Look at Detroit.

[Two Thumbs]

That is Baltimore's future.

Look at the riots. I've never seen so many in my lifetime. Not since the 60's and 70's have things been like this.
What's different? The progressives are in charge, people that hate America are pushing hate, division, distrust and violence upon us.

America cannot be destroyed from without so they are doing it from the top seat.

If another prog wins the nest election, we will not be able to call ourselves a "free people", they won't allow b/c of some stewpud reason.

Look at Detroit, that's Americas future.

 

[ScienceRocks]

Yep, this is what negro acceptance of crime and outright hatred of education will do to our entire country.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Yep, this is what negro acceptance of crime and outright hatred of education will do to our entire country.

they hate school b/c leftist make sure that the schools they force them to go to suck balls.

and when they can't get into college or get a good job they are forced into the system or turn to crime.

all as planned by leftist.

uneducated, poor, lied to, people are easy to enrage or keep in chains.

 

[Marxist]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

No.

It was built up by capitalist and destroyed by leftist.

any honest person can see that.

 

[Porker]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

You are SO full of shit...it's streaming out your ears.

 

[Marxist]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

No.

It was built up by capitalist and destroyed by leftist.

any honest person can see that.

Capitalism as a system ought to be judged by its failures as well as its successes.

The automobile-driven economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s made Detroit a globally recognized symbol of successful capitalist renewal after the great depression and the war (1929-1945). High-wage auto industry jobs with real security and exemplary benefits were said to prove capitalism's ability to generate and sustain a large "middle class", one that could include African Americans, too. Auto-industry jobs became inspirations and models for what workers across America might seek and acquire – those middle-class components of a modern "American Dream".

True, quality jobs in Detroit were forced from the automobile capitalists by long and hard union struggles, especially across the 1930s. Once defeated in those struggles, auto capitalists quickly arranged to rewrite the history so that good wages and working conditions became something they "gave" to their workers. In any case, Detroit became a vibrant, world-class city in the 1950s and 1960s; its distinctive culture and sound shaped the world's music much as its cars shaped the world's industries.

Over the past 40 years, capitalism turned that success into the abject failure culminating now in the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

The key decision-makers – major shareholders inGeneral Motors, Ford, Chrysler, etc, and the boards of directors they selected – made many disastrous decisions. They failed in competition with European and Japanese automobile capitalists and so lost market share to them. They responded too slowly and inadequately to the need to develop new fuel-saving technologies. And, perhaps most tellingly, they responded to their own failures by deciding to move production out of Detroit so they could pay other workers lower wages.

The automobile companies' competitive failures, and then their moves, had two key economic consequences. First, they effectively undermined the economic foundation of Detroit's economy. Second, they thereby dealt a major blow to any chances for an enduring US middle class. The past 40 years have displayed those consequences and the capitalist system's inability or unwillingness to stop, let alone reverse, them.

Real wages in the US stopped growing in the 1970s, and have not grown since, even as workers' rising productivity generated even more profits for employers. Rising consumer debt and overwork postponed for a few years the impacts of stagnant real wages on consumption. But by 2007, with wages stagnant and further consumer borrowing capacity exhausted, a long and deep crisis arrived. Employers used the resulting unemployment to attack job security and benefits and the public sector built up in the 1950s and 1960s to support the middle class (for example, by low-cost public higher education).

Auto industry capitalists took the lead and Detroit exemplified the economic decline that resulted. In the deep crisis since 2007, General Motors and Chrysler got federal bailouts, but Detroit did not. The auto companies got wage reductions (via the tiered wage system) that assured Detroit's wage-based economy could not recover, even as auto company production and profits did. The failures of private capitalism thus drew in the complicity of the federal government.

Despite what the heroic sit-down strikes and other actions of the United Auto Workers had earlier won for their members, the auto companies' decision-making powers remained in the hands of major shareholders and their boards of directors. They used that power to evade, weaken and eventually undo what union struggles had won. The unions proved incapable of stopping that process. Detroit's capitalists thus undermined the middle-class conditions workers had extracted from them – and thus destroyed the "capitalist success" city built on those conditions.

