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.

Back in the old days, Detroit was a shining example of what America was doing right.

Today, 47 percent of all people living in the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.

Back in the old days, middle class neighborhoods sprouted like mushrooms all over Detroit.

Today, the median price of a home in Detroit is just $6000.

Needless to say, crime is exploding in Detroit and many families live in constant fear.

Many have taken justice into their own hands. Justifiable homicide in Detroit rose by a staggering 79 percent during 2011.

But Detroit is only one example of a national trend.

For example, a recent article by Jim Quinn entitled "More Than 30 Blocks Of Grey And Decay" described the filth, decay and wretchedness in West Philadelphia. Quinn refers to the drive through this area as "the 30 Blocks of Squalor"....

The real unemployment rate exceeds 50%, murder is the number one industry, with drugs a close second.

As you drive down the 30 Blocks of Squalor you meet the ghost of Squalor future for West Chester Pike. The population along this corridor is ignorant, dependent, and represents the dregs of our society.

But this area was once home to middle class families. There were once many beautiful homes in West Philly, but most of them are now either gone or are crumbling badly. According to Quinn, the physical decay is matched by the social decay....

The once proud homes are in shambles. Bags of garbage dot the landscape. Most of the people who live here are parasites on society. Personal responsibility, work ethic, education and marriage are unknown concepts in this community. Even though more than 50% of the students in West Philly drop out of high school and the SAT scores of West Philly High students are lower than whale ****, the bankrupt school district spent $70 million to build a new high school/prison to babysit derelicts and future prison inmates. The windows do not have steel bars yet, as the architect was smart to put all windows at least eight feet above street level.

One of the great things about the article is that Quinn pointed out how the retail stores in the area reflect the things that the population of the community truly values....

The Chestnut Plaza truly represents what is important to this community. This Squalor Center, as opposed to Power Center, includes a video porn store, cash checking/payday loan outlet, smoke shop, donut shop, Laundromat, and liquor store. No need for a wedding ring store or resume writing service.

Sadly, there are communities like this all over the country. As I wrote about recently, the entire state of California is slowly being transformed into one gigantic cesspool.

Yes, there are still a few areas where the wealthy play that are absolutely beautiful. If you stay in the wealthy enclaves you might never even know that the rest of the state is badly decaying.

There are really good reasons why millions of people are moving out of California. For example, a reader named Peter left the following comment on one of my recent articles....

I am a native Californian ( Im 61) and have lived here all but two years of my life. I can tell you absolutely that this state is not what it was 30 years ago. Cities like San Francisco have gone from being world-class tourist attractions to national disgraces. Los Angeles is a third-world city. San Diego is bankrupt. Even Silicon Valley, despite the recent improvements, is no way what it was in the 90′s. The retail trade is all but dead in this state. Even high-end malls like Rodeo Drive and Ocean Ave in Carmel are full of vacancies.

Throughout the state, good businesses are shutting down and hard working families are selling their homes. The void that is being created is being filled by crime and gangs. The following is a comment that a reader named Roberta left on that same article....

Yep we lived in Oroville CA back in 2007 and it was just starting to get bad then. Montgomery Wards closed, then McMahan’s furniture closed and NOW McDonalds is closing this July along with a grand slam of well known businesses are all folding and pulling out of Oroville or folding lock-stock-n-barrell. It’s turning into a gang town with wide spread rampant drug use. I feel sorry for family and friends that are still their clinging onto the hope that thnigs “will” get better. But I don’t think so.

Perhaps things are still quite good where you live.

Perhaps you think that you will be immune from all this.

Sadly, the truth is that this is just the beginning.

The U.S. economy is actually performing much better than it should be thanks to the trillions of borrowed dollars that Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress have been spending into the economy.

When our debt-fueled prosperity ends, a lot more cities are going to end up looking just like Detroit.

America cannot prosper without middle class jobs, and those kinds of jobs are rapidly disappearing.

Just this week HP announced that it is going to lay off 27,000 workers.

We are losing middle class jobs at a time when we desperately need more of them.

Last year, 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor's degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed.

Yet our politicians continue to pursue the same foolish policies over and over.

So things are going to continue to get worse and America is going to continue to descend into squalor.

You better get ready.

[wardaddy]

Yes i do.....all else being relative

[Road Glide]

“And the cities we bombed out of existence such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Berlin etc look modern, beautiful, vibrant and shining! Such dichotomy!!
But then all those American cities in decline are run by democrats. Will people ever wake up and smell the coffee?”

There is a “scent of coffee” in your statement that you yourself may not be smellin’.

Look at the faces of the people who lived in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Berlin, then vs. now. The faces pretty much look the same (except, of course, for the influx of Muslims into Germany).

Next, look at the faces of the people who inhabited major American cities in 1940, vis-a-vis the faces of those who live in them today.

What has changed?
Hint: it wasn’t the politics, for the most part...

[ctdonath2]

You don’t win by giving up.

[Road Glide]

“I too, am pessimistic and am convinced that we will balkanize. This may be be for the best though. Liberal and Conservative ideologies are incompatible, and I for one, do not wish to live with those who fervently believe that socialist-marxism is our future.”

A thoughtful post.

I would contend that the ONLY pathway to a future in which conservatives will thrive in North America is some kind of “post-American” solution. It will come -after- the existing USA has become so polarized and so balkanized that a unified co-existence between conservatives and the left is simply no longer possible.

