Certain areas of Detroit are seriously scary places, places I won't go WITH a gun. There is no city in the US that even remotely compares to Detroit and if you believe there is, you have never been to the East side.
Eastside represent! No but seriously - it is essentially anarchic, and not in a good Wickedfire forum discussion kind of way either.
Most liberals blame it on the failing automotivie compannies.
The only problem with that is most of those automotive jobs were lost in the suburbs, not the city. And the suburbs are doing just fine.
Wasn't Detroit the premier socialist experiment in the US? WTF happend?!
That's exactly what happened. Liberals have had 40+ years of
completely uninterrupted control of the city from the mayors, to the city council members and all of the power brokers as well. They have had 40 years to try things their way with very little contrarian thought or outside influence, and modern day Detroit is the predictable result of what happens when you run out of other peoples money.
They raised taxes through the roof in a city that provides almost zero services. They raised them even higher on businesses. The predictable result is businesses and people moved out to the suburbs or out of state. I pay less property taxes on my nice house in the suburbs (with great schools and very little crime) then I would have to pay on a dilapidated crack house in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. Not only does that chase people away, but investors won't even come in to buy up properties for rentals, so the houses just get stripped for copper and burned down for insurance money. Why would an investor buy a house for even $500 if he is going to be on the hook for $5k in property taxes? The math just doesn't work.
Then they just found out that over half of the people that still live in the city don't even pay property taxes. As in, fuck you I ain't paying - come try to collect if you want and I got something waiting for you. Needless to say, they don't bother trying to collect it. So now you have a city that lost half it's population to greener pastures and the half that is left isn't paying taxes because they're too high so then you have no money for police, fire, schools etc.
The unions have been so intertwined into the political control of the city that nothing gets done unless it gets done their way. Therefore, nothing gets done. Then you have a vocal minority of residents that hate all things non-Detroit (ie white) and would literally burn the city down rather then allow outsiders to try and help fix the fucking problem like this minister:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhE_5_gyqSE"]Detroit Malik Shabazz "we will burn it down" comment. - YouTube[/ame]
tl;dr: Detroit is a liberal utopia - the result of high taxes, strong union influence, 100% complete political control by the democrats for over 40 years, and a healthy obsession with demonizing all those evil white men and corporations. In other words - the future of America. Enjoy!