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You Know That Your City Has Become A Hellhole When….
Did Michael Snyder overlook any examples of Life in the Big Hellhole? I get the feeling this list is only the beginning. ~ Ilene
You Know That Your City Has Become A Hellhole When….
Courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse
All across America there are cities and towns that were once prosperous and beautiful that are being transformed into absolute hellholes. The scars left by the long-term economic decline of the United States are getting deeper and more gruesome. The tax base in many areas of the nation has been absolutely devastated as millions of jobs have left this country. Hundreds of cities are drowning in debt and are desperately trying to survive.
Last year, city government revenues in the United States fell by another 2.3 percent. That was the fifth year in a row that we have seen a decline. Meanwhile, costs associated with health care, pensions and virtually everything else continue to explode. So what are cities doing to make ends meet? Well, one big trend that we are now witnessing is that many U.S. cities have been getting rid of huge numbers of employees. If you can believe it, 72 percent of all U.S. cities are laying workers off this year. Social services and essential infrastructure programs are also being savagely cut back in many areas of the country. The cold, hard truth is that most of our cities are flat broke and things are going to get even worse in the years ahead.
So how do you know if your own city has become a hellhole?
Well, a few potential "red flags" are posted below....
You know that your city has become a hellhole when most of the street lights get repossessed because of unpaid electric bills.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when it announces that it will no longer prosecute domestic violence cases in order to save money.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when it simply stops sending out pension checks to retired workers.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when it rips up asphalt roads and replaces them with gravel because gravel is cheaper to maintain.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when nearly half of all the people living there can't read.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when one out of every ten homes sells for under $10,000.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when you can literally buy a house for one dollar.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when you have hundreds of people living in the tunnels underneath your streets.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when three of your past five mayors have been sent to prison for corruption.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when nearly half of the public schools in the city get shut down because of a lack of money.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when you have dozens of young people rampaging in the streets that are thirsty for revenge and that are armed with bats, pipes and guns.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when it is considered to be one of the 10 most dangerous cities in the world. [Note: Capetown came in first, Detroit came in third, and New Orleans came in ninth. - ed.]
You know that your city has become a hellhole when thieves defecate in the back seat after they have broken into your car and taken your things.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when prostitution and drug dealing are two of the only viable businesses that remain in the city.
You know that your city has become a hellhole when the police chief announces that the police department will no longer respond to calls about burglary and identity theft due to very deep budget cuts.
Many of the examples above may seem humorous at first glance, but the truth is that they reveal just how deeply tragic our economic decline really is.
This is one of the reasons why I write about our trade deficit over and over and over. Every single month, tens of billions of dollars more wealth goes out of the United States than enters it. Every single month, we are getting poorer as a nation. Every single month, we lose more jobs and businesses.
Any politician that tells you that he or she can solve our economic problems without fundamentally addressing our horrific trade imbalance is lying to you. That means that there are a whole lot of liars in both political parties.
If the number of good jobs continues to decline, the plight of the average American family is going to continue to get worse. Home sales will continue to hover around record lows. The American people will continue to become increasingly frustrated with the economy.
The signs of decline are all around us.
Quit listening to the politicians and just open up your eyes and look.
So do any of you have any additional signs that a city has become a hellhole to add to the list above? Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below....
Second picture credit: Jak's View From Vancouver
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Trade deficits are cause by government overspending. For what it's worth, if the government stopped its suicidal program of massive pump priming the trade deficits would self correct.
Yeah right
You know you live in a hellhole when the nicest house with green grass is the bankers - seen all across rural America and the Midwest. Follow the motherfucking fraud- fiat.
It's the same in most every community - lost farms = Record bonuses for making hellholes and gutting America.
Make no mistake about it, making hellholes is no accident, and fraud dripping with govt sponsored corruption pays big. Record big.
Small town bankers are poor compared to the corporate drug pushers, er, doctahs. Follow the money. Now 17% of GDP and growing like cancer.
2/3 of the world's population lives on $3/day or less and you're asking for pitty for local bankers? Do local bankers push fiat?
Only following orders...
You know your city is a hellhole when it has been run by only liberal democrats for many decades.
Fact is, take all of the old, large industrialized states that used to have a manufacturing base, and they all have been city fiefdoms run and controlled by Democrat machine politics. Corruption, graft, nepotism and rape of the local tax base for at least the last 40 years is the norm.
People have voted with their wallets and left these shitholes.
bullshit.
White cities like Portland have been run by liberal democrats since like...19 always.
This has nothing to do with liberalism.
