As I have said before, I sometimes have a problem where it comes to blogging about bad news. This can lead to problems, such as avoiding depressing topics entirely. Or writing about topics some would consider frivolous, like the weather, or comparisons between medical marijuana and radiation tourism.
Another option is to find humor in bad news and dire situations. But this has its limits. Carried too far, it can be very bad taste.
But sometimes I cannot resist the temptation, and I am certainly tempted where it comes to Detroit. To say that the city continues to have serious problems is understatement.
As the latest census illustrates dramatically, people are fleeing in record numbers. Freep’s Rochelle Riley calls the news a “wake-up call” and says it is wrong to scold those who leave:
Last week, Detroit got the wake-up call that might finally force its leaders to govern the city that exists instead of the city they remember.
U.S. census results revealed that Detroit has lost a quarter of its population — 237,500 people — since 2000.
It was the largest percentage loss ever for any American city with more than 100,000 residents, except New Orleans, which lost 29% or 140,000 people after Hurricane Katrina.
Detroit’s crisis didn’t result from hurricanes, but from slow-rising waters that threaten to drown the city:
* Higher insurance rates.
* Higher taxes.
* Poorer schools.
* Fewer amenities.
* Violent crime.
Rather than excoriate those who leave, Detroit leaders should work faster to fix what’s wrong.
Of course, the immediate (and understandable) reaction by city officials was to lamely attempt to scramble to come up with the missing numbers, because unless the city has the requisite 750,000 residents (which it no longer has) it stands to lose millions in state and federal dollars.
So there’s a search on — to discover the whereabouts of the “nearly 40,000 residents the census must have missed.”
City Council President Charles Pugh got even more creative. He wants to count Detroiters who are locked up in state prison:
City Council President Charles Pugh appealed to the census to count Detroit’s lawbreakers. There are thousands of Detroiters in prisons around the state who should be counted as city residents, he said. Pugh argued that Detroit’s population is also undercounted because “we know that there are thousands of people, because of car insurance, that have addresses in the suburbs.”
Freep columnist Stephen Henderson: sees the problem as primarily economic, and says “It’s the green leaving”:
By the 2006-08 census estimates, things had gotten even worse. The poverty rate was 34%, and median household income had dropped to a point where 44% of the city’s households were earning $25,000 or less each year.
I’ve not seen anything that suggests the 2010 numbers will show any great reversal. And I’ve been reminded this week of a conversation last year with a Detroit pastor who said the pivotal number in his congregation had become $30,000. Once a family was earning that much, he lost them to the suburbs.
The price of entry to inner-ring communities had fallen that low, and the collapse of Detroit city services, with the attendant struggle to find good schools or even feel safe, was driving a new exodus from the city.
So the incredible shrinking Detroit is no longer a story of white flight or black out-migration. It’s the green leaving.
The city is losing what little is left of its black middle class.
Nothing funny about it.
My first question is what happens when a city’s tax eaters become the overwhelming majority and the taxpayers flee? Where will the money come from?
Margaret Thatcher famously said that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
And when you run out of other people’s money because the people who had money have run away, you have Detroit.
MORE: I hope readers will forgive any errors in formatting, spelling, content or judgment as I have no time to proofread this post.
I am running out! (No, really….)