Somewhere between 18 and 20 billion dollars. That’s the estimate for Detroit’s debt burden. The Motor City, built with the blood and sweat of blue collar autoworkers, has been systematically plundered by kleptomaniacal politicians and thieving unions. They promised money for votes and cut horrifying deals to line their own pockets, under the impression that the gravy train would never end.
Boy, were they wrong.
An abandoned house next to an out of service fire hydrant in a Detroit neighborhood.
The industry fled, heading for places where labor worked for a reasonable (and sometimes criminally-low) wage and the tax revenue fell. The city’s infrastructure began to collapse, and the people fled and the tax revenue fell again. Now all that’s left are the people who can’t afford to run and their massive, decaying bloated corpse of a city. Of course, Detroit never bothered to actually save any money for their liabilities, spending it willy nilly like most cities do, heedless of their obligations and promises to their citizens and employees.
And now there’s no way to beg, borrow or steal more money. The party’s over.
And who will pay the price for the greed and stupidity of these union officials and their politician toadies? Regular people. Regular people who were lied to for decades, told that ludicrously-structured pension plans backed by the city would be stable and provide for them.
“This is money they’ve earned, they counted on,” opined Karen Ferguson, director of the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit that advocates for retirees.
Sadly, those workers earned nothing. They simply fell for an old trick, known as advanced fee fraud. Ever get one of those Nigerian Prince emails? Send me ten grand, which I will use to get my billions out of some non-descript legal jam. Then, when I am free and clear, I will give you 10 million dollars. What a deal!
The same thing happened in Detroit, except instead of a Nigerian Prince it was a mayor, a city councilman, a Union shill.
The promise of a hefty public sector pension is a tempting lie to believe, but anyone who ever bought into it is a fool. And now these poor souls will pay the price for seeing what they wanted to see, and hearing what they wanted to hear.
