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Camden, New Jersey: One Of Hundreds Of U.S. Cities That Are Turning Into Rotting, Decaying Hellholes
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
All over America, formerly prosperous communities are being transformed into crime-infested wastelands of poverty and despair. Of course the most famous example of this is Detroit. At one time, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city that the world had ever seen and it had the highest per capita income in the entire country. But now it has become a rotting, decaying hellhole that the rest of the planet laughs at. And of course Detroit is far from alone. There are hundreds of other U.S. cities that are suffering a similar fate. In this article, the focus is going to be on Camden, New Jersey, but the truth is that there are lots of other "Detroits" and "Camdens" all over the nation. Jobs and businesses are leaving our cities at a staggering rate, and what is being left behind is poverty, crime and extreme desperation.
Earlier this month, Rolling Stone published an article that took a hard look at the nightmare conditions that exist in Camden. A city that once made Campbell's soup and some of this nation's most famous warships is now a national disgrace. The following are six of the best quotes out of that article...
-"In September, its last supermarket closed, and the city has been declared a "food desert" by the USDA. The place is literally dying, its population having plummeted from above 120,000 in the Fifties to less than 80,000 today."
-"Their home is a city with thousands of abandoned houses but no money to demolish them, leaving whole blocks full of Ninth Ward-style wreckage to gather waste and rats."
-"With legal business mostly gone, illegal business took hold. Those hundreds of industries have been replaced by about 175 open-air drug markets, through which some quarter of a billion dollars in dope moves every year."
-"On January 18th, 2011, the city laid off 168 of its 368 police officers, kicking off a dramatic, years-long, cops-versus-locals, house-to-house battle over a few square miles of North American territory that should have been national news, but has not been, likely because it took place in an isolated black and Hispanic ghost town."
-"After the 2011 layoffs, police went into almost total retreat. Drug dealers cheerfully gave interviews to local reporters while slinging in broad daylight."
-"The carnage left Camden's crime rate on par with places like Haiti after its 2010 earthquake, and with other infamous Third World hot spots, as police officials later noticed to their dismay when they studied U.N. statistics."
You can read the rest of the article right here. But as bad as things have become in Camden, this should not be a surprise to most of you. The reality is that this kind of rot and decay is happening in communities all over the United States.
Over in Detroit, crime has gotten so bad that even the police are telling people to "enter Detroit at your own risk". When you call the police in Detroit it takes them an average of 58 minutes to respond, and more than 90 percent of the crimes committed in the city end up as unsolved mysteries.
At this point, 60 percent of all children in Detroit are living in poverty, and there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.
For much more on all this, check out the statistics in this article, and you can find some great photos of the "ruins of Detroit" right here.
So why is all of this happening?
Well, there are lots of factors involved of course, but the biggest one is the lack of good jobs in these cities.
At one time, Detroit had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the entire nation. But now those days are long gone.
And what is happening to Detroit is precisely what is happening to America as a whole. Our good jobs are disappearing and the middle class is being systematically destroyed.
In order to have a middle class, you have got to have middle class jobs.
There is no way around that.
And right now, hordes of young people are graduating from college and discovering that the middle class jobs that they were promised simply are not there.
CNN recently profiled a 37-year-old college graduate named Bobby Bingham. Because he cannot find a good job, he is forced to work four low paying jobs...
Bobby Bingham works four jobs in Kansas City, Missouri, yet he has very little to show for it.
Bingham is 37 years old and has a college degree, but like many Americans, is stuck working many hours in low wage, part-time jobs.
Each week, he works a total of about 60 hours in his jobs as a massage therapist, a waiter at a Mexican restaurant, a delivery man for sandwich chain Jimmy John's and a receptionist at his massage school.
Bingham makes approximately $400 a week, which works out to about $20,000 a year. He has come to the conclusion that he may never be able to make enough to support a family...
"I've come to the point in my life where I wonder if I can ever support a family," he said. "I have no idea how that's ever going to logically happen."
That deeply saddened my heart when I read that. Here is a young man that wants to get married, have a family and do all the right things, but the economy is so bad that he fears that this may never be possible for him.
As I have written about previously, the economic downturn that we are experiencing right now has hit men particularly hard. The number of men in their prime working years that do not make enough money to support a family is rising with each passing year, and this is causing massive problems in this country.
And when our politicians proclaim that all we need is "more education", I feel like vomiting. The U.S. population as a whole has more "education" today than it ever has had before.
