Posted on 07/21/2013 6:11:02 AM PDT by Zakeet
Detroit’s bankruptcy filing is one depressing read. Poverty, crime, blight – you name the malady and there’s plenty of data to back it up. And unfortunately, Detroit’s not alone. You may be wondering which city hits the wall next.
I’m not making predictions, but I’ve looked at one indicator that may offer some clues: population loss.
As any good Ponzi Schemer will tell you, your future looks much better when there are more people moving in than moving out. Once the population change turns negative, a vicious circle can take hold, and that’s exactly what we saw in Detroit.
In addition to spending excesses and mismanagement, the city’s financial problems stem from the challenges of downsizing infrastructure as quickly as the tax base contracts. Here are a few lowlights from the bankruptcy declaration:
And now for a look at other cities that are battling severe population loss. Here are the top 15, ranked by the decline from each city’s population peak, according to the decennial U.S. census:
And here are the top 15 ranked by the percentage decline (for this list, I required a population of at least 125,000 in or before 1960):
Nine cities have the dubious distinction of making both “top 15” lists. For these cities, I’ve added charts showing population histories using all of the data I could find. There’s one chart each for the Midwest, Northeast and South (and if you’re looking for St. Louis, I went with the last Missouri accent that I’ve heard – definitely a drawl):
The rate of population decline in most of these cities was at least slower from 1980 to 2010 than it was from 1950 to 1980 (Detroit was one of the exceptions). Nonetheless, they’ll need to manage the exodus more carefully than Detroit did to avoid the same fate.
You won't find any cities from my bastion of liberalism on that list ... cause we're not afraid to raise taxes ... and our population losses are being offset by lots of immigrants from third world countries!
Thanks for posting this.
It’s not the cities. It’s the whole friggin country that’s going bankrupt.
The cities cannot print money. If the country wasn’t printing money the country would already be bankrupt.
We are Bankrupt.
If countries stop taking our money just on the fact that we promise it’s good we are done for.
If we bail out Detroit, it would guarantee it’ll continue to happen. The fed’s will begin devouring municipalities as it did GM. Ultimately, the bureaucracy will own everything and everyone.
Another reason the lefties want to “concentrate” suburban people back into to urban hellholes. Then want to lock to custodians in with the animals, to clean up the poop.
/johnny
It’s not so much how many people are leaving town as whether it’s the productive or non productive.
You can drive around the parts of I-285 and on I-75 and on I-85 that are within the city limits of Atlanta at night and find all those nice street lights that are supposed to light up the roadways for safety are off.
If you get into Cobb County (or other metro county I’d expect) they are on.
Whas up wid dat, Kaseem?
Until Obama is forced out of office by his own Democrat, liberal, left-wing failures or impeached, more major cities and minor cities will fail!!! Without further ado....”There is no such thing as a free lunch”!!! Obama and his communist/socialist/racist mantra has failed miserably!!! Throw the failure, POTUS Obama out of office, NOW!!! This moron Obama is the joke of the entire world!!! The USA is being laughed at and ignored across the entire world!!!
Right on, Bernanke keeps throwing money out there to keep the US above water.
Fed balance sheet has increased 85 billion a month for years. That's “B” for billion.
Someday, dah chickens are gonna come home to roost-ah.
Right now, artificially holding down interest rates is killing elderly retired folks, but if they do rise, even by one or two points, it will add billions to the national debt.
The Feds have placed this country between a rock and a hard place. If they cease monetizing our debt, interest rates will rise...killing the housing market and business expansion. If they continue pumping billions into the markets, organic economic growth remains stagnant, volatility in the markets continue, savings and spending slump....and American national debt continues to drown us.
The whole lot should be sent packing.
And it's because of this that the stock market keeps hitting records.
Of course, having to keep doing this to keep the economy from crashing is a sign that the economy has NOT been fixed. IMHO, it's NASDAQ 5000 and the housing boom all over again.
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The pattern for many big cities is similar - as the cities became more liberal, the productive people began to migrate outward.
From my experience in Cleveland, OH, several events preceded or coincided with the drop in population. The Hough and Glenville riots in the late 1960s and forced busing in the 1970s come to mind. There’s more, of course, but these 2 stick out in my memory.
Pittsburgh also has a serious pension shortfall, but the local press doesn’t like to talk about it.
He’s a another new world order queen.
If they thought white flight was bad before, it’s going to go to warp speed after all the black mob attacks.
Glendale CA has a very aggressive traffic police force that must raise a lot of money for them. By all the construction and street maintenance therein one would never otherwise know of this great crisis of the cities.
Those 3rd world immigrants cost a lot.
I am hoping we see a flood of bankruptcies in cities and states across America. This country needs a major re-set
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