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America The Fallen: 24 Signs That Our Once Proud Cities Are Turning Into Poverty-Stricken Hellholes
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
What is happening to you America? Once upon a time, the United States was a place where free enterprise thrived and the greatest cities that the world had ever seen sprouted up from coast to coast. Good jobs were plentiful and a manufacturing boom helped fuel the rise of the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the planet. Cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Baltimore were all teeming with economic activity and the rest of the globe looked on our economic miracle with a mixture of wonder and envy. But now look at us. Our once proud cities are being transformed into poverty-stricken hellholes.
Did you know that the city of Detroit once actually had the highest per-capita income in the United States? Looking at Detroit today, it is hard to imagine that it was once one of the most prosperous cities in the world. In fact, as you will read about later in this article, tourists now travel to Detroit from all over the globe just to see the ruins of Detroit. Sadly, the exact same thing that is happening to Detroit is happening to cities all over America. Detroit is just ahead of the curve.
We are in the midst of a long-term economic collapse that is eating away at us like cancer, and things are going to get a lot worse than this. So if you still live in a prosperous area of the country, don't laugh at what is happening to others. What is happening to them will be coming to your area soon enough.
The following are 24 signs that our once proud cities are turning into poverty-stricken hellholes...
#1 According to the New York Times, there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit.
#2 At this point, approximately one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.
#3 Back during the housing bubble, an acre of land in downtown Phoenix, Arizona sold for about $90 a square foot. Today, an acre in downtown Phoenix sells for about $9 a square foot.
#4 The city of Chicago is so strapped for cash that it is planning to close 54 public schools. It is being estimated that Chicago schools will run a budget deficit of about a billion dollars in 2013.
#5 The city of Baltimore is already facing unfunded liabilities of more than 3.2 billion dollars, but the city government continues to pile up more debt as if it was going out of style.
#6 Today, the murder rate in East St. Louis is 17 times higher than the national average.
#7 According to USA Today, the "share of jobs located in or near a downtown declined in 91 of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas" between 2000 and 2010.
#8 Between December 2000 and December 2010, 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost.
#9 There are more than 85,000 streetlights in Detroit, but thieves have stripped so much copper wiring out of the lights that more than half of them are not working.
#10 The unemployment rate in El Centro, California is 24.2 percent, and the unemployment rate in Yuma, Arizona is an astounding 25.6 percent.
#11 It has been estimated that there are more than 1,000 homeless people living in the massive network of flood tunnels under the city of Las Vegas.
#12 Violent crime in the city of Oakland increased by 23 percent during 2012.
#13 If you can believe it, more than 11,000 homes, cars and businesses were burglarized in Oakland during 2012. That breaks down to approximately 33 burglaries a day.
#14 As I have written about previously, there are only about 200 police officers assigned to Chicago's Gang Enforcement Unit to handle the estimated 100,000 gang members living in the city.
#15 The number of murders in Chicago last year was roughly equivalent to the number of murders in the entire country of Japan during 2012.
#16 The murder rate in Flint, Michigan is higher than the murder rate in Baghdad.
#17 If New Orleans was considered to be a separate nation, it would have the 2nd highest murder rate on the entire planet.
#18 According to the Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center, Mexican drug cartels were actively operating in 50 different U.S. cities in 2006. By 2010, that number had skyrocketed to 1,286.
#19 Back in 2007, the number of New York City residents on food stamps was about 1 million. It is now being projected that the number of New York City residents on food stamps will pass the 2 million mark this summer.
#20 The number of homeless people sleeping in the homeless shelters of New York City has increased by a whopping 19 percent over the past year.
#21 As I noted yesterday, approximately one out of every three children in the United States currently lives in a home without a father.
#22 In Miami, 45 percent of the children are living in poverty.
#23 In Cleveland, more than 50 percent of the children are living in poverty.
#24 According to a recently released report, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
As I mentioned at the top of this article, the decline of the city of Detroit has become so famous that it has actually become a tourist attraction. The following is a short excerpt from an article in the New York Times...
But in Detroit, the tours go on, in an unofficial capacity. One afternoon at the ruins of the 3.5-million-square-foot Packard Plant, I ran into a family from Paris. The daughter said she read about the building in Lonely Planet; her father had a camcorder hanging around his neck. Another time, while conducting my own tour for a guest, a group of German college students drove up. When queried as to the appeal of Detroit, one of them gleefully exclaimed, “I came to see the end of the world!”
For much more on the shocking decline of one of America's greatest cities, please see my previous article entitled "Bankrupt, Decaying And Nearly Dead: 24 Facts About The City Of Detroit That Will Shock You".
So are there any areas of the country that are still thriving?
Well, yes, there are a few. In particular, those areas that are sitting on top of energy resources tend to be doing quite well for now.
One example is Texas. In recent years people have been absolutely flocking to the state. There are lots of energy jobs, the cost of living is low and there is no state income tax.
But overall, things are really tough out there. Over the past decade America has lost millions of good jobs to offshoring, advancements in technology and a declining economy.
Last year, the United States had a trade deficit with the rest of the world of more than half a trillion dollars. Overall, the U.S. has run a trade deficit with the rest of the world of more than 8 trillion dollars since 1975.
All of that money could have gone to U.S. businesses and U.S. workers. In turn, taxes would have been paid on all of that income which could have helped keep our cities great.
But instead, our politicians have stood idly by as we have lost tens of thousands of businesses and millions of jobs. If you can believe it, more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities have closed down permanently in the United States since 2001.
We have allowed our economic infrastructure to be absolutely gutted, and so we should not be surprised that our once proud cities are turning into poverty-stricken hellholes.
And this is just the beginning. The next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching, and when it strikes unemployment in this country will eventually rise to a level that is more than double what it is now.
When that happens, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near our rotting, decaying cities.
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well,... how's that nafta, cafta, gatt/wto, working out for the bush's and clinton's?
these fucking people are still praised as our unquestionable leaders?
hillary... the POS heiress to be america's first female president...
how's that working out?
were fuck'd!!!
unless???
HOPE - CHANGE - FORWARD
What do you expect to happen with trade agreements penned by globalists that outsource US jobs. Globalism is a bad idea. Too late though, all those fuckers that made out in the 80s and 90s are retired or dead and we are left with the damage. Fuck Nixon too for taking us off of the gold standard.
Did you know that in 1985 our first Free Trade Agreement was signed .....with Israel?