Why would anyone on here still be living in a large urban area? It's common sense that urban areas are going to get worse and worse. Get out now while you can still afford it.
There are still decent cities to live in. Portland, Seattle, & Vancouver BC come to mind.
The second photo paints a disengenuous picture: sure Van has some rougher spots, but over all it is a shining example of a large, cosmopolitan city. Certainly not a "hellhole".
Vancouver is one of the most expensive places on the planet to live, if you are wealthy enough to afford it there are MANY many great places to live, the point is that where incomes have declined hellholes have emerged. These days that is just about everywhere. Portland is OK, not great, I would go way out of my way to avoid Seattle.
That first photo... is it Cairo, IL's downtown by any chance? Of course there's a thousand streetscapes just like that around the country.
Me, I don't mind living in a hellhole. Cleveland's hanging on, I'm not worried about selling my house anytime soon, and all this vacant land around me sure is taking gardens and livestock well.
Hard to keep the groundhogs down, though... it was easier to run off the streetwalkers!
I used to live in Cleveland. The first day I was there I was in the town of Elyria , "a suburb community" , I thought Cacti would start blowing across the roads. All the businesses were boarded up. This was in 1980.
But Cleveland has guts. No matter how bad it gets , the town keeps going. The people there make things work when other people just run.
It looks like scenes from "The Last Picture Show"
All these factors weigh into the equation. Then there are racial realities that no one wants to notice, much less acknowledge, in "polite company."
And no, this is not "hate." Nor is it bigotry. It is observation.
Steve Sailer calls those, "hate facts".
Cities don't become hellholes in one year or two.
It takes decades of profligacy by the town 'leaders' to award no-bid contracts to their favorite contractors, to give in to every whim that will siphon money off of taxpayers, and lenders to give to their favorite contributors, to set up juicy pension and healthcare contracts with the unions that cannot be funded with current and future production.
When government workers in these towns drive around for 20 years in new high end cars, brag about not having to work very hard for obscene pay, and thumb their noses at you when you demand an accounting of their stewardship, you know that they have become one of the Elite, no different than Lord Blankfein, Dick Fuld, and Bernie Madoff: Just Scam artists working at a lower level.
When the entrails of bankrupt cities like our Capitol, Harrisburg are examined, in the mess you will find flagrant corruption, self-dealing, bribery, extortion, and patronage at the roots.
All this while piously announcing at every opportunity that Jesus Christ is their saviour, as though that is a magic mantra to protect them from criticism for their arrogance, greed and incompetence. My guess is that Jesus would puke.
I just hope that people will be able to distinguish between decent public employees and those that are ripping them off. Some of us aren't driving around in BMWs and awarding wasteful contracts. Being one of the people trying to fight that cancer from inside the system is a maddeningly uphill fight. You don't get rich, there's always another monster to slay, and the public too often judges guilt by association.
Detroit is a War Zone. Many, many years of liberal policies.
again, WRONG.
Norway has had decades of liberal policies. Portland, OR has.
This has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with race. The lengths you guys will go to to ignore the obvious....
Geography has nothing to do with it?
Norway (I've been there) has great sea ports, not to mention oil.
Portland (I've been there) has great sea ports. Comes in kind of handy during boom times with Asia.
The Greenland Norse (I'm just guessing that they were all white) failed. The locals (non-white) just continued on...
There are LOTS of factors. The world/nature is very dynamic.
Let's declare victory and pull out. Or at least make each Baby Momma make her Baby Daddy pull out.
Nature makes NO promises regarding anyone's survival, especially if the population multiplies like rabbits, eats shit, smokes, drinks, etc. This is why universal health care in an uneducated idiocracy fails.
Detroit? Future soylent green farm.
I'd further add that its universal MEDICAL care that is THE problem. Health care is more about prevention than cure (which is what the MEDICAL juggernaut, combined with the sick-producing food juggernaut, is forcing upon us).
What's going on in Detroit will be going on everywhere. It's just that in a densely populated location it's a lot more visible. Lots of older folks out in the rural areas are also going to start giving way sooner. NOTE: I'm an "older" person living in a rural area, and I'm quite aware of my predicament (which is why I avoid smoking, drinking, TV and, for the most part, commercial food).
Ive watched my 400lb neighbor (who doesnt/ cant work) get hauled away by an ambulance (After she loaded herself on the gurney and waddled down the steps herself) TWICE in the last 3 months. TWICE! An ambulance AND a fire truck each time. Anyone whos been injured knows ambulance rides are atleast 1k a pop, and dispatching a firetruck costs around 300$ depending on where you live. So im saying somewhere around 3,000 in taxpayer money hard at work.... and i still see them fill the recycling with 2litre sodas erry week
would you rather she were left to die?
