Detroit and the Death Throes of Socialism

After years of government mandates, corruption, and massive losses in the auto industry, there should be no question as to why Detroit, Michigan is losing thousands of residents each year. The latest census count suggests that Detroit has fallen back some one hundred years in terms of population count.

This does not bode well for Mayor Dave Bing, who is seeking a recount:

The flight of middle-class African-Americans to the suburbs fueled an exodus that cut Detroit’s population 25% in the past decade to 713,777, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday. That’s the city’s lowest population level since the 1910 census, when automobile mass production was making Detroit Detroit.

The decline, the fastest in city history, shocked local officials, who had expected a number closer to 800,000. Mayor Dave Bing said the city would seek a recount.

“If we could go out and identify another 40,000 people that were missed, and it brings us over the threshold of 750,000, that would make a difference from what we can get from the federal and state government.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal

SmokinOkie, a regular SHTFplan contributor, opines on the matter:

If the mayor’s first reaction to losing a qtr mil people is to measure that in lost goodies from the gubment- maybe it’s the ENTIRE MINDSET of the people who live there, including the idiots they elect to city offices. When your whole damned world-view is predicated on what you “get” from the government, it’s no wonder you’re a declining craphole of a city.

Detroit is so far gone that no amount of federal money will help at this point. A culture of corruption, excessive spending, mismanagement and dependency will inevitably lead to bankruptcy and migration of skilled labor. Will more federal money bring back the union contracted auto industry? Will it improve the schools, which have completely fallen apart over the last two decades and are now to the point where there will be 60 students per class due to budget problems? Will federal government giveaways send the right message to the Detroit city council and policymakers?

Detroit is not alone. The same mentality that has destroyed the wealth of this once vibrant and industrial powerhouse will lead to the bankruptcy of many more in months and years to come; and it will not be isolated to just cities, but entire states. Eventually, the federal government, operating under the same auspices of progressive socialism, will be left decimated.

While in 2008 millions of Americans voted to empower the ideologues who would further expand government sponsored health care, retirement and labor, history will show that it is these very policies that brought down a nation once looked to by the rest of the world as the beacon of freedom and innovation.

Cyclical forecaster Martin Armstrong, in his essay The Collapse of Capitalism or is it Socialism?, discusses this very trend and suggests, contrary to popular progressive opinion, that it is not capitalism, free markets and liberty that are collapsing, but rather, Marxist socialism and communism:

It may seem strange, but we have been undergoing a battle of economic philosophy that transcends so many concepts, that unless we step back, most have difficulty understanding the trend. This battle has often been laced with efforts to control mankind. For within this battle, we will find religion, politics, scientific innovation and progress spanning technology in all areas, but also issues that include both slavery and labor that all create what has become known as our economy.

Sometimes we are too close to a problem that it is just impossible to see. When man landed on the moon and sent the first pictures of Earth rising, only then could we see what our world truly looked like. We are facing the very same problem. The change that we now see and are debating, is still from the view of a fly on an elephant’s back. We do not know we are even on an elephant or what is an elephant.

Our society is still growing and changing. We are going through puberty where the youth rebels against the parent. The profound change, the Great Economic Transformation, became bluntly visible back in 1989 where the world economy began to change with the fall of Communism. That fundamental change was truly an Economic Transformation wave which is now causing the collapse of socialism in the Western nations. What we are facing is confusing. Nevertheless, if we want to see the elephant, it is time to take flight.

Without getting into the obvious issues of individual liberty, the ideologies of communism and socialism can be boiled down to economics. And the fact of the matter is, the mathematics simply don’t work. The numbers don’t add up, no matter how hard those in power try to cover them up and manipulate them. The Soviet Union and the East Block are clear examples of the end result.

The good news is that socialism is a failed experiment. Marx was wrong. The entire system is unsustainable and must collapse.

The bad news is, that there is no easy way out. The period of transformation as socialism collapses and a new paradigm emerges will be difficult and mired in poverty, destitution, violence and war.

View the original article here