We can't even manage a trade surplus with that little shit country, and I don't think it's even the objective with these FTA's.
....So do we buy or sell.......
Long Pb, Au, Ag, and food.
So those who can move away from the city will move away from the city. The rest will suffer and die in the concrete jungle.
Surprise surprise... all those hellholes are statists paradises.
The responsibility for this atrocity fall squarely on the shoulders of the American multinational corporations who out sourced the businesses,the jobs and the taxes. It also falls on the shoulders of their congressional whores who lined up to sell out the country.
Which started with the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement... followed by NAFTA...
You forgot Korus and now the TPP.
really? you blame and put
what about the banksters and hofjuden who took over the fed reserve and sucked the country dry with usury? they are not to be blamed?
New York.
A first class city in a second class country.
The infrastructure in NY is horrible. "First-class"? Try visiting.
Everyone has been to New York. That's part of what makes it great.
It's by New York that we can judge the rest if the USA as a wretched shithole.
The USA is a cultural abyss. It has nothing, zero, nil.
Is that you, Naked Cowboy?
Images for times square cowboy
- Report images
Bullshit. Typical NY dick who has to chant "this place rocks!" Just to paper over the feeling of being fucked.
Lol,
Look at all these sore Americans who think they live in a great city!!
North America is culturally vacuous with the exception of 10 square miles of Manhatten and 10 square miles of LA.
Everything in between is a pale piss weak copy of those two locations.
Anyone who denies that is an ignorant dipshit who needs to apply for a passport so they can see what a great city is supposed to have.
#1 Originality.
Anyone who denies that is an ignorant dipshit who needs to apply for a passport so they can see what a great city is supposed to have.
Small towns in Northern Italy stage better operas than the NY Met, better orchestras for most classical music, often have better artwork, much better food, far better ambiance and the people are far more civilized.
Bloommberg's sanctuary city (sanctuary for islamic & financial terrorists) on the Hudson is like a polished turd.
LA is by no means better than San Fran. This right there shows holes in your theory.
Come on then.
Name another US city that has more than one internationally recognisable landmark...
Just one US city other than New York with two or more internationally recognised landmarks.
There isn't one.
How about Washington, DC, asshole. Try the White House and the Washington Monument for starters.
And then GFY.
I'll take the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Sedona's Red Rocks and the Sierra Vista mountain ranges in Southern AZ over man-made shiite anyday of the week. NYC is nice to visit once or twice though. Same with D.C. if you want an easy lay. But nothing settles the soul more than seeing Monument Valley's buttes at sunset on a horse.
SNL is not funny at all, but this clip is a little... Maybe? East Saint Louis is a Hellhole - Trust me I am the Mayor
http://www.hulu.com/watch/348496
Hastily made Cleveland tourism video (come and see both of our buildings!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmLA5TqbIY
Downtown Cleveland isn't that bad anymore. There are virtually no stores to rob so the gang bangers have moved out to Beachwood, Mentor, and Strongsville.
Business is so bad downtown that Volks, the premiere 24" gold chain dealer, had to close up shop. When you can't even operate a store that existed on nothing but gang banger drug money, you know it's bad.
Back in 2007, the number of New York City residents on food stamps was about 1 million. It is now being projected that the number of New York City residents on food stamps will pass the 2 million mark this summer.
Not a big surprise when the poverty level in NYC is around $47k a year.
I live and work around NYC for two more months. NYC is not the hip city you see in movies and TV. NYC has the financial center of manhattan and Midtown from the battery up to the park. North of there and on every side it's a stinky fuckin graffiti'd nightmare. I can't wait to get outta here. It's horribly expensive. Takes 45 minutes to move 1000 yards most times of the day and the people are fucking rude. We have to work like dogs and every time we look up, Nanny BloomTurd and Cuomo/Homo are fucking up liberty. It was great for about a year. Now not so much. Besides, this place is a time bomb with terriss'. We are moving to Cincy to help my parents and get free baby care. I think Snyder is spot on.
Manufacturing #s collapse at end of first quarter, just like last year, and the year before, and the year before, and the year before...
http://www.vulgartrader.com/post/48789098430/right-on-schedule-the-alleged-recovery-collapses
I've been seeing a number of bumper stickers recently talking about "Zombie Ready".
I live in a suburb of D.C., "Capital of the World".
Huh? You referring to Disneyland Central? Milestones
Some interesting tangential reasoning:
Corporations, not being human, lack patriotic loyalty; with a free trade regime in place they are free to move wherever taxes and wages are low and profits are high. We have seen this recently in Ireland where, despite a brutal austerity budget, corporation tax is not to be raised lest multinationals desert for warmer climes.
For a while the Communist system held this at bay by offering a rival paradigm, however faulty, for how we might live: but with the collapse of the USSR in 1991 — and the adoption of state corporatism by China as an engine for development — large scale opposition to the corporate system withered.
We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities (you can live very nicely as a CEO or a politician, as long as you don't bite the feeding hand) or steamrollered if they try to resist.
In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion. [source]
Or...
Corporations are driven by people — they aren’t completely autonomous agents. Yet if you shot the CEO of Exxon or any of the others, what effect would it have? Another person of much the same ilk would swiftly move into place, much as stepping on a few ants hardly effects an anthill at all. To the extent they don’t depend on individuals, they appear to have an agency of their own. And that agency is not a particularly human one — it is oriented around profit and growth, which may or may not be in line with human flourishing.
Corporations are at least somewhat constrained by the need to actually provide some service that is useful to people. Exxon provides energy, McDonald’s provides food, etc. The exception to this seems to be the financial industry. These institutions consume vast amounts of wealth and intelligence to essentially no human end. Of all human institutions, these seem the most parasitical and dangerous. Because of their ability to extract wealth, they are also siphoning off great amounts of human energy and intelligence — they have their own parallel universe of high-speed technology, for instance.
