Detroit, and the Bankruptcy of America's Social Contract
http://www.nationofchange.org/detroit-and-bankruptcy-america-s-social-contract-1374412531
One way to view Detroits bankruptcy the largest bankruptcy of any American city is as a failure of political negotiations over how financial sacrifices should be divided among the citys creditors, city workers, and municipal retirees requiring a court to decide instead. It could also be seen as the inevitable culmination of decades of union agreements offering unaffordable pension and health benefits to city workers.
But theres a more basic story here, and its being replicated across America: Americans are segregating by income more than ever before. Forty years ago, most cities (including Detroit) had a mixture of wealthy, middle-class, and poor residents. Now, each income group tends to lives separately, in its own city with its own tax bases and philanthropies that support, at one extreme, excellent schools, resplendent parks, rapid-response security, efficient transportation, and other first-rate services; or, at the opposite extreme, terrible schools, dilapidated parks, high crime, and third-rate services.
The geo-political divide has become so palpable that being wealthy in America today means not having to come across anyone who isnt.
Detroit is a devastatingly poor, mostly black, increasingly abandoned island in the midst of a sea of comparative affluence thats mostly white. Its suburbs are among the richest in the nation. Oakland County, for example, is the fourth wealthiest county in the United States, of counties with a million or more residents. Greater Detroit which includes the suburbs is among the nations top five financial centers, the top four centers of high-technology employment, and the second-biggest source of engineering and architectural talent. Not everyone is wealthy, to be sure, but the median household in the region earns close to $50,000 a year, and unemployment is no higher than the nations average. The median household in Birmingham, Michigan, just across the border that delineates the city of Detroit, earned more than $94,000 last year; in nearby Bloomfield Hills still within the Detroit metropolitan area the median was more than $150,000.