Shrinking Detroit has 12,000 abandoned homes

AFP ^ | Sun Aug 14, 5:03 PM ET

[Xenalyte]

Y'all will have to get started without me . . . I have a Chronicle gig 6:00 to 7:30 that night!

[devane617]

"Lead in bricks?"

Let me venture a guess and say someone will eventually declair Detroit a "Federal Disaster Area" and we will have another Katrina-like evac at taxpayers expense. Watch closely, and see who picks up the debts in the future.

[Bacon Man]

Nick's on Thursday, anyone? :-D

Hap's office Christmas party is Thursday which lets us out. :(

You back for good now?

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Exactly what I thought. Every bad aspect of that city mentioned in the article can be traced back to an over-regulation of free trade...starting with the unions who took so much from their employers that their employers had to let them go. They had no jobs, so they had to move out of the city. That was one of the first dominoes. Their solution is not more free trade, but more regulation to try to take money from a captive audience. And they're actually considering turning the land into farmland? By the time they got finished with the superfund sites and the hazmat cleanup, there'd be no soil left. Just getting rid of the lead-tainted soil would take off the top inch.

[Pietro]

I got lost in Detroit one morning and stopped at a convenience store to ask directions back to the highway. All of the items for sale were behind a 2" thick bulletproof glass wall. The people had to tell the shopkeeper what they wanted and he would go and get it, after he got the money.

The neighborhood looked like Berlin in May of '45.

[longtermmemmory]

I find it interesting that a part of the new bankrupcy code is for MUNICIPAL Bankrupcies.

[Southack]

"Are there any livable majority minority cities?"

Yes. Selma, Alabama.

This isn't a Black/White issue. It's a liberal/conservative, marxist/capitalistic issue.

[Lijahsbubbe]

Suburbanites are taking the bodies of their relatives out of cemeteries

There go the votes.

[Revolting cat!]

Yeah, but he hadda runaway too!

[Jason_b]

"declair" ! ? Now that is a dandy of a spelling error!

[devane617]

"declair" ! ?

Punctuation dude. Try this for assistance:

http://www.grammarbook.com/

[Revolting cat!]

declair

Mmmmmmmm... d'eclair!

[JasonC]

In Detroit, after you pay your federal taxes FICA etc, you get to pay -

3.9% MI state income tax
3% Detroit city income tax
6% MI state sales tax if you buy anything
3.4% to 4.3% property tax

That's right Virginia, on a $200,000 house you'd be socked for another $6800 a year, on top of your wonderful mortgage payment. The feds will take a third of your income and the locals will take a quarter, leaving you and the bank to tug of war over less than half.

Owning property in metro Detroit is financially insane.

[devane617]

My Favorite. D'clair with a Caffe Latte.

[Jacquerie]

This isn't a Black/White issue. It's a liberal/conservative, marxist/capitalistic issue.

Yes, I suppose you are right.

Still, Detroit's plight is another reminder that civilization is fragile and brittle. Civilization has retreated before and history is littered with such lessons. Not just Rome but 14th century France, 1930s Germany, the Soviet Union, the last thousand years in Persia, the list goes on.

Radical leftist unions combined with equally thuggish Marxist local government brought a once prosperous city to ruin. I trust God alone will forgive the left, I will not.

[Southack]

It should surprise no educated person that "civilized" people of even moderate means are "retreating" from Marxist-run areas such as Detroit (complete with clutched-fist Lenninesque statue).

Detroit has neither weather nor geography on its side to stem the tide. Its downtown land has lost so much value that its "best use" is now considered agricultural.

Well, once you turn urban blocks back into the farmland from whence they came, you've pretty well stated that you aren't in an area that knows how to manage prosperity.

The wealth of Ford and GM has been frittered away into the abyss of corruption and mismanagement that always goes hand in glove with Marxism.

Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbabwe can relate.

[DugwayDuke]

"Their solution is not more free trade, but more regulation to try to take money from a captive audience."

Well, you can have too much freedom don't you know. Just read any of the 'free trade' or 'walmart' threads here on free republic. They are replete with calls for limiting your freedom to purchase what you want from who you want.

[ninonitti]

Lead in bricks?

Yup, so Superman can't peek thru 'em