The financial system as a whole functions as a hostile AI. It has its own form of intelligence, it has interests that are distant or hostile to human goals. It is quite artificial, and quite intelligent in an alien sort of way. While it is not autonomous in the way we envision killer robots or Skynet, it is effectively autonomous of human control, which makes it just as dangerous.[source]
Oh, and thanks for the warning / threats of dissolution, that's a first. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Or, more poetically put:
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
~Keats
But Aurora, the Supremes said that corporations are people! Of course the 13th Amendmwent which bans the owning of other people as SLAVERY and is illlegal; and how can you own stock in a person? Isn't that slavery? Well just silly me. Milestones
So far I've been threatened with:
Being dismembered / eaten (non specific if animal or human doing the eating)
Death (non specific method)
Dissolution (one presumes acid bath)
Disbelief that I haven't moved location due to them knowing where I am (threat to get the thrill of the chase "running man" going, but I don't fancy ending up hiding in a boat)
All 100% seriously. Sure, you can rack up the multi-kill bonuses, genocides and gigocides, and killing someone is easy these days, but fuck you if I'll fear you or be intimidated by you. Even by the "existential rangers" who we're all so ignorant of. Including you, old friend.
System Crash or Negotiate.
Aurora, what in the F*** are you talking about? Maybe you should reread my post or see a head doctor. Milestones
I was telling you directly the personal cost of posting here, in reference to vague instances of "slavery".
Oh my--wow, oh wow. I hope to hell you live far away from me---and any other people. Milestones
Although, I do have very definite opinions on the way America views mental illness, and the way you made that leap was predictable. As a little tip to get you going: the term "conspiracy theory" fits very well into Foucault's observations on Power and so forth. You should probably also make yourself aware of techniques used by groups such as Scientologists to wage psychological warfare on undesirables; they're well documented, and designed to trigger the other social animal's fear responses, not purely the targets. (If you want to know more, I'm more than happy to provide links).
Try to remember this isn't a conversation, it's a written medium, and what's written is not only being analysed by you (singular) viewer, it's being analysed by other readers (who also include algo's).
I'll leave off the metaphysical humor as well, oh well, c'est la vie.
I liked his post.
Hey man. You need a thick skin to last two days on the porch. Tyler swings a mean broom. And sometimes he goes back inside for the shovel.
Who would have thought starting to pay ghetto mamas to pop out a new kid every nine months for cash in the 1960s would have ended up with this result?
s/
What you saw was the mass expansion of the ghetto around 18 years after the first Great Society Programs. The first ghetto baby boomers leaving the nest to pilfer the next town over. A decade and a half later, another huge push was made and the second ring suburbs fell.
What you are seeing in Chicago and other cities is Ghetto Trash III, the last installment in the epic trilogy "Destruction of America". There is no room for expansion, unless the ghetto gang bangers want to live in the country. All that is left is to kill and terrorize anyone that still has a job in the city.
You can now draw a straight line from Cleveland to Akron, OH consisting of nothing but ghetto.
I drew a line around Cleveland one time marking off cities that were over 75% black and hispanic. The size of the area was astounding. I'm using it as my Zombie Apocalypse survival map.
Wrong about Cleveland to Akron - I grew up 20 miles south of Cleveland and 20 miles north of Akron in Summit County - it is still beautiful in the suburbs. Highly taxed and regulated but beautiful. Also there is an Emerald necklace of parks around Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Valley Conservatory which is gorgeous.
The decay is limited to about 7 miles around downtown Cleveland and about 2 miles around downtown Akron. The rest is green.
I don't know what that says about your point but you are way off about Cleveland. My sisters still live within 1 mile of my childhood home. We are white by the way.
...and this had nothng to do with a lack of jobs?
Again - what is your point?
Ohio's unemployment rate is wayyy less than California's. The white Ohio unemployment rate is less than that.
I wasn't talking to you, but the point is, decent jobs for all but the uber-educated or those with specific skill sets have been declining decade afer decade.
Short of sterilization, how do you stop human procreation? With a growing population and a vanishing job base, well, the expanding ghetto is what we get.
Is that violence in Flint considered sectarian?
"What is happening to you America?"
Welfare and other entitlements.
Legal immigration policy since Teddy "Carwash" Kennedy's 1965 "Bring in uneducated, non white voters from 3rd world Act"
Unenforcement of Illegal Immigration Act since 1990.
Wefare and entitlements are the honey to the honeypot being offered to 3rd world, future DEM party voters.
Let the Hunger Games begin !
"Asia for the Asians. Africa for the Africans. White countries for every one."
Pardon me while i insult you but every american is an immigrant.
You were the rejects of europe, a mixture of criminals and religious heretics.
Is it any wonder you turned out the way you did, how could anyone expect a nation founded on immigrants to have any kind of cohesive identity.
The american dream is a failure.
I for one welcome the american balkanization, after the dust settles on the coming race war and you split into six different countries the world will be a better place.
20,000 years ago all proto-humans lived in africa, does that make us africans because we were descended from them?, our skin became white over generations of lives spent wandering north and intermarrying with neanderthals, so who really is more pure?, the masaai warrior or the neanderthal/human crossbreeds who settled in europe*.
*europe (where the history comes from)
Where in my post did I say anything about America?
@ Snyder:
Before that, the Indians of the Sioux and Lakota nations hunted bison ... whenever they felt like it. They had little in the way of government 'interference' nor did they pay income taxes (they also didn't have bathtubs). These were the 'glory days' of liberty in America: to ride horses all day, giving the finger to 'The Man': wonder and envy indeed.
Since the early 19th century, the same cities lauded as middle-class paradises have teemed with the poorest of the poor ... and not just in the US. See 'How the Other Half Lives' by Jacob Riis and 'People of the Abyss' by Jack London.
Problem was (and is) cities in the US are all about elites making money and not about physical character of the cities themselves. While 'prosperous' in a money sense, the cities themselves have gradually been made into negro dumping grounds with acres of free parking. As industries moved out or failed the middle class moved to the suburbs. This process started before World War 11 and in Detroit it began in 1900. These cities were doomed long ago ...
Post-war blows included slicing the towns up with freeways and development fads: tower 'cores', urban renewal projects which tended to be bland barracks-type buildings or monstrous Blade-Runner-esque high-rises. It turns out what cities look like from the ground ... and how the residents feel about the city-spaces they inhabit really matters a lot more than how much money handfuls of billionaires can strip-mine from them.
A gigantic problem is that US cities have been given over almost 100% to the automobile ... to the benefit of a few billionaires ... and taken from the residents as part of the process. Fewer cars = the better city life becomes ... younger people are already starting to figure this out.
"Negro dumping grounds." - Heh
Noble Indians again - right - Indians slaughtered the people lived on the land before them after the great migration.
So cars are the problem - right. People moved to the 'burbs to buy houses which were subsidized by the gummbit. They still worked in the cities. The Democrats that ran the cities are the ones that ran them into the ground with their big government rules and regulations. They wanted to skim the profits of the working people.
