‘When most people think of the economic
decline that is happening in America,
most of them think of states like California
and cities like Detroit.
In both cases, unemployment is rampant, government finances are a mess, and
businesses and families are both leaving in droves. So what is causing
this? What do California and Detroit have in
common? Well, for one thing, both the state of California
and the city of Detroit
have been run by anti-business socialist control freaks for decades. Once
upon a time millions of young Americans that dreamed of a better life flocked
to California and Detroit was one of the most vibrant manufacturing
cities in the history of the world. But now both of them are in an
advanced state of decline, and a lot of the blame can be placed at the feet of
the politicians in both cases. Both California
and Detroit have become very unfriendly places
to businesses and families, so businesses and families have been leaving both California and Detroit
in very large numbers. At the same time, the socialist welfare policies
in both places have caused them to become magnets for those that enjoy being
dependent on the government. Welfare recipients are not likely to pack
up and move down to Texas
because they know that their benefits would not be nearly as good down
there. So both California and Detroit will continue to
attract those that want to live under socialist control freaks and it will
continue to drive away those that do not want to live under socialist control
freaks.
It is so sad to see what has happened
to Detroit.
At one point, Detroit was one of the greatest cities in the
world.
But today, 53.6 percent of all children in Detroit
are living in poverty and 47 percent of all people living in the
city of Detroit
are functionally illiterate.
How does something like that happen?
Over the past 50 years, the
population of Detroit
has lost more than a million people as businesses and families have left in
droves. The following is from a recent Economy In
Crisis article....
Once
the wealthiest city in America,
known as the “arsenal of democracy,” Detroit was
the fourth largest city in the U.S.
in the 1960s with a population of two million. Now a microcosm of everything
that is wrong with the American economy, Detroit
has become nothing more than a devastated landscape of urban decay with a
current population of 713,000.
Visiting
Detroit is the closest Americans can come to
viewing what appears to be a war torn city without leaving the U.S. This
former powerhouse is a barren stretch of land, devastated by looters and and full of run-down, vacant houses. Rows upon rows of
dilapidated structures line the streets; empty apartment buildings and
factories consume the landscape. Almost a third of Detroit has been abandoned.
Third world conditions prevail in
many areas of Detroit
today. There are many areas of the city that you simply would not want to
ever visit at night. The following is what one enterprising 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.
In Detroit today there are large numbers of three
and four bedroom homes that you can buy for next to nothing. Most
of them are boarded up and abandoned. Nobody wants to live in them
anymore.
The graduation rate in Detroit is down to about 25 percent, and the city has become a
breeding ground for crime and gangs.
The jobs that have left Detroit are not coming
back. A lot of this can be blamed on the foolish "free
trade" economic agenda being pushed by both major political
parties. For example, auto parts exports from China have increased by more than 900 percent
since the year 2000.
But not all the jobs that have left Detroit have gone
overseas.
A lot of businesses have simply moved
their manufacturing facilities to more business-friendly areas over the past
several decades. When politicians just keep pushing the business
community over and over, eventually many businesses will start to leave for
greener pastures.
Today, there are hordes of formerly great cities all over the "rust
belt" that have lost their economic infrastructure. But instead of
changing strategies, many of them just keep on doing the same old things and
hope that somehow things will turn around.
It is also very depressing to watch
what is happening to the entire state of California.
Over the past 20 years, the state has
experienced a net loss of approximately four million residents to
other states.
As I wrote about recently, there are
a whole host of good reasons to move away from California, but certainly
the twisted control freak socialists running the state are one of the primary
reasons why so many families are hightailing it out of there.
California just keeps implementing more ridiculous anti-business and anti-family
regulations. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal article....
And
things will only get worse in the coming years as Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown
and his green cadre implement their "smart growth" plans to cram the
proletariat into high-density housing. "What I find reprehensible beyond
belief is that the people pushing [high-density housing] themselves live in
single-family homes and often drive very fancy cars, but want everyone else to
live like my grandmother did in Brownsville in Brooklyn in the 1920s," Mr. Kotkin
declares.
