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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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The democratic Party is responsible for the decay of the inner city, and The Obowel Movement is finishing off the the rest of the country.
Any questions?
The current condition of this country is not the fault of any one political party but rather the fault of both parties who have sold out the people for the highest bidder in the banking and business communities that have lobbied for and received the passage of laws that have gutted the US economy and the jobs, homes and savings of the vast majority of the people of the country.
In short: The fault lays with ALL the sold out bureaucrats and politicians that have dedicated their careers and lives to sucking the cocks of the oligarchs that have ravaged this country.
They haven't manufactured a Packard for over 50 years
I'm amazed the plant is still standing
They should turn it into a museum of technology
RIP.
Boston is a prime example... balkanized ethnic enclaves, tough ghettos in the shadow of glass towers, and sposon fed fools in the street worshipping the cops and praising the capture of patsies offered up by the alphabet soup agencies that orchestrated the bombing!
They shut the fucking city down today to lionize the cop that was killed (by whom?) and to praise the goddamn local cops that stood down when the feds stepped in.
Chicago's political machine is now running Washington. Expect Obama to Chicagoize the rest of the US.
I ask my father, who has Scandinavian roots. He was born and raised here in the same region of USA that I live in now. It is impossible not to notice it's become a shit hole compared to when I was a kid. My dad says everything is better, he says every year things get a little better Magnum.
But it is so overcrowded, every second person speaks Hindi, Chinese, Viet, Espanol, etc. The original people who grew up here have big sports arenas to cheer their players, that's about it. When not at a sports stadium, to engage a stranger in a conversation and find out they speak like a local is unique.
The roads, the hospital situation, the pollution, the number of lazy people on welfare using EBT, the local parks are full of trash and the people there are trashy.
I was in Austria not too long ago and I was like, I just wish I could live in a country where people are decent and keep their communities clean and speak a common language and are united as a nation. USA is in fact becoming rapidly a dump of disunited jerks, and smart people are making contingency exit plans. Notice a lot of people stand respectfully but do not say the national anthem, it is itself a complete lie "one nation,,, indivisible with liberty and justice for all" are you kidding me?
One word... balkanization.
$392,040.00 that is 1 acre at $9 PER SQ FT....$3,920,400.00 that is 1 acre at $90 per sq ft...someone needs to check their math...and its not me...
Agreed. Perhaps that was supposed to be 1 acre with a hotel sitting on it.
The USA is drowning in excesses: Too much unemployment Too much printed money Too much debt Too much fraud Too much office space Too much retailing space Too much housing Too much energy Too much agriculture Too many political solutions Too much pollution Too much poverty Too much crime Too much entertainment Too much free time Too much moar We have past the inflection point - things will get worse before they get better. ZH is all about survival. There is little we can do to change the evolution of events. Learn; prepare; adapt; and survive. Good luck to all.
Too many Satanic Tribe members manipulating things!
For every city in the North experiencing economic disaster, thank the South for economic theft.
You made your hell-hole cities up north by supporting the "Dailey" type machines, now you can survive like a cockroach in the bed that you prepared for yourself.
"Do the South a Favor, Put a Yankee on a bus. "
jesus fucking christ, this thread is turning into white power convention.
Everyday is a white power convention on ZH, highest concentration of rich racist republicans anywhere on the web.
I have the antidote: Marxist propaganda! "Diversity is our Strength!"
Did I do it right, comrade?
Antidote cures them, why would I cure them of their prejudice whilst I can take advantage of it financially.
You do know the cold war is over dont you? mr beef.
I remember when America was fun.
This is liberal statist bullshit propaganda.
So the urban hellholes (D) are going down the tubes and the fatttest slobs (R) driving up healthcare costs. Next
So the urban hellholes (D) are going down the tubes and the fatttest slobs (R) driving up healthcare costs. Next
Washington DC is doing all right.
It's the Satanic Tribe, stupid!
Its a sick takeover by the bankster funded politicians. Oh what comes out of a hell hole?
Nothing new here Americas smaller towns and cities have been going downhill since the 1950s as people moved to the larger cities. Now with American industry going overseas the large cities are now going the same route.
All of this is obama's fault, once the republicans take back the white house this willall be fixed within a year.
Rochester, NY has been generally spared from the housing boom-bust, but, the city - which is broken down into four quadrants with a city center downtown - continued to deteriorate from the 60s to the present.
The NE quad was Italian, German and Ukie immigrants until "urban renewal" (what a canard), welfare and sprawl in the late sixties brought in the blacks and turned modest neighborhoods into shitholes. The SW quad followed suit in the 70s and 80s. By the 90s, the blacks took over the NW quad, leaving only the SE as the only reasonable section of the city, as it is today.
Downtown has been gutted by political building developments and now is almost entirely made up of minorities. 3/4 of Rochester is a shithole, with a declining tax base. The 'burbs pay high taxes to support this rotting center and it won't get any better until something radically changes, though I'm clueless to what that might be. Shitty schools, shitty neighborhoods, god-awful parents teaching their kids how to work the system while the white folks in the suburbs finance it all with extreme property taxes, the highest in the nation.
As long as this current system stays in place, there will be no growth in the inner core and the seeds of distrust and hatred continue to grow into giant weeds with tentacles everywhere.
Disincorporate the city from the county? That would crush the city. Only solution I see is cut all the social service programs, let the riots ensue, shoot and kill about 50000 city dwellers and start over, with a lower tax rate. If we get lucky, Governor Cuomo will show up in time to be caught in the crossfire. The guy is nothing but a Bolshevik and deserves to burn in hell.