Roughly 90% of all native humans were eradicated before European settlers even met them; part of the psychosis of America is that the immigrants moved into pre-settled lands / ecosystems without people, and didn't realize this, leading to "manifest destiny", "God has provided an Eden"[1] and other such thinking.
Plague: it's a wonderful lebensraum provider.
Hint: Your education probably lied to you. As for Indian "slaughter"...
[1] Ask the British with their obsession with gardens how long it takes to cultivate a landscape; exactly the same thing happened in North America, immigrants were just too fucking self-satisfied to recognize it. Oh, and the Passenger Pidgeon says you're all cunts btw.
Substantiate your point - Are you saying that when the Indians migrated to North America there wasn't anyone here?
WRONG - it is new science.
You're gonna have to add a [source] there skippy. There was sure a lot of mega-fauna there before humans.
NOMNOMNOMNOM.
Bisons got off 'cause they were small and fast. Heck, might want to look into Giant Tortoises or Giant Moa for mega-fauna eaten in "industrial" times, with partial scientific records to show how homos, rats and cats ate them all.
I suggest a trip to Scienceville to find out how the spread of humans (or earlier variants thereof) ate themselves into bigger brains. One big blood shed of marrow making your brain the size it is today! (Are you the homo vegetarius we've been looking to discover?!? Would explain much!)
Your name should be Aurora Non-sequitur
In the years before English settlers established the Plymouth colony (1616–1619), most Native Americans living on the southeastern coast of present-day Massachusetts died from a mysterious disease. Classic explanations have included yellow fever, smallpox, and plague. Chickenpox and trichinosis are among more recent proposals. We suggest an additional candidate: leptospirosis complicated by Weil syndrome. [source]
In reference to "Are you saying that when the Indians migrated to North America there wasn't anyone here?" I'm left wondering who else you thought was on the continent before migrations of homonids turned up and started eating stuff. Aliens?
Science > racist nonsense.
The car was invented to convey people out of the city because they wanted to get out of the city! Trolleys and inter-urbans were precursors to the automobile that assisted migration of the middle-class to the suburbs to catch up with the wealthy who were already there and had their personal transportation to do so.
City life is only as good as the money spent supporting it, which is available as long as suburbanites continue to commute into city centers. 50 years from now, if not sooner, most employment opportunity will reside in the suburbs, just as most retail left the city for the suburbs since WWII.
Negro dumping grounds? There was a lot of migration of African Americans into the midwest for factory work pre 1960, but that wasn't dumping, that was people trying to take care of themselves and their families. Could it be that the increase in African American population within the city in the past 50 years is indigenous? Probably. Look at the numbers - African American population in the US has more than doubled since 1960 (18 Million to 37 Million) while the overall US population has only increased by slightly more than half (200 Million to 315 Million). 40 Million of that increase has been immigrants, so indigenous population increase has only been 37% (75 Million), and much of that was African Americans (20 Million). So, since the inception of the Great Society, African American population has increased at a rate over 3 times that of everybody else. Naturally, African American populations growing at that rate, as they displace other populations who are leaving places like Detroit, only make it seem like poor blacks are dumped there.
Dumped? Hardly.
How about the blacks went to where the jobs were. They didn't want to be poor sharecroppers any longer.
That's what I said. But that was pre-1960's. Current growth is pure population growth, not migration into Northern and Midwestern cities by blacks from the South. In fact, there has been some reverse migration back to the South.
When using italic print for a quote use qutation marks or the it will not allow anyone to comment. Milestones
Max -
some US history beyond what you were taught from your high school history class. During the 60's many cities in the South would purchase blacks one way bus tickets to Detroit if they wanted a free ticket to get out of the South and to Detroit. Hence, Detroit became the "Dumping Ground" for blacks from the South that were shipped North.
Cars fucking suck ass when you take a look at "how good they are" vs reality.
Yes. you can drive anywhere and everywhere if you can buy enough gas. BUT, we have traffic, HIGH RISK for accidents, HIGH COST for the car itself, HIGH COST for any repair, LOW RESALE VALUE, and a SHIT LOAD of pollution when hydrocarbon fuels are used.
Fuck cars! Fuck buses! Trains and subways are old technology, but still much safer and cheaper than other transportation. If the railways are expanded, the cities and even rural areas will benefit a TON.
*Speaking from first hand experience* - bought a sedan at $3K. Less than a year later, got into a minor front-end crash that set off the air bags. Current ask price for repairs: Over $2K. Current bid price for sedan: $300.
Fuck cars!
My car can move two tons of shit 30 miles for the cost of a Happy Meal. I'd call that dirt cheap if the alternative is to try pulling that in a Radio Flyer wagon or towed from a bicycle.
I do like the idea of building up the railroads to where they tie together all cities of 10,000 or more, at the cost of trucking. We had quite the sprawling nation, with most people living in rural communities, before oil. Most cities were founded beside rivers and then railways, and if speed and convenience wasn't so dear to us we could move almost all freight that way again.
Regarding your car's repair cost, why not just turn off the airbag? If you dump the car for $300 and get a bicycle, I can guarantee that it won't have an airbag either.
Yes, that's where I was pointing to with the railroads/subways. If the rails are built up and the buses ditched, travel would become A LOT easier and cheaper SO LONG AS there is a network that aimed to be as big as the cell phone or internet networks, with stops being about 5 miles apart. The UK uses a national bus system, but since gas/diesel/jetfuel is expensive as shit these days, the rails seem to be the best option.
Regarding my car, I have 4 options:
1) Save for repairs
2) Sell my sedan and save to buy another one
3) Sell my sedan and say "Fuck it, I'm not driving."
4) Sell my sedan, and save to buy a motorbike, and get the licence for it.
Probably taking option 2 or 4.
moar stimulus!! moar, moar!
Who would have ever thought that increasing infertility would be our best friend!!
quick, someone call Jack Bauer.