Detroit's decline, like the parallel decline of the United Auto Workers, teaches an inescapable lesson. The very contracts that militant unions win with employers give those employers great incentives to find ways around those contracts. They usually do.

The top-down structure of capitalist enterprises provides major shareholders and boards of directors with the resources (corporate profits) to cut or remove the good conditions unions can sometimes win. That's how this system works. Detroit has "been there and done that". The solution is not more contracts.

If the autoworkers had transformed the auto companies into worker co-operatives, Detroit would have evolved very differently. Worker co-operatives would not have moved production, thereby undermining their jobs, families and communities, including especially Detroit. Workers would not have destroyed themselves and their communities that way. Moving production, a distinctly capitalist strategy, was key to Detroit's population dropping from 1.8m in 1950 to 700,000 today.

Workers co-operatives would also have searched and likely found alternatives to moving that might have saved Detroit. Workers co-operatives, for example, would likely have paid less in dividends to owners and salaries to managers than was typical at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Those savings, if passed on in lower automobile prices, would have enabled better completion with European and Japanese car makers than Detroit's Big Threemanaged.

We cannot know how much more Detroit's auto industry might have benefited from technical progress had it been organized as a workers' co-operative. We can guess that workers have greater incentives to improve technology in co-operatives they own and operate than as employees in capitalist enterprises. Finally, worker co-operatives would likely have switched to producing (and helped to promote) mass-transit vehicles or other alternatives to the automobile to retain jobs and well-being once they saw that continued automobile production could not secure those priorities for worker co-operatives.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

When those capitalists' decisions condemn Detroit to 40 years of disastrous decline, what kind of society relieves those capitalists of any responsibility to help rebuild that city?

The simple answer to these questions: no genuinely democratic economy could or would work that way.

Detroit s Decline Is a Distinctively Capitalist Failure Common Dreams Breaking News Views for the Progressive Community

 

[Marxist]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

You are SO full of shit...it's streaming out your ears.

You're full of shit, read my previous reply. more please.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

No.

It was built up by capitalist and destroyed by leftist.

any honest person can see that.

Capitalism as a system ought to be judged by its failures as well as its successes.

The automobile-driven economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s made Detroit a globally recognized symbol of successful capitalist renewal after the great depression and the war (1929-1945). High-wage auto industry jobs with real security and exemplary benefits were said to prove capitalism's ability to generate and sustain a large "middle class", one that could include African Americans, too. Auto-industry jobs became inspirations and models for what workers across America might seek and acquire – those middle-class components of a modern "American Dream".

True, quality jobs in Detroit were forced from the automobile capitalists by long and hard union struggles, especially across the 1930s. Once defeated in those struggles, auto capitalists quickly arranged to rewrite the history so that good wages and working conditions became something they "gave" to their workers. In any case, Detroit became a vibrant, world-class city in the 1950s and 1960s; its distinctive culture and sound shaped the world's music much as its cars shaped the world's industries.

Over the past 40 years, capitalism turned that success into the abject failure culminating now in the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

The key decision-makers – major shareholders inGeneral Motors, Ford, Chrysler, etc, and the boards of directors they selected – made many disastrous decisions. They failed in competition with European and Japanese automobile capitalists and so lost market share to them. They responded too slowly and inadequately to the need to develop new fuel-saving technologies. And, perhaps most tellingly, they responded to their own failures by deciding to move production out of Detroit so they could pay other workers lower wages.

The automobile companies' competitive failures, and then their moves, had two key economic consequences. First, they effectively undermined the economic foundation of Detroit's economy. Second, they thereby dealt a major blow to any chances for an enduring US middle class. The past 40 years have displayed those consequences and the capitalist system's inability or unwillingness to stop, let alone reverse, them.

Real wages in the US stopped growing in the 1970s, and have not grown since, even as workers' rising productivity generated even more profits for employers. Rising consumer debt and overwork postponed for a few years the impacts of stagnant real wages on consumption. But by 2007, with wages stagnant and further consumer borrowing capacity exhausted, a long and deep crisis arrived. Employers used the resulting unemployment to attack job security and benefits and the public sector built up in the 1950s and 1960s to support the middle class (for example, by low-cost public higher education).

