For those familiar with Detroit, how would you try to fix things?
I live in California and don't know much about their current situation other than how dire it is.
I'd like to hear from people who live there, or have experience dealing with Detroit, about what they would do to try to turn things around.
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Detroit is where the middle class was born, thanks to Henry Ford and the United Auto Workers. Before the Depression, Ford paid his workers $5 a day -- enough money for them to be able to afford to buy the products they made, as well as their own homes. In time, a worker could save enough to send their kids to college and have a comfortable retirement. Other automakers followed suit.
During World War II, Detroit was the arsenal of democracy. The assembly lines produced jeeps, bombers and tanks and a whole lot more. People had jobs. When the men came back from the war, most of the women "returned" or "were returned" to the homes and the factory jobs went to the returning vets.
The riots of 1967 saw most of the city's Caucasian population leave for the suburbs. Many of the African Americans who could leave town for the suburbs have also left for the better schools and safer neighborhoods.
Around the late-60s, the combination of automation and off-shoring saw the auto plant jobs begin to disappear. By the late 80s, most were gone, never to return. What's left of the big employers are educational institutions and hospitals.
The scammers are here, too. What one guy wants to do with Belle Isle, a tarnished crown jewel of the City:
And We here in Detroit are getting poorer every day. Which doesn't mean there isn't some friend of Gov. Snyder who can't turn a buck off it. When they're through, they'll have privatized the City's nicest assets, the water works and Belle Isle, which they want to transform into an quasi-independent Commonwealth located between the USA and Canada to the south -- a tax shelter identical in spirit with Georgetown in Grand Cayman I kid you not.
Detroit's Game Changer
In 1950, Detroit was a vibrant city; the wealthiest in the nation. Now, despite all the efforts of many good people, the city has lost most of its population and is now the poorest, most dangerous, most run down city in America.
Detroit needs a game changer. The 982 acre island of Belle Isle can be that game changer for Detroit. The book Belle Isle is about that vision.
The setting is Belle Isle, 30 years in the future. Twenty nine years prior (2014), Belle Isle was sold by the city of Detroit for $1 billion dollars to a group of investors who believed in individual freedom, liberty and free markets.
They formed their own city-state, with innovative systems of government, taxation, labor and money. People soon came from all over the world to be part of this culture of unlimited opportunity. Belle Isle became the “Midwest Tiger,” rivaling Singapore as an economic miracle. Although numbering only 35,000 citizens, it generated billions of dollars in desperately needed economic growth and became a social laboratory for the western world.
Detroit shared in the genuine Renaissance. The large sum paid for Belle Isle was used to train Detroiters to fill the huge need for construction workers on Belle Isle. Beyond this, the construction of this remarkable new nation by private money provided years of economic boost for Detroit and Southeast Michigan, and the sparks generated by the fires of “can do” optimism and a new social pact jumped the river, causing factories and farms to be built in Detroit, restoring it to its former glory.
Big changes take big ideas, power arising from noble intent, and leaders of great vision and courage. It happened before with the birth of America. It can happen again.
All this is possible on Belle Isle.
SOURCE: http://www.commonwealthofbelleisle.com/
My short answer: Invest in the people. They'll figure out a way forward better than the so-and-so's appointed to divvy up what's left for piratization.