Oh, for God's sake, grow up. First, Detroit was the most prosperous city in the early 50's, while most of Europe, the UK, and Japan were still digging out the rubble of the war that passed the US mainland by. For 30 years, from 1945-75, the US was virtually unchallenged in all areas of manufacturing, agriculture, etc., as the rest of the once-developed world rebuilt itself. During those fat and sassy years, the US raised the world's worst generation - the Boomers - who grew up in such unmatched luxury that they believed it was their natural birthright, and not just the happy coincidence that ICBMs and long range bombers didn't exist until well after the collapse of the Nips and Huns. As a result, the Boomers who were educated resisted real work and chose easy manipulation - advertising, TV, and above all, finance - as their careers. Only a few would go into manufacturing. The uneducated Boomers expected to make $50k/year doing repetitive manual work that could be learned by any reasonably intelligent, and not necessarily well educated, human in a week. Worst of all, the Boomer 'intelligentsia' decided that teaching arithmetic was stunting little Johnny, that classic literature was too work to understand, and that no child should ever feel bad about anything ever, and any parent who spanked their squalling brat in a crowded shopping mall was a monster.
But three simple developments in the 1960's began to change all that. The container ship, fibre optic and satellite communication, and above all cheap computing started dissolving the moat that had kept Castle America above the rest of the world. Once business discovered Mexican peasants work as well as drugged-out Detroiters, and for much less money, and that the work could be monitored and controlled (thanks to the fibre/sat coms), and finally that transportation costs were no longer an issue (nor being held hostage by thuggish dockworkers), the walls came tumbling down.
For the people in Des Moines, they don't have to worry about Detroit; they have to worry about Djakarta. Jobs and money are going to flow to where labour is inexpensive, government is controllable (or at least predictable), and capital and other barriers are low. They don't need to stay in Stocktons or Baltimores or Madisons held hostage by public sector unions. America is drowning in its own sense of entitlement, not realizing that the world has changed, and that their kids better be ready to compete with Germans or Japanese or Chinese. Not for nothing is smart man Jimmy Rogers making his kids learn Mandarin.
"First, Detroit was the most prosperous city in the early 50's," because Detroit built the weapons that were used to bomb Europe and Japan into agricultural backwardness.
We need to do that again.
DETROIT STRONG.
Have you seen the garbage shit junk cars that have rolled out of Detriot over the last 50 years?
They can't build a fucking thing. I wish all my competition was half as incompetent and feckless as the people of Detriot.
I'm embarrassed for them looking at the quality of engineering they rolled out.
6 liter V8 cars with 150BHP?
Fucking pathetic.
It's even worse when you learn about the supression by the manufacturers. 100MPG carberators invented in the 1930's and 1940's, but completely ignored by ALL major manufacturers? Fuck that shit.
FrankDrakman;
You are partialy correct in that technology brought great change, especially after 1970. However - and these are a big ones. - What brought the biggest change has been globalization, Trade agreeemnest, the rush by our government to free American Corporations from the stability of American wages and throw workers onto world labor arbitrage standards, and the failure of government to protect American companies and labor from the race to the economic bottom.
It's not the governments job to protect the workers. That's an impossible ask.
The workers and corporations need to protect themselves...
BY COMPETING.
You put the cart before the horse, my friend.
Globalization only began because of the existence of the three factors I mentioned. How could you have reliable outsourced mfg - as opposed to little branch plants - without the existence of ANY of the three technologies I mentioned? I worked in telecom in the 80's; long distance calls just across the US were $0.50/min - and that was in 1980$, not devalued 2013 FRN's. Trying to call across the ocean was $5-6 minute at least.
Without container ships, the lags of loading/unloading (and the shrinkage during that process) would have added so much to costs, doing things overseas would make no sense. And without the cheap computing power (and I'm not talking PC's; I'm talking about DEC, Prime, and the other minicomputer makers who started offering cycles at half IBM's price), there was no way you could have monitored it all.
The three technologies came, and it took a while for them to converge, as all the entrenched forces fought against them. Longshoremen fought container ships, the entrenched telco's fought against cheap long distance, and IBM sneered at mini and micro computers (I remember some douchebag IBM'er sneering at my new Apple II "Do you want one of those toys on your desk?"). But, just as Canute knew he couldn't hold back the tide, smarter businessmen saw the writing on the wall, and started working for globalization, as without free-r trade, they couldn't take advantage of it. So they started pushing for globalization on the grounds 'it will help poor nations stave off communism', not that they really cared.
So, globalization followed the technology, not vice-versa. But you make some good points.
Oh, yeah, fuck you, Bernanke.
You're an idiot.
Nailed it.
Chicken or the egg? I'll take the egg, unfertilized - boiled - and pickled.
Russia had a few rulers with total power transform their country for the better... soon enough, the US will need one of those. Peter The Great was the greatest Russian ruler of them all.
A good dictator in the US would be needed for a year or two. Destroy the banks. Arrest the banksters and statists like Bloomberg and Feinstein and their medias heads, hang em high. Fire every SCOTUS judge appoint pro-constitution judges... Kill the welfare state. Build a damn fucking wall on the border. Arrest illegals, deport them. Legalize all drugs. Bring back all the troops. Get rid of ALL LAWS. Rewrite only the ones necessary and make them simple. Break up the cartels. All of them... (medias, power, health care, banks, etc...) Destroy DHS, ATF and DEA... Reform FBI, SEC, CIA... Make cops liable for what they do... taxpayers don't pay... cops pay with their own money when they screw up or go to prison...
A lot of stuff needs to be done... and no way a democracy can achieve it, especially with the majority of morons running around.
Hail Obama the incompetent.....
The liberal establishment and the financial 1% will fight you to the death.
I can do that.
Sounds like Thatcher.
Man... you need to learn something about Russia. Look for the man who was PR to Putin, and the neo-Nazi's and the avant-garde art scene. and who sculpted the late 90's / 00's scene.
You know fuck all about modern Russian politics.
Western version
Putin's Rasputin (more Western version)
The reality was a little more chaotic (and included spy-rocks, and a few Mafia bar mitzvah).
You socialists think a dictator solves everything dont you?
Most importantly, democracy needs a tax ceiling.
Lack of which is a critical flaw, which has enabled almost all failures from Greece to american cities.
Democracy is like Unix and Internet: when it was created, it was not fireproofed against malicious intent. Soon bad people appeared who understood this, and shit happened.
President Obama must be very proud of his accomplishments. And the Senate, and Congress, and the rest of the members of the big club.
Oh please. This decline started in the early 1970s. Read up.
That dumbass has disappeared more money than all the execs who came before him combined and still has nothing to show for it. This started getting ugly for us in feb 1914; but the story is much longer. Read up.
Oh really? Did BO send Hammerin' Hank Paulson into Congress with a C4 vest threatening to blow up the nation's financial system unless he was given a trillion dollar bailout? Was that Obama. No. Seems to me that was under the aegis of a man named W. Stop twisting history to match your narrow political agenda. If you hate Obama, fine! But don't warp history to match your prejudice. And oh yeah, read up.
