[grania]

The answer, so crazy that it might work:

Set up an enterprise zone including the bridges to Canada, the shoreline and a nice chunk of adjacent land. Move all people out of it. Hand it over to Canada on a 99year lease. Canada would pay Detroit money that went directly to pensions and public safety. During that time, the pensioners would die off and what's left of Detroit would benefit from enterprise zone jobs going to residents.

Nobody's that bold.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Just sell the art from the art museum.
Divide up the spoils...

[cripplecreek]

Nobody's that bold.

In a sense that's exactly what Rand Paul is proposing as a pilot program that can be extended to other port cities and beyond. He says he wants to see them cut all business and personal taxes to 5%. Since Michigan and Detroit already allow private competition with many city services, its likely that private contractors will take over many of them.

Saginaw cut their city employees from 500 down to 20 with private contractors hiring most of the employees.

[TomasUSMC]

open that PANDORA’S BOX and you’d have NY, LA and Chicago leased off in no time.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Set up an enterprise zone including the bridges to Canada, the shoreline and a nice chunk of adjacent land.

Yeah, it's funny how the only thing you ever have to do to restore prosperity to a given area is make government go away. Detroit's collapse is no more unintentional that Stalin's famines in the Ukraine - and it was accomplished by the same type of people with the same type of motivations.