Comments on: RIP Detroit, as the US goes socialist

By: Tom McLoughlin

Tom McLoughlin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:17:23 +0000

Randy Newman said it well on Little Criminals with a song called Baltimore:

http://www.asklyrics.com/display/Randy_Newman/Baltimore_Lyrics/170900.htm

also on YouTube one version here: Great pathos if that’s the right word for it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rcSb8LgPQc

and note

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore,_Maryland#Economy

By: Mark Wainwright

Mark Wainwright — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:53:48 +0000

Detroit is a very depressing place with (ironically for Motor City) sh-t roads; cracked concrete freeways filled with scared white folks driving fast in huge SUVs to and from the outer suburbs. The inner suburbs are dominated with black and poorer white folks (in buses or driving smaller, older and often Japanese cars), with a lot of visibly decaying housing, much of it still occupied. Both parts of the population seem to largely ignore each other, unless their paths cross over a shop counter often with cringeworthy “have a nice day” style greetings (or couldn’t-give-a-toss disinterest, the hallmark of retail and service industry teenagers everywhere!). Crossing the tunnel under the Detroit River to Windsor is like entering another world. Although the two cities are clearly visible to each other across the water, the contrast is startling. The first thing you notice is that the road is no longer shaking your car to bits, then you see trees and greenery, and people doing things like actually walking without the aid of a Hummer. Canadians of all creeds seem to smile and shake their heads when discussing the US, whilst their American neighbours appear oblivious to just how crap their world actually is. They genuinely seem to think it really is the best country on the planet! God bless ‘em.

By: Michael James

Michael James — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:27:41 +0000

Guy found Detroit to be on the way to ruin back when he visited in 2006, but it was already there when I went through in 1979. As an outrageously pampered Australian baby-boomer it made an impression that stays with me today. I was visiting the father of some American-Australian friends, people who I still refer to as the Detroit Refugees. He was a Detroit cop and gave me an extensive tour in his patrol car—almost the only way to see parts of this city! To drive for seemingly endless miles down Telegraph Avenue (the scale of the US never fails to get to me: it seemed about three times the width of the Gold Coast highway and as long but was just a suburban main road) and it was like those pictures of bombed out Chechnyan cities.

Worse, because as Guy says, it was all abandoned. What was just a few years prior had been the industrial centre of the richest country on earth. Burnt out, boarded up or bulldozed empty blocks—mile after mile after mile. (The only comparable spectacle and more accessible to visitors without the need of a squad-car, is to go up the Arch in St Louis and look over at the devastation of East St Louis on the other side of the Mississippi.) And the once beautiful Detroit inner suburbs filled with Queen Anne, Tudor or Georgian houses, perhaps repros but gracious and made of real brick and timber unlike modern tack. These, too, were often burnt out or looked like it, though many were occupied but suffering from years of no maintenance despite ostentatious cars out front.

Downtown had the surreal and fantastical Renaissance Centre, a misguided attempt to bring some life back to the city, but symptomatic of the problem: a giant mall of high rises that rose out of the old city like a glass Camelot and protected by giant blank concrete walls from the surrounding shabbiness and danger of the old downtown. Inside, like any other nondescript mall in America except crawling with an unusually high density of security guards.

Another American friend with neo-con tendencies has harped on, for about a decade now, of how it is obvious the Europeans and especially those socialist hellholes like Sweden, will surely fall into terrible chaos when their excessive taxes feeding social welfare/retirement benefits get overwhelmed by their aging population. My response was exactly yours: even if some of these Euro states have promised too much and may have trouble delivering, they have an abundance of the most critical element of all, social capital and the evidence all around that it works.

By: Jenny Morris

Jenny Morris — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:50:30 +0000

Orin, I can also suggest the pathos-ridden Phillip Island ‘attraction’, with all the famous landmarks of the world - can’t remember the name. Leaves Wobbies World for dead.

By: Evan Beaver

Evan Beaver — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:46:20 +0000

Orin, are you familiar with the D-Gen’s Piss Weak World skit? No sign of it on Youtube.

By: Evan Beaver

Evan Beaver — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:42:29 +0000

Great article Rundle. I can’t help but feel not at all sorry for them though. The big US manufacturers have been pumping out rubbish cars for years and years, not one of them worth their weight in lead. The GM(?) exec getting up at a conference last year and declaring that the “push towards fuel efficient and hybrid cars caught us completely by surprise” absolutely beggared belief. He didn’t notive that Japan had been doing pretty well selling little, fuel efficient, simple cars?

And you are right, it is a total failure of the Capitalist system. The same GM-GM went on to plead that people kept buying them, so how could they know they wanted anything different? Inconceivable! It’s a miracle they lasted this long. The Japanese recession in the early 80s or so is probably the only thing that saved them.

By: Orin Thomas

Orin Thomas — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:35:28 +0000

Alas Wobbies World died some years ago. Now we have to take our kids to Gumbaya Park to get that 7th rate theme park experience.

By: Jenny Morris

Jenny Morris — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:13:23 +0000

I’m packing the anti-depressants (to counter the lack of sunlight) and heading to Scandinavia. Anywhere will do.