Yes Senator Obama, the darling of Soros, Buffet and China did participate in that crime. GFY.
Nonsense. GFY!
America,like Europe,has hollowed out its economy.all this crap about a smart economy and high value service jobs and software and all the fancy jazz that people forget has to actually run on THINGS that are MADE.
If you convince people that MAKING THINGS is not a desirable career choice,then what are we left with.entire nations of people that can't make shit. That does not end well.
Also we like to forget the reality that a good chunk(maybe 30'/,)of school leavers are too unintelligent to program a super computer or write a KILLER APP that runs on a Chinese made IPhone .
Then there is the FUCKING FINANCIAL INDUSTRY.I use the word industry with a pinch of salt.thousands of highly educated kids who play video games with people's money,snort coke,fuck each other and then run like a scalded cat when they fuck up.
I remember a time(I'm 39)when our fathers could build a wall,put up shelves and plumb a washing machine.our kids will not have this memory,cos most men my age are well educated in useless skill,and useless in all else.......
You're stuck in between the two generations. Those who did 'stuff' and those who spend countless hours playing video games endlessly. I remember what a real hardware store looked like before the big box - Home Depot - Lowes, etc looked like. There wasn't nothing in the vintage Hardware store that you didn't need. Now we have the Big Box Stores, with their stupid commercials telling you to go out and accomplish something and making it look like you could paint the house in an hour, remodel your bathroom in an afternoon and rebuild your house in a week. Then you wander around the endless aisles of appliances, custom bathroom remodeling, offering six choices of the most boring granite ever known to mankind and hordes of employees that are well versed in pretending to look busy or running when you need help. Sheesh!
Aint globalization great!
And to think there are still people defending the "Flat World" even on ZH. Fucktards.
Our infrastructure has gone to shit but Wallstreeters, Congresspersons and members of the MIC are shitting in solid gold commodes..... Where's the problem, they ask?......
Don't worry the guillotines will be made of wood. hujel
How come NOBODY bitches about the CORPORATE WELFARE STATE? They pay Halliburtion $19 million per month to drive empty fuel trucks across the Iraqi desert. The Pentagon pays $500+ for a fucking toilet seat and over $50 for a fucking sledge hammer but NOBODY bitches about that. I'm all for cutting out deabeats who won't work, but how is ripping the taxpayer off at several times the market price for goods and services a productive pursuit in ANY FUCKING WAY, SHAPE OR FORM?
It makes me wonder if all the people blaming the poor for the ills of the nation aren't in fact on Jamie Dimon's payroll...
We don't complain about corporate welfare because the corporations actually add value to the economy (and we aren't brain dead libtards either).
There is corruption everywhere - but Big Government multiplies the effect. Drastically shrink the size and scope of government and the problems above will be greatly reduced.
But no - you are in favor of the welfare state and government largess.... So take the bad with uhh the BAD.
"We don't complain about corporate welfare because the corporations actually add value to the economy.
"Now that's funny, I don't care who you are."
Wealth stolen from an economy, taxes, undermines that economy. As that loot is squandered it directs productive capacity in the direction of government causing more undermining distortions of that economy. If the booty is also used as welfare payments then dependency and idleness is an added assault on said economy. i.e. the people robbed pay, the people denied certain goods and services pay and the poor bastards dependent on welfare, corp or otherwise, pay with their souls.
Give Mises, Rothbard and/or Hayek a read. No need to agree, but please, for everyone's sake, do become informed. hujel
"#1. Burn ‘em down.
#2 Plant some fruit trees everywhere so everyone has food, or food gardens.
#3 Phoenix, came back to earth after that heavenly gust of bubble wind, etc…………………………………
#4 And illegals aren’t a problem, even yet ……
#9 Good. I hate street lights, and all lights at night. What ever happened to nocturnal creatures, the stars or sleeping with natural melatonin released for deep sleep can be done only in the DARK, as light inhibits sleep and to all those sleep deprived, TURN OUT THE LIGHTS. We are damaging the earth and all kinds of creatures with massive artificial lighting, it’s destroying the earth.
#10 El Centro? No speak English. Yuma, Az,? No speak English.
#11 Oakland, Ca, gang rape capital of the USA. To all females: never go to Oakland. Ever. Probably goes for Chicago and Detroit too. And remember, for every murder rate, the RAPE rate is far far higher, with a pitifully lower, much lower, conviction rate, so until the massive violence against women stops, stay away. Let’s not forget, women are at risk by predators for violent crime far more than men so life is much more dangerous and violent and frightening for women in these cities.
#21 This may or may not be bullshit. It’s the norm for illegals and others to not register the father of the baby on the birth certificate so that women can collect money for the kids and the illegal father never has to pay up because the state doesn’t know who he is, and he can work and live in the house and the state doesn’t know. Don’t tell me this doesn’t happen in the thousands, because it does, and with almost every “illegal” birth.
AND remember — very important, there are NEW STANDARDS OF POVERTY — just ask all the social services departments ——- must have a bedroom for each kid, must have sofa, TV, medical, etc"
from tent site
Until US politicians grow a spine and loose their snake skin, nothing will change. The problemis that Americans are incapable of organising a 5 star movement like Italy and instead have retreated to their guns and ammo out of fear and frustration.
The corporations similarly will not retreat from China as they have invested too much capital, handed over too much know how and derive too much of their profit from China. In any case they can see the fate of Japanese corporations which now bearthe brunt of anti Japanese sentiment.
With all this offshoring going on I am amazed the US has not been hiring Chinese soldiers to fight its Iraqi and Afghan wars.
"the greatest cities that the world had ever seen sprouted up from coast to coast"
This guy needs to get out more....Hardly the worlds"greatest cities"....You can include NY, but that's about it.
JFC: 24 signs?
Anyone who drove through the south Bronx in 1975 would know this answer.
- Ned
{let alone the DC area behind the Supreme court building}
{{let alone ...}}
NYC was fun in the late 70's...total shithole, dangerous, but fun. Much like Miami 78-83.
I'm not convinced this article is entirely right, though it makes some good points.
I'm in Texas and let me tell you that we are doing anything but thriving.
The income in this country just keeps on accruing to the top 1% with leftovers for the top 10%.