When that happens, we will see a “Great Migration” of conservatives away from liberal areas to those parts of the nation in which they will be able to re-congregate and form overwhelming and (at least in their areas) un-challengeable majorities. Not so unlike the flight from California that we are seeing amongst productive people right now.

Conservatives would prefer to keep the nation intact, so long as they could be left alone in their own areas and live by the values and mores they choose, without harassment from the increasingly liberal and authoritarian federal government. They wouldn’t care how the left lived in their states, just so long as conservatives could still live by “the old values”.

But it’s the left that will NEVER permit this. For the left, it’s their way or else, and they will never be satisfied until everyone falls under their diktats. The left (and the feds) will use all the powers at their command, including the military and the increasingly militarized civilian police, to force their will upon conservatives.

Somewhere down the road in our future, I see a Soviet-style breakup as the ONLY peaceful solution to the otherwise intractable problems we are facing.

Conservatives and those who believe in the old ways — folks who are primarily Euro in heritage — will have to make the choice:
Go their own way, or...
Submit to a future of socialism and ever-increasing governmental power.

It’s going to be the choice of the century...

[Prospero]

And from the article, about the 30 blocks of squalor on West Chestnut Street in west Philly, I think this must be the laundromat, donut shop, porn house, even a Halal meet store... not mentioned by the blogger, who "supports" the Occupy movement.

[Pelham]

This was the subject of E Michael Jone’s book “The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing”

“Focusing on Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Chicago, Jones shows that Government sponsored “renewal” of American cities was not a program that failed by going sadly awry, but instead was a planned destruction of the ethnic neighborhoods that made up the human, residential heart of the cities”

http://www.culturewars.com/Reviews/SlaughterReviews.html

[Pelham]

“I mean, we have fought a great Civil War where more than 700,000 died for their proper freedom,”

The war was fought specifically ‘to Preserve the Union’. The idea that it was the civil rights movement plus guns is just more modern nonsense trying to absorb the past into current controversies.

[RightOnline]

"I guess you may or may not see this reply.....

I saw it. You get it.

[Pelham]

“Next, look at the faces of the people who inhabited major American cities in 1940, vis-a-vis the faces of those who live in them today.”

“What has changed?
Hint: it wasn’t the politics, for the most part...”

This is where those collections of Life Magazine photos from past decades are highly instructive.

All issues of Life are online here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=N0EEAAAAMBAJ#all_issues_anchor

[Ken H]

So your conclusion is the RACIAL MAKEUP and CULTURE of the population is the most important factor that influences the thriving or decaying of a city?

Yes.

I know of no majority black city in the US that is NOT riddled with crime and decay. I know of no city in the US with a black population of under 5% that IS riddled with crime and decay.

Can anyone provide examples of cities where the above is NOT true?

[Melas]

I’m curious Wardaddy. Since you lay some of our modern problems at the feet of the “racial redress stuff” from the 1960’s, how do you think it should have gone? What should have been done differently from a racial standpoint?

[Melas]

I believe the rule of thumb for preppers has been for many years: live more than a tank of gas away from the city.

That doesn't leave a whole lot of locations in the United States. I can't name too many places where a tank of gas doesn't get you from one sizable city to another. I can mentally, without a looking at a map on a single tanks of gas go from L.A. to Las Vegas, to Phoenix, to Albuquerque, to OKC, to Little Rock, to Nashville, to Charlotte, to Richmond, to Philly to NYC.

Good luck finding a place more than a tank of gas away from one city or another.

[Melas]

Is it honestly your contention that the problem is skin color? I’ve been scratching my head for weeks now wondering what the hell has happened to FR. The comments with racial overtones are waaaay over the top.

[Trailerpark Badass]

You poor thing.

[okie01]

What should have been done differently from a racial standpoint?

If I may...

Bussing was an mistake of epic proportions. The federal judge who first mandated it admitted that it had been a mistake some years later.

Forced integration was too drastic -- and controversial -- a remedy for a situation that, left alone, would've solved itself.

Moreover, it shifted the emphasis of public education from education to social engineering -- and enforced enormous (and unnecessary) expenditures on transportation. In the process, it destroyed the neighborhood school concept and seriously diluted public education for all children -- black and white.

If the federal judiciary had been content to let nature take its course, integration would likely be a fact of life today -- while we are, in fact, further away from that goal than ever. And we might still have a functioning system of public education...

[Ken H]

Is it honestly your contention that the problem is skin color?

No. Skin color has nothing to do with it.

I’ve been scratching my head for weeks now wondering what the hell has happened to FR. The comments with racial overtones are waaaay over the top.

Let me ask this. Which would you move your family into - a neighborhood that was majority black or majority white?

[Melas]

Let me ask this. Which would you move your family into - a neighborhood that was majority black or majority white?

Well, since you put it that way: My family did move into a neighborhood where whites are a minority. There are more black people in my neighborhood then white people, and more Hispanics yet still.

[Melas]

Furthermore, how do you think posts like this come across to black FReepers like Windflier who’ve I’ve just pinged? Sorry, but I’m not buying into this race thing. Worse, how do you think you represent this website to those who might be looking but haven’t joined, and who might happen to be black?

[Stentor]

This was the subject of E Michael Jone’s book “The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing”

I witnessed the murder of Trenton NJ by Urban Redevelopment.

[Ken H]

Well, since you put it that way: My family did move into a neighborhood where whites are a minority. There are more black people in my neighborhood then white people, and more Hispanics yet still.

Interesting.

Now back to my question. Which would you move your family into - a neighborhood that was majority black or majority white?