If you think that "more education" is the answer, then check out the following excerpt from a recent interview with a law school graduate that is making about $40,000 a year and that has about $200,000 in law school debt...
Yes, it's extremely hard to get by. I can't afford rent or a car and can barely afford food. Anything extra like enjoying myself with friends, going to a movie, traveling, etc. — that's all out the window for the foreseeable future and possibly for the rest of my life thanks to law school. I live with my parents. I don't have a car. I don't go out to socialize. I don't date. I don't buy new clothes. I don't buy electronics. I don't buy much of anything. I spend my free time working other jobs to put more money toward my debt. I do contract work for other lawyers, but the pay is very low and payment is sporadic.
Why did this happen to him? Well, the truth is that there are way, way too many law school graduates. There are not nearly enough good jobs for all of them. In fact, this particular law school graduate deeply regrets ever going to law school and considers it "an extraordinary waste of money"...
I consider law school a waste of my life and an extraordinary waste of money. I feel like I was duped and tricked. At the end of the day, it's my own fault for being a sucker and I learned an extremely hard lesson. Because I went to law school, I don't see myself having a family, earning a comfortable wage, or having an enjoyable lifestyle.
But at least he has a job. There are millions of college graduates that do not. And there are hundreds of thousands of other college graduates that are currently working as waiters and waitresses. Large numbers are also working temp jobs or standing behind registers in retail stores.
Over the past decade, tens of thousands of businesses and millions of good jobs have left this country. The quality of the jobs that remain continues to decline at a frightening pace, and most of the new jobs that are being "created" these days are part-time jobs.
But you won't hear the mainstream media or our most prominent politicians talk about these things much. You won't hear them talk about the fact that median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row or about the fact that the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row.
The middle class is dying.
Wake up America.
And even as millions of our jobs have been shipped to the other side of the planet, some of the most prominent "American companies" have been bought up by foreigners. The following list comes from a recent Economy In Crisis article...
-----
Here are some of America’s most famous brands currently held in foreign hands:
- Budweiser, now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V., which is based in Leuven, Belgium
- Alka-Seltzer, now owned by German company Bayer Schering Pharma AG
- Ben & Jerrys, now owned by British-Dutch Unilever
- AMC theaters, now owned by the Chinese
- 7-Eleven, now owned by the Japanese company, Seven & I Holdings
- Woman’s Day Magazine, now owned by the French company, Hachette Filipacchi Médias, S.A
- Purina, now owned by the Swiss company, Nestle
- Gerber, now owned by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Novartis
- Firestone, now owned by the Japanese Bridgestone Corporation
- Citgo, now owned by the government of Venezuela
- French’s Mustard, now owned by Reckitt Benckiser, a British conglomerate
- Frigidaire, now owned by Sweden’s AB Electrolux
- The Plaza Hotel in New York City, now owned by Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva’s El-Ad Group
- Trader Joes, now owned by German billionaires Karl and Theo Albrecht
- Dial soap, now owned by Henkel KGaA, based in Dusseldorf, Germany
- Sunglass Hut, now owned by Italian eyewear seller Luxottica Group
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Are you starting to get the picture?
Our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted and more than 46 million Americans are now living in poverty.
And if you are waiting for the jokers in Washington D.C. to fix things, you are going to be waiting for a very, very long time.
Over the past several years, both the Democrats and the Republicans have proven again and again that they are basically completely and totally useless. In fact, just about everything that they try to do actually makes our problems even worse.
In just a few days, Barack Obama leaves for a 17 day holiday vacation in Hawaii. Many have criticized him and the members of Congress for taking so much time off, but perhaps that is the best thing that they can do at this point. As long as they are away from Washington D.C., at least they won't be making things even worse for all the rest of us.
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This pretty much could have been written in 1968. It's nothing new.
For better than 30 years I have recived monthly aucton notices, these notices are industrial machinery auctions and plant liquidations, and most are huge.
A recent one that comes to mind had a yard locomotive, 3 gantry cranes, 75 welders, 7 turret mills, 10 lathes, presses, brakes, shears, lasers, my guess this plant alone represented 200-250 good paying jobs.
North American industry has been slowly gutted, and so has the never to return middle class.
Pay people to pop out babies, this is what you get. Let garbage people in the country, this is what you get. Allow the Latin America drug lords to have free reign in America's cities and this is what you get.