Americans will do anything but negotiate for higher wages. We are programmed to feel bad to do it, that we are somehow failures and "takers". So we end up psychotic and the money flows to the top, and the top redistributes some to the actual takers who have figured out how to game the system.
t
can we stop talking about detroit already? Detroit was shit back in 1990.
Also shit in 1977 when I was there.
I always tell people, urbanization is the height of mankind. Now, I like the peace and quiet myself, and half my family balks at the prospect of venturing into dense urban areas, but skyscrapers do indeed represent civilization.
Just look up pictures of Singapore, that glorious city-state at the tip of the Malay peninsula. It will grow in importance and wealth in the future especially as tax seeking Western governments extend their reach inward.
Chinese cities aren't that bad, and as they develop the tertiary sector will start to shelve away some of the factories and tone down the pollution. Take a look at cities like Kunming, Chengdu and Xi'an which are much cleaner and vibrant than dreary Beijing. It's not all bad.
What matters most in any area are the PEOPLE which inhabit it. I don't see people wanting to live in Detroit just as I don't see honest hard-working folk wanting to live in Sierra Leone. People matter. I don't know anyone who wants to live in Phoenix anymore, but then again I don't know anyone who wants to live in El Salvador. I've met plenty of folks who want to live in Maine or Montana, just as I know others who are considering Austria or Scotland.
And lets get real. Every freakin' city no matter how large NY Chi LA or small Gary Indiana or Birmingham Al or Leesburg Florida.
Wherever the homies live their neighborhoods have always been shit in America forever! This isn't something new.
You can't blame Obama for that or Bush happened way before their watch. Who the fuck writes crap like that!
Were they born in a vacum?
Hum, yes and no: I've talked to an American and he was proud that the industrial work was being outsourced to low-wage countries, and that in the US all people will be having high-paying service and creative jobs. Or look at Apple, sitting on 140 billion $ cash in off-shore places, paying hardly any taxes, and Americans showcasing that and being proud how successfull the US are.
As it looks, it didn't quite turn out that well. But blame the Americans first.
Yes, many of the wealthiest are proud. They know when it all falls apart they can board their jet and escape to their guarded estate outside the US.
I will be very hungry by then.
This will make it most inconvenient for me to locate, hunt and eat them. When is the little guy ever going to get a break?
The major cities have been crumbling for decades. You are seeing first hand what socialism can achieve. Capitalism built the great cities, and socialism is tearing them apart. Welfare is skyrocketing and the voters want more and more of it. 100,000 gang members in Chicago? What does that tell you about the state and city presenting us with the great Obama? As far as Detroit goes, having lived in its proximity for many decades, I can tell you that it has been one socialist failure after another starting with the model city program in the 1960's. Democrats have destroyed the cities, and not without help from the other side.
Many of the jobs lost to China and Mexico were union jobs. Unions think they exist for the purpose of raping a company for all they can get. I have been a union member also. The company comes first, before any unions can even be thought of. If you own a business and your costs exceed your revenue, you will be in trouble. And labor is the biggest cost for most manufacturing businesses. Of course, we have been taught by the socialists to hate the rich business owner (listen to Obama) and therein lies some of the problem.
I still believe that true free market policies can fix this country. But, I am in the minority. You now have rampant government interference on all levels and can anyone name me anything that the government does or controls that is cost efficient and productive? The voters voted for The Dictator and your reward will be the former USA evolving into a clone of 1960's Russia, complete with flies in the mashed potatoes, as my grandfather proclaimed.
-- free market policies can fix this country -- Free market at that level of technology and overproduction ??? maybe for a small amish style community, in a modern real world it's pure fantasy.
In the mean time we offer Medicaid and welfare for immigrants like the Boston Marathon bombers while sending all the manufacturing, research and technology overseas.
I see talented people leaving the taxing states/the US for elsewhere.
Unless there is a Renascence or revolution there is no reason to stick around.
The US is now the Top producer of debt. Paul Krugmans, Ben Bernanke's and the bankster's dream.
export jobs, import terrorists and unskilled illegals ... no way to stop this trend
This crap is like saying oh look, the Mexican side of El Passo is a shithole. No fucking shit it is! Always has been!
Can anyone tell me how much energy we are wasting by simply storing gazillions of databytes that are inane, useless and of no productive value? The amount has to be huge and growing at the speed of light....
... on the brighter note, the rich have never been richer and the top 0.001% have never been so powerful.
Which will make them all the more delicious when the starving masses start viewing them as lunch.
Bob: What did your wife pack you for lunch today, John?
John: Braised leg of Lawyer. What about you Bob?
Bob: Barbequed Banker Ribs.
"#13 If you can believe it, more than 11,000 homes, cars and businesses were burglarized in Oakland during 2012. That breaks down to approximately 33 burglaries a day."
By the way, until this gets cleaned up I propose a new law for Oakland residents.
All men with high school diplomas, a job and a clean record are required to attend deputization courses and subsequently requried to open carry a firearm on their belt. (They can choose which side)
When the burglary rate drops below 5 per/day, this law can be suspended.
The city prosecutors and police won't stand for it; and neither will Jesse Jackson.
Sure cowboy. That'll work as long as the world plays along with your Charles Bronson scripted delusion of reality. However, the truth would more likely be: After 10% of your clean cut vigilantes get a cap popped in their pasty white asses, the other 90% will mail in their cracker jack box badges and stay home soiling themselves.
I fully support gun ownership, but so many of you "gun boys" are such delusional internet tough-guys that it really does make it embarrassing to be on the same side of ANY issue with you.
I'm certain that faster Internet backbones and better broadband wireless, combined with a State tax on all Internet transactions, will revitalize these cities in no time.
Also, some Architecture and Landscape design teams of students from the closest Ivy League college, with pretty pictures and mock ups, and a few trillion of building said designs with pretty buildings and plants, will make everyone living in them currently successful and happy in the future.
As if by magic they will no longer be spitting on the sidewalks, dealing drugs, peeing in the alley, and selling their bodies.
Hope and Change, you must believe.
Break a window!
eb - trying one the MDB hat?
He's very good at sarcasm.
If MDB is serious about what he says, I fear for his children.
"Break a window!" was my version of /sarc, but yes, all sarcasm.
We off-shored production and manufacturing jobs, repealed Glass-Steagall, killed the rule-of-law, dumbed down education and our children, destroyed the natural family with a penchant lust rarely seen in the history of humanity - and yet expect good things.
