{ Ah yes … those sweet sounds and smells of motown … the darks
coming to a place near you! }
Do you
want to know what the future of America is going to look like? Just check
out what is happening to Detroit. The city of Detroit was once one of the
greatest industrial cities in the history of the world, but today it is a
rotting, decaying, post-apocalyptic hellhole. Nearly half the men are
unemployed, nearly half the population is functionally illiterate, more than
half of the children are living in poverty and the city government is drowning
in debt. As economic conditions have gotten worse, crime has absolutely
exploded. Every single night in Detroit there are frightening
confrontations between desperate criminals and exasperated homeowners.
Unfortunately, the police force in Detroit has been dramatically reduced in
size. When the police in Detroit are called, they often show up very late
if they even show up at all. Detroit has become a lawless hellhole where
violence is the currency of the streets. If you want to survive in
Detroit, you better be ready to fight because there are hordes of desperate
criminals that are quite eager to take literally everything that you have
got. But don't look down on Detroit too much, because what is happening
in Detroit will soon be happening all over America.
The
following are 20 things we can learn about the future of America from the death
of Detroit....
#1 People don't want to live where the
stench of failure and decay is constantly in the air. Back in the 1950s,
Detroit was a teeming metropolis of approximately 2 million people.
According to the 2010 census, only 713,000
people live in Detroit today. The U.S. Census Bureau says that Detroit
lost a resident every 22
minutes during the first decade of this century.
#2 When the economy falls apart,
desperate people will do desperate things and many homeowners will fight
back. Justifiable homicide in Detroit rose by a staggering 79 percent
during 2011.
#3 In major cities where people are
scrambling just to survive, any confrontation can quickly escalate into a life
or death affair. The rate of self-defense killings in Detroit is
currently 2200%
above the national average.
#4 When there is not enough money to go
around, a lot of local governments will choose to cut back on police
protection. Ten years ago, there were approximately 5,000 police for the
city of Detroit. Today, there are less than
3,000.
#5 The essential social services that
you are enjoying today will not always be there in the future. Officials
in Detroit recently announced that due to budget constraints, all police
stations will be closed to the public for 16
hours a day.
#6 Economic decay is a breeding ground
for chaos and violence. Last Friday and Saturday, a total of nine
shootings were reported in the city of Detroit.
#7 More Americans than ever are
realizing the benefits of self-defense. The following is what 73-year-old
Julia Brown recently told the
Daily....
The last time Brown, 73, called the
Detroit police, they didn’t show up until the next day. So she applied for a
permit to carry a handgun and says she’s prepared to use it against the young
thugs who have taken over her neighborhood, burglarizing entire blocks, opening
fire at will and terrorizing the elderly with impunity.
#8 When crime gets go bad that the
police are powerless to stop it, vigilante groups begin to form....
In fact, crime has gotten so bad and
the citizens are so frustrated by the lack of police assistance that they have
resorted to forming their own organizations to fight back. One group,
known as "Detroit 300", was formed after a 90-year-old woman
on Detroit's northwest side was brutally raped in August.
#9 When criminals become desperate,
they will steal literally anything that is not bolted down. In Detroit
today, thieves have stripped so much copper wiring out of the street lights
that half of all the lights in some neighborhoods no longer
work.
#10 As things fall apart, eventually a
time comes when it is not even safe to drive down the road in the middle of the
day. 100 bus drivers in Detroit recently refused to drive their routes
out of fear of being attacked on the streets. The head of the bus drivers
union, Henry Gaffney, said that the drivers were literally "scared
for their lives"....
“Our drivers are scared, they’re
scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about
security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers
was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the
police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney.
#11 One of the clearest signs of decline
in America is the state of our education system. Only 25 percent
of all students in Detroit end up graduating from high school. Many other
major cities will soon have graduation rates similar to Detroit.
#12 When local governments run out of
money they are forced to make tough choices. After already shutting down
dozens of schools, officials in Detroit have announced plans to close down 16 more
schools.
#13 A growing percentage of Americans
cannot even read or write. This is a very frightening indication of what
the future of America could look like. According to one stunning report, 47 percent
of all people living in the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.
#14 Sadly, child poverty is
absolutely exploding all over the United States. Today, 53.6 percent of all
children that live in Detroit are living below the poverty line.
#15 The employment situation in America
is a lot worse than the
government is telling us. An analysis of census figures found that 48.5% of
all men living in Detroit from age 20 to age 64 did not have a job in 2008.
#16 When a major city becomes a
hellhole, home prices fall like a rock. The median price of a home in
Detroit is now just $6000.
#17 When crime and looting become
commonplace, homes in an area can become absolutely worthless. Some homes
in Detroit have been sold for a
single dollar.
#18 When depression-like
conditions exist in an area for a number of years, large numbers of
people will move on to greener pastures. As of a few years ago, there
were more than 40,000
vacant properties in the city of Detroit.
#19 Just because we have a high standard
of living today does not mean that will always be the case. Detroit is
just a rotting shell of what it once was, and what is happening to Detroit will
happen to much of the rest of America very soon. The following is what
one British reporter found during
his visit to Detroit....
Much of Detroit is horribly dangerous
for its own residents, who in many cases only stay because they have nowhere
else to go. Property crime is double the American average, violent crime
triple. The isolated, peeling homes, the flooded roads, the clunky, rusted old
cars and the neglected front yards amid trees and groin-high grassland make you
think you are in rural Alabama, not in one of the greatest industrial cities
that ever existed.
#20 When government finances collapse,
politicians look for things to sell off and "privatize".
Unfortunately, the Detroit city government is so broke that it is now
considering selling off some
of its most famous assets....
Now, the city of Detroit's most
venerable assets — from Belle Isle to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel — could end up
on the auction block as the city fights for its financial life.
Facing mounting debt and the prospect
of a state-appointed emergency manager, the city is looking at all options to
shed expenses and raise revenue. If city officials can't come up with a viable
budget plan, an emergency manager would have the power to sell assets as part
of a financial takeover of Detroit.
But Detroit is not alone.
Lots of other cities all over America
are flat broke and out of options.
For example, just check out what is happening
in
Scranton, Pennsylvania....
Mayor Christopher Doherty is blunt when
asked about a court order forcing his Pennsylvania city to pay about $30
million in wages withheld from police and firefighters under a state-approved
fiscal recovery plan.
“I don’t have the money,” said
Doherty, 53. As for the chance of borrowing the cash, more than half of the
city’s projected general-fund revenue, he added, “there’s no financial
institution that’s going to give me $30 million to pay it.”
The U.S. economy never recovered from
the last major financial crisis,
and now another one is on the way.
As the economy crumbles, so will the
fabric of our society.
The American people are terribly
spoiled and they do not possess the character to handle depression-like
conditions with grace and dignity.
In the years ahead, we are going to
see rampant rioting and looting in our major cities. The crime sprees
that we will witness in future years will be absolutely unprecedented.
Things did not have to turn out this
way, but unfortunately the consequences of decades of really bad decisions are
starting to catch up with us.
So what do you think the future of
America will look like? Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion
below....