Michael Trivisono went on a great rant one day on Cleveland radio after a group of black thugs killed a young white girl. He said Cleveland died when the Jews bought all the politicians and kicked the mafia out of Cleveland. He said Cleveland never had a problem with the blacks until the late 70s becaude the mob kept them in check. If a black guy wandered onto Murray Hill, the Italians just killed him. Containing the spread of the ghetto disease. But then the Jews bankrolled the neighborhood blockbusting, buying up property so they could rent the homes to the blacks. Tubbs Jones and Kucinich allowed the blacks to run all over town causing trouble, forcing the whites outbof the inner ring suburbs. Then the Jews could pick up all the property cheap. Nobody loved section 8 rent more than the Jewish slumlord taking in government guaranteed rent. Like Caddyshack, Jews were never really welcome in Cleveland country clubs. So they devestated the neighborhoods and forced hundreds of thousands out of the cities. Today you can go from downtown Cleveland to Beachwood without passing a single home owned by a white family. What once were proud middle class neighborhoods are now a discrace.
Somehow Trivisano still stayed on the air, probably because he can still have people whacked.
My dad told me you never had to worry about the mafia guys. If it got late and a kid needed a ride home, a nice Italian guy in a suit would give you a ride home and make sure you got home safe. If a group of ghetto thugs started causing trouble, the mobsters would make sure they didn't do it again. The mafia protected women and children and kept the peace better than the cops. There was a criminal element, but compared to what goes on with the Fed and the league of lawyers today, what went on was hardly anythingn at all.
The real reason for this degeneration of our once-great nation is this stupid, stupid, stupid nonsense of "Free trade".
I am 75 years old. I knew 40 years ago when the Repugnicans started using the term that is was going to be a concept that would bring about national suicide.
This is how the international Tribal banksters and stateless oligarchs have brought us down without firing a shot.
If you don't understand this, you have been dumbed-down and brainwashed.
Of course "Free Trade" doesn't really exist. China and Germany are run on Mercantilist principles.
Sounds like what the White Student Union that Towson University here in Maryland tried to do. The organization was promptly shut down, then restarted, then marginalized. It exists, but oh boy, what a firestorm.
Not a member, but I've met the chief. Good dude, just wants to live in a peaceful community and have a wife and kids one day and an environment where they can paly safely and go to good schools. I do wish half of them would lose a bit of weight, beef up a bit and get some tats, but hey....they're doing more than most, including me. Me? I'm running west, which in a way is just trading one problem for another.
You lost me at "get some tats."
Tat ....Toos....
Ohhhh, TATs. I was wayyyy off.
You are completely misguided if you think the Mafia are the good guys or "nice" guys. They are parasites in the same way as the bankers, just with a more direct and physically violent shakedown.
35 years ago,America was in a very similar place;Jimmy Carter was president,American foreign policy in disarray,urban blight occurring in every major city;and then,one day,for no particular reason,Ronald Reagan became president of the United States,and it was morning again in America.
Industry thrived,cities rid themselves of crime,the US won the Cold War and from sea to shining sea there was prosperity,as the failure of communist tyranny faded,discredited,from the world scene.
But now there has arisen a generation,who,in the words of Exodus "knew not Joseph" and what was as clear as day a generation ago has become blurred and defaced,relics of a bygone era.Fascist Muslim states,spewing ancient vitriol roil a world grown weak and fat,flabby from decadence and indolence.
But it doesn't have to be this way.America is a nation founded upon an idea;that men yearn to be free,and live out there destiny pursuing their dreams,not yoked as beasts of burden to toil for an increasingly totalitarian state.
So,my fellow citizens,keep your powder dry;there are many acts left to play in the American drama.Soon,after the long dark night,it will be morning again in America...
True, but all was accomplished with printed money. All you state happened but it was not because of leadership, a new beginning, or a lucky time in our history-it was printed $$$$$$$.
Looking forward to an American Spring.
a few wags say the downfall of America began with the installation of air conditioning allowing Congress much more time in session in the former swamp, Washington, D.C.
still haven't got my bamaphone yet. what's the NSA gonna listen too?
Doesn't Camden have a Winter Olympics bid in??
really ya cant blame Bush or Oblama-this house of cards has been coming down for decades-JFK tried to reverse it and was murdered-after that, the collpase went into full swing with the help of both Reublicans and Democrats; yep even your hero Ronald Reagan worked for the NWO.
Ever flown in to LAX recently? Surrounding neighborhood looks just like a Mexican slum.... Oh wait that sounds like a compliment.