If you raised your children and ran your household the way we have run the country since 1913 you would expect a slovenly drooling bunch of troglodyte wastrels fucking, stealing, and pissing on the good works of their fore-bearers and running headlong as fast as their drunken legs could carry them into the pit of oblivion.
And thus...
BUT... you can still buy coke in 499 cl cups... maybe, can't you? So... why complain?
I just figured out the agenda for the gun ban.
Take our guns.
Only the "underprivledged" (criminal element) has guns.
They kill us.
Democrats forever.
I suspect most of ZH's readers are too young to remember the busing issue where racial integration was forced upon city dwelling children all over the country. This long ago abandoned program destroyed cities all over the country as middle class types (typically white) refused to allow their young children to be bused for an hour or so at a time into poor neighborhoods (typically black). This asinine program did not account for the response that city dwellers everywhere would take which meant leave the city. When they left they took with them jobs, taxes, etc. and down went the cities forever.
Catholic school - problem solved. I think they moved for other reasons.
But in Boston this was a BIG f'king deal.
I am sure that Catholic schools kept some people in the city but the Catholic school system was not big enough (and of course they had to pay to get in) to solve the issue. In the midwest, where I was raised, whole neighborhoods were abandoned one after another. Numerous attempts were made by the liberal do-gooders to redraw the school district lines further and further out into the suburbs but people just kept moving out even further. Another point is that when residents moved into private schools they would always vote down school tax referendums (which you would naturally do since you weren't using them). This was a major factor in the deterioration of cities everywhere.
All the liberals moved to California.
"Catholic school - problem solved."
Oh my fucking god. Yeah, that's a brilliant idea. Instead of letting your child mingle with "the niggers"...you'd rather send them off to get brainwashed and molested by a priest. Brilliant...just...fucking...brilliant.
I know of the bussing program far too well, I was one of those white kids bussed to go to school in the hood. What a glorious project of social engineering that was. Yes, my parents finally scraped up enough money to move the fuck out of the city of Richmond and back into the county we were annexed from in the first place.
Perhaps we are subsidizing the wrong things?
The US is the best at producing debt instead of products.
Look to history to see how that ends up.
The author blames taxes on this decline, yet companies shelter much of their income and pay a very low corporate tax rates.
I have observed first hand that the reasons for the decline in manufacturing and good paying jobs are varied but basically boil down to: 1) wages in the US could never compete with what the same workers are paid in China (and before that Mexico and other third world countries); 2) health care costs and the level of care for each person are a fraction of that in the US; 3) until recently China has been entirely hands off regarding any environmental protection, water and air quality, whereas US regulations do cost companies money by restricting what they can release into the air and water; 4) human life generally is not valued in China the way it is in the US, so you don't have OSHA, or other agencies that are intended to look after workers welfare (as flawed as they are). These cost companies money. Basically Chinese workers could do the same job as US workers at a fraction of the cost, which enabled companies to maintain/increase profits. The US jobs are no more and will never return. The lack of need for US workers has filtered down into society and caused the crime and povery, which too will never go away. Lower corporate taxes will never change this as the resultant profits will minimally filter down to any unemployed worker.
With the manufacturing sector eviscerated, all that is left is minimum wage service jobs: Walmart, food service, other retail. It is well documented that Walmart employees are the biggest group using food stamps (or whatever they call it), and other government supplemental income services.
1860-1980 Solid Manufacturing products and US exports
1980-1990 Reducing exports rising imports and consumption
1990-2004 US exports technology
2004-2008 US exports securitized loans
2008-2012 US exports cash
2013 US has nothing left to export
I love Snyder and how he always makes such silly statements in what are usually solid articles. The greatest cities in the world...Yeah? So the U.S used to have the greatest cities in the world? No other city came close to those in the U.S?
Most vibrant middle class in the history of the world? And Mike knows this how exactly? He's gone through time and confirmed this? Oh wait I forgot....history of the world now only means the last 100-120 years. Oops!
I wouldn't be surprised if Mike hasn't even stepped foot outside of the U.S in his entire life and isn't some history buff. Usually Americans who say that kind of crap haven't even left the country. Hell, most haven't even left their state.
If Americans want to know one reason why things there are how they are now it is because the majority are like Mike here and think the U.S is (or was) the greatest place ever and act like they are entitled and their land mass with imaginary border lines and those within the border lines are superior to everyone else.
The problem with Snyder is that he's too close to being the "Old Man" of Omnicorp for comfort. The only difference is that he represents the equally as bad ALEC and Mackinac Institute, not Michiganders in general. Referendums only happen at the consent of those groups, appropriations are put in to prevent Ohio-sized (read: 60-38 or worse) rejections of the law.
Thankfully the Delta City measure was voted down.
In the Dallas/Forth Worth area it seems to be a race to failure of the water system, the power system, the hospital system, and the highway system. All four are under stress with new people popping up left and right. It looks to me like the water system is going to go first but the bankrupt TXU power shenanigans will be a close second.
"What is happening to you America"?
America: Socialism
The real danger is in the fact that most people don't know the difference between socialism and fascism. You just parrot what the fascist say and try to pawn it off as an original idea.
Here's a simple delineation:
Socialism = Getting your teeth fixed for free.
Fascism = Getting your teeth kicked in for nothing.
Now tell me, which one of those two items is more readily representative of amerika?
I think I would respect Bernanke more if he dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow with a pirate cutlass at his waist and a few ravaged princesses at his feet when he gave a news conference.
If the all the gang members in Chicago are active, that is an 'army' size group of people. That is insane!
I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but could it be that most cities (and even countries, including the US) have just grown too quickly to have any sort of sustainabiity about them? If you were to compare human nature to the ecology that we currently sit on top of, and look at any chart depicting human population growth, oil consumption, federal deficits (of any country) or anything else under the direct control of humans, there's exponential growth. Yet if you look at the greater ecological setting, nothing grows at an exponential rate in perpetuity, and things always balance out. Yet humans try to avoid "negative growth" at all costs.
Couldn't this be just the beginning of a rebalancing of human behaviour?
You leave out the most important aspect of population growth (and it was brought up here in the responses). It's not the growth that's the problem, it's the QUALITY of the population growth. I live in Kalifornia and I can tell you most of the population growth is of questionable quality... Low IQ, doesn't speak the language, don't want to assimilate and no respect for what this Country is (or at least was...) and a sense of entitlement, fueled by the Government itself. Stupid is, as stupid does.