Detroit's Dramatic Population Loss

What can I say about this?

I'm not surprised now that I think about it. There're no jobs. The buses are shitty, and there aren't any trains. Cars are tricky because Michigan allows discrimination based on zip code. I saved more then $1,000 in insurance alone when I left. The Public Schools have Mission Impossible, and (predictably) fail at it.

The jobs situation might improve soon, because the auto industry is picking back up, but in the long-term the industry is in decline. The political system is incapable of solving the other problems because it includes three county governments, and more then 100 Mayors, and everyone's obsessed with screwing everyone else.

It's really sad.

Part of the problem here is that the region is represented by it's biggest ghetto. Metro Detroit isn't doing great in this economy, but it's not lost 25%. But Detroit has, so the entire region looks shitty. And the sad thing is most of the political leaders in the region like it this way. They'd rather be last in everything then give voters from the ghetto a say in what happens in their tiny little enclave.

3rd worst place to live?

According to a recent BS list Detroit is the third worst place to live. The good news is Cleveland is #2, and some tiny city in Cali is #1. The bad news is we look terrible in the international media, which means it's gonna be a lot harder to bring business in. It seems like we get one of these hits every few months. Our numbers just suck

There is an easy way to fudge them so we wouldn't look so bad in national (and international) rankings: unification.

Every urban region in the country has crappy areas. We are pretty much unique (Gary and St. Louis share the honor) in that the crappiest of the crappy areas are all in the municipality that gave it's name to the entire region. If we changed that by unifying the tri-county area into a single municipality the number these dorks used for their statistical rankings would improve, almost certainly beating the national average, and definitely beating the state averages, in pretty much everything.

It's not likely to happen, tho. Any little change to the existing order makes black nationalists go crazy, on the basis that their power is being diluted; even if said dilution is simply replacing one group Detroiters elect (the School Board) with a group appointed by a guy Detroiters elect. Similar selfish little interest groups dominate most of the suburbs.

So rather then unite, and solve this problem, we'll remain divided and self-righteous.

BTW, I recently went into economic exile from Detroit. To Cleveland. Lucky me.