"Hundreds Of U.S. Cities Are Turning Into Rotting, Decaying Hellholes"
Nowhere can be 100% unaffected. Everything's connected. Where towns, cities, and states rot and their infrastructures dissolve, TPTB and their businesses will rot too, slowly but surely. Recently our road district supervisor mentioned that new culverts that last only 5 years replaced culverts that had been installed 50 years ago when USA made its own steel. The new culverts are far more expensive and will have to be replaced in 5 years; the new ones available then may last one year or possibly less. How are roads throughout the US to be maintained so that trucks can deliver goods needed to sustain life? This is only one of the lesser social-breakdown problems.
They have their own compounds.
You're thinking of MINIONS to TPTB.
dont worry the gubmint will take care of you womb to tomb.... i wonder if there is a study that shows why third gen parasites have large number of kids while rational people realize if you dont have income dont have kids... SO WE ARE BREEDING GENERATION AFTER GENERATION OF FUCKING IDIOTS, MULTIPLYING LIKE RABBITS AND SUCKING MORE PRODUCTIVE CAPITAL OUT OF THE ECONOMY... WITH FUCKING IDIOTS LIKE PELOSI REID AND OBAMA SAYING ITS GOOD FOR THE COMMON GOOD...
re Cali - how would you like to be a teacher expecting to get a pension in Cali...
re Camden / Detroit - bulldoze them...
re foreign ownership of "amerikan" companies... so what without them there would be even less jobs... and you have to ask yourself why foreign investors can make a resonable ROE while ussa investors cant.. after all we have all the glorious MBA factories costing $100k/year chrning out management geniuses...
Maybe its because companies like GE PAY NO TAXES, bought with contributions to obama and other political scum and "we bring good things to life" like no social responsibility and moving xray plants to china etc etc and supplying iran with nuclear technology... and tax evasion and profiting from slave labor (china)...
CORRUPTION and IMMORALITY UP DOWN AND SIDEWAYS.... no one givs a fuck til you get shot in the head because some cretin jacks your whooptie in an upscale burb mall while youre Christmas shopping...
Maybe its because ussa has become a country of service (servants) and financial gangsters as opposed to a cohesive moral society..
Detroit just needs ELECTROLYTES! it's what EBT cards crAAAaaave!
Put saltpeter in the govt cheese.
Require depo provera to get govt cheese.
Put Kanye West on packets of condoms.
Open Planned Parenthood franchises on every corner and offer a Poppa Stopper Special with a free quarter pounder with cheese and fries for every abortion.
Stop paying govt money just cuz' someone popped out another kid.
The City of Camden spends $22,000 per student. Graduation rate is 33% Superior Court Judge Doyle has ruled that New Jersey is not spending enough to educate children in “high-risk” districts. He has said that more state monies must be committed to these districts in order to satisfy the requirements set down by the State Supreme Court.
No doubt the city hall is still sending out huge real estate tax bills and selling grandmas house left and right for nonpayment.
Who will be the last person in a ghost town?
The chain-link fence erector?
..."you still have the pattern continuing today, in the form of psychopathic financial industry titans determined to repeat their mistakes from 2008 all over again."
You think 2008 was a mistake? The test was the savings and loans; they got away with it, nothing happened. 2008 was the next step, which continues to this day, because nothing happened!
"Yes, it's extremely hard to get by. I can't afford rent or a car and can barely afford food. Anything extra like enjoying myself with friends, going to a movie, traveling, etc. — that's all out the window for the foreseeable future and possibly for the rest of my life thanks to law school. I live with my parents. I don't have a car. I don't go out to socialize. I don't date. I don't buy new clothes. I don't buy electronics. I don't buy much of anything. I spend my free time working other jobs to put more money toward my debt. I do contract work for other lawyers, but the pay is very low and payment is sporadic."
Regan said "Start a million dollar company in your basement", Obama said "live in your parents basement"!
So all is well in the Obama plan!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wRRwZDSmTVI
Lucy splains it .... sukka
Nothing will happen.
It's like the time I was pond fishing for stocked trout at a boat ramp.
State fish game tanker truck pulls up and pours raised trout out. They just staid in a big knot. Didn't know what to do.
Same same. Tenth gen welfare sheep haven't and won't move a bit
I know who can save Detroit!
7.62x54mm. Big, mean, old, proven round, dirt cheap, and widely available in time capsule spam cans.