"The
new regime"—his name for progressive apparatchiks who run California's government—"wants to destroy the
essential reason why people move to California
in order to protect their own lifestyles."
Housing
is merely one front of what he calls the "progressive war on the middle
class." Another is the cap-and-trade law AB32, which will raise the cost
of energy and drive out manufacturing jobs without making even a dent in global
carbon emissions. Then there are the renewable portfolio standards, which
mandate that a third of the state's energy come from renewable sources like
wind and the sun by 2020. California's
electricity prices are already 50% higher than the national average.
The funny thing is that Barack Obama
likes to point to California
as an example of where he wants to take the entire nation. But a recent Daily Beast article noted how
foolish it would be to follow the path that California has chosen....
Obama
regularly asserts that green jobs will play a crucial role in the future of the
American economy, but California, a trend-setter in the field, has yet to reap
such benefits. Green jobs, broadly defined, make up only about 2 percent of
jobs in the state—about the same proportion as in Texas. In Silicon
Valley, the number of green jobs actually declined between 2003
and 2010. Meanwhile, California’s unemployment
rate of 10.9 percent is the nation’s third highest, behind only Nevada and Rhode
Island.
When Governor Jerry Brown predicted a
half-million green jobs by the end of the decade, even The New York Times
deemed it “a pipe dream.”
Obama’s
push to nationalize many of California’s
economy-stifling green policies has been slowed down, first by the Republican
resurgence in 2010 and then by his reelection considerations. But California’s
politicians, living in what’s become essentially a one-party state, have
doubled down on green orthodoxy. As the president at least tries to cover his
flank by claiming to support an “all-in” energy policy, California has simply refused to exploit
much of its massive oil and gas resources.
The funny thing is that California is one of the least "green" places
in America.
According to a recent article by Les Christie, the five most
polluted cities in America are all in California.
So perhaps that should clean up their
own act before trying to export their philosophies to the rest of the nation.
As businesses and families leave California in waves, the
state is finding itself in a lot of financial trouble.
Once again, the state is facing a
much larger than anticipated financial hole in 2012. So far this year tax
receipts are way, way down as a recent Bloomberg article noted....
California
personal-income-tax collections in April are falling short of Governor Jerry
Brown’s projection by more than $2 billion, data from Controller John Chiang
show. The state is already facing a $9.2 billion deficit through June 2013.
With
two days to be counted, the state has taken in $6.74 billion since April 1,
according to a daily tally on Chiang’s website. Brown’s projection for the
month was $9.13 billion.
But as mentioned above, Barack Obama
wants the rest of the country to become much more like California.
With each passing day, the United States
is becoming even more socialist, and both major political parties are facilitating
this transition.
For example, back in the year 2000
social welfare benefits made up approximately 21
percent of all salaries and wages in the United States.
In 2012, social welfare benefits make
up approximately 35 percent of all salaries and wages in the United States.
That is a mind blowing shift in just
12 years.
It would be easy to blame Obama for that,
but the Republicans actually had control of the White House for most of that
time period.
The truth is that both George W. Bush
and Barack Obama have steadily moved America in the direction of big
government and socialism.
And at the White House Correspondents'
Dinner the other night, Obama joked about "the
European-style socialism that he has planned" for his second term.
He joked that it will include "more government handouts, a life of
government dependencies, indoctrinating our children, a left wing social
agenda" among other things.
Is it really a laughing matter that
the entire country is going down the same path that California
and Detroit
have gone?
Hasn't enough damage already been
done to our economy?
According to a recent Gallup poll, only 60 percent of all Americans
say that they have enough money to live comfortably. That was the lowest
level Gallup
has ever recorded.
How much worse do things have to get
before the American people decide that it is time for a fundamental change of
direction?’