Not saying that. Diet and exercise are a personal choice. Soda and excess sugar are probably half the problem with the obecity epidemic. Highfructose corn syrup might as well be renamed di-uh-beat-us. My problem with it is come 2014 i will legally be held to paying MORE money out of each paycheck into a crony healthcare scheme. Which means il be paying for people like this all accross these rotten fruited plains. Not to mention knee replacements, diabetes meds, and whatever else they "need". More handouts baby
What happens in nature?
Do you understand "opportunity cost?" Money applied for one thing is unavailable for another thing.
So, with this in mind I'd spin the question back at you: Why do you feel that children should be deprived of health care (which might result in THEM dying)?
This makes me want to listen to some Spinal Tap.
Living on a sex farm???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk9aThIovMA&ob=av2e
"You know where you stand in a ..."
I once had about the same problem when I played SimCity 2000.
I leveled most of the houses and the population went down, and I kept everything that still made money.
It worked than in the game so why not in the real world?
Population control. Maybe start another war and inlist all the unemployed and ship the to some sandbox to fight? And the patriots who survice can come back and do underpaid jobs that even the mexicans don't want.
Herman Cain 999 Plan: Did It Come From SimCity?
Herman Cain's '999 Plan' Looks a Lot Like Sim City's 999 PlanSomebody put freakin' Sid Meyer in charge of the economy!
999 will A) not generate near enough revenue to run government even at half the current levels and B) is grossly regressive taxation that simply will not fly with the vast majority. It is DOA just as Mr. Cain will be at the GOP convention. All we need is another black man with zero government experience and no political capital who would actually make the nation wistfully nostalgiac about the Obama years as bad as they are.
It worked than in the game so why not in the real world?
........................................................................
Because video games are virtual and this is the real world, a notion hard to understand for US citizens?
Video games's universe is usually connected to a permanent source that allows a permanent inflow.
No, the Congo was not limitless.
What "still makes money" with no people?
Video games first universe is connected to a second universe that is unlimited.
Transfering money, resources, wealth, manpower or whatever from the second universe to the first universe, the one the player plays in is always possible.
Video games are the wet dream of expansionists, they can tap as much as they want into a second universe, it wont dry up.
Problem with that is all men over the age of 18 must register for that draft in the US.
All that's going to happen is the 1% will buy their children out of the service, or put them on twink duty somewhere.
We Can't Make It Here Anymore - by James Mcmurtryhttp://www.youtube.com/embed/jTW0y6kazWM
Fucking thank you! One of the finest song writers around! Amazing showman! i love you. And him. Erryone should listen to this track
Negativism breeds negativism. Toss Jamie Dimon's* head, Apocalypto style, down the steps of Wall Street. See. Now that's positivism!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_99mcINufQ
*In his book "The Eagle's Gift," Carlos Castaneda spoke of the immediate afterlife known as "The Eagle's Beak." Any and all men who lived according to anything less than impeccable principles would be devoured in the beak.
Pessimistic realism breeds pessimistic realism, I may be negative about our future, but at least I will not be badly surprised by it when it comes to pass.
By the way, the Don Juan books by Carlos Casteneda were almost certaianly fruads, works of fiction.
"I will not be badly surprised."
I do not know what pact you have made, with what entity, or principality. I only know that I am glad it was not my choice, and not my path. Good luck to you sir.
Each of us has the capacity to explore at least one dimension above us. Madam Blavatsky was claimed to be a "fraud" as well. Yet, she saw many things beyond this earthly realm. Many occult arts have been lost to industry and machine. The world is not plastic, glass, and steel.
I will hand you a point for that Null, though it is easier to explore other realms when you do not have to worry about daily survival in this one which is glass and steel. I have no pacts with other entities, but if you know who I can speak to about tonights powerball numbers I am game to try. :)
Change you can believe in ....YES we can !
You city has become a hellhole when my family moves there.
OldPhart
You city has become a hellhole when my family moves there
We related?,my family considers redecorating hanging new or more hubcaps on the double wide,and adding more tin foil for the T.V. antenna.
Your city has become a hellhole when you can't afford a Firebird on blocks in the front yard and have to settle for a Camaro on blocks instead.
I don't care which nation it is. If it spends 2 dollars for every dollar it takes in then this sucker is going down. Doesn't take more than elementary school math to figure out.