What can we learn from Detroit's Bankruptcy?

I lived in detroit for ten years. So while your pontificating do understand real lives are affected. Men and women who played by the rules for all of their lives just might be assed out. If you really want to lay blame towards detroit situation, just look at it's past leaders. Bad leadership is bad leadership regardless of party affiliation. Detroit should be a case study on what happens when a city does not pay attention to education. Anyways i could write a book but that won't change a thing. I just pray the people are able to move on and survive

Juan and Lust, in case you missed it,Detroit has been run by liberal democrats for the past 50 years or so. Originally Posted by Abraham

I believe I quite clearly stated that I blame the liberal union mentality for the root cause that led to the downfall of Detroit.

L4L

It is the perfect laboratory of the completely impractical application of liberal theology. It is liberalism in practice, given time to prove itself out as a complete and total failure. Every single practice in play in Detroit will eventually prove to be what reduces the entire country to the same miserable pile of shit that is currently Detroit.
What is the invisible hand causing liberalism to fail? Collective indemnity for personal shortcomings. If the collective guarantees the promise that no one can suffer the consequences of their own irresponsible, selfish, pathetic loser behavior, starting with coddling underachieving students, then when the collective no longer has enough people willing to pay for other people to be selfish jackasses with no penalty, the whole enterprise fails.
In a similar fashion, trillions in deficit spending props up the United States. Once the taxpayers are unwilling to prop up this monstrous ponzi scheme called the US government, or foreigners no longer accept our paper money, will will reap the inevitable collapse of all liberal schemes.
Liberalism, without suckers, is unable to sustain itself. Originally Posted by Jewish Lawyer

I want to support your main points, which for the most part I agree with, but when you extrapolate them to cover all liberal policy on a national level, I think that's a fail.

When you say "If the collective guarantees the promise that no one can suffer the consequences of their own irresponsible, selfish, pathetic loser behavior, starting with coddling underachieving students, then when the collective no longer has enough people willing to pay for other people to be selfish jackasses with no penalty, the whole enterprise fails." and apply it to the context of unions and Detroit specifically, I agree with you. The UAW killed the goose that laid the golden egg by pricing their workers out of the market and by blocking performance-based management of employees. This led of course to quality problems, the migration of jobs to more business-friendly locations, and an invitation to offshore competition.

The impact on Detroit, caused in this case by that liberal unionist behavior, was to gut the tax and consumer base of the city. Subsequent decades of weak leadership with it's head in the sand, governing as though a turnaround was just around the corner, exacerbated the problem.

Having said this, there is more than one way to attack the consumer class, and the Ryan budget would be just as damaging. If you underspend on things like infrastructure, healthcare, and education, while grossly overspending on things like the military, you shrink the tax and consumer spending base making budget problems worse, not better. It's another path to the Detroit model.

I am convinced that neither party has an effective solution, although Obama is sure doing a lot better than Bush was. An overly liberal policy that puts too much burden on businesses and the "haves" will kill jobs, which will lower spending, which will lower tax revenue, which will point us all towards Detroit. An overly conservative policy that makes health care unaffordable, education unaffordable and 2nd rate, and infrastructure uncompetitive will lower consumer spending, lower the competitiveness of American workers, and make it more costly for business to operate, which will put us on a path to Detroit.

Balance is needed. We need intelligent spending of what we can afford. We don't need to be in two wars. We don't need to be giving away jets to Egypt. We don't need to be arming our enemies in Syria. We don't need to be flying Pelosi back and forth to California on private planes every weekend. Health care and the post office should NOT be run by government, but nor should either be a profit center. The rest of the world has proven that a blend of socialism and capitalism works best for these types of services.

Unless something changes, I fear that Detroit is the model that the rest of the country is on a path towards. The good news is that I think that Hillary and Bill understand this. :-)

L4L

Balance is needed. We need intelligent spending of what we can afford. We don't need to be in two wars. We don't need to be giving away jets to Egypt. We don't need to be arming our enemies in Syria. We don't need to be flying Pelosi back and forth to California on private planes every weekend. Health care and the post office should NOT be run by government, but nor should either be a profit center.

L4L Originally Posted by Lust4xxxLife

Amen

Poor old Detroit. I used to go to Detroit Tiger Baseball games in the bleacher seats in the 50s, I believe for $2.00 or so a seat, memory is hazy. Rangers are actually comparable today according to a friend of mine you can get a bleachers seat for $20.00 there.