Auto industry capitalists took the lead and Detroit exemplified the economic decline that resulted. In the deep crisis since 2007, General Motors and Chrysler got federal bailouts, but Detroit did not. The auto companies got wage reductions (via the tiered wage system) that assured Detroit's wage-based economy could not recover, even as auto company production and profits did. The failures of private capitalism thus drew in the complicity of the federal government.

Despite what the heroic sit-down strikes and other actions of the United Auto Workers had earlier won for their members, the auto companies' decision-making powers remained in the hands of major shareholders and their boards of directors. They used that power to evade, weaken and eventually undo what union struggles had won. The unions proved incapable of stopping that process. Detroit's capitalists thus undermined the middle-class conditions workers had extracted from them – and thus destroyed the "capitalist success" city built on those conditions.

Detroit's decline, like the parallel decline of the United Auto Workers, teaches an inescapable lesson. The very contracts that militant unions win with employers give those employers great incentives to find ways around those contracts. They usually do.

The top-down structure of capitalist enterprises provides major shareholders and boards of directors with the resources (corporate profits) to cut or remove the good conditions unions can sometimes win. That's how this system works. Detroit has "been there and done that". The solution is not more contracts.

If the autoworkers had transformed the auto companies into worker co-operatives, Detroit would have evolved very differently. Worker co-operatives would not have moved production, thereby undermining their jobs, families and communities, including especially Detroit. Workers would not have destroyed themselves and their communities that way. Moving production, a distinctly capitalist strategy, was key to Detroit's population dropping from 1.8m in 1950 to 700,000 today.

Workers co-operatives would also have searched and likely found alternatives to moving that might have saved Detroit. Workers co-operatives, for example, would likely have paid less in dividends to owners and salaries to managers than was typical at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Those savings, if passed on in lower automobile prices, would have enabled better completion with European and Japanese car makers than Detroit's Big Threemanaged.

We cannot know how much more Detroit's auto industry might have benefited from technical progress had it been organized as a workers' co-operative. We can guess that workers have greater incentives to improve technology in co-operatives they own and operate than as employees in capitalist enterprises. Finally, worker co-operatives would likely have switched to producing (and helped to promote) mass-transit vehicles or other alternatives to the automobile to retain jobs and well-being once they saw that continued automobile production could not secure those priorities for worker co-operatives.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

When those capitalists' decisions condemn Detroit to 40 years of disastrous decline, what kind of society relieves those capitalists of any responsibility to help rebuild that city?

The simple answer to these questions: no genuinely democratic economy could or would work that way.

Detroit s Decline Is a Distinctively Capitalist Failure Common Dreams Breaking News Views for the Progressive Community

proving me right?

Thanks!

or did you not know that Progressive is another word for lying fucking leftist?

 

[RoshawnMarkwees]

Baltimore won't become Detroit because its port industry will always exist. What's more, lots of white democrats are pricing the blacks out of town and the city is going through a renaissance. They call it gentrification. When non-white democrats do that it's called racism.

 

[Marxist]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

No.

It was built up by capitalist and destroyed by leftist.

any honest person can see that.

Capitalism as a system ought to be judged by its failures as well as its successes.

The automobile-driven economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s made Detroit a globally recognized symbol of successful capitalist renewal after the great depression and the war (1929-1945). High-wage auto industry jobs with real security and exemplary benefits were said to prove capitalism's ability to generate and sustain a large "middle class", one that could include African Americans, too. Auto-industry jobs became inspirations and models for what workers across America might seek and acquire – those middle-class components of a modern "American Dream".

True, quality jobs in Detroit were forced from the automobile capitalists by long and hard union struggles, especially across the 1930s. Once defeated in those struggles, auto capitalists quickly arranged to rewrite the history so that good wages and working conditions became something they "gave" to their workers. In any case, Detroit became a vibrant, world-class city in the 1950s and 1960s; its distinctive culture and sound shaped the world's music much as its cars shaped the world's industries.

Over the past 40 years, capitalism turned that success into the abject failure culminating now in the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

The key decision-makers – major shareholders inGeneral Motors, Ford, Chrysler, etc, and the boards of directors they selected – made many disastrous decisions. They failed in competition with European and Japanese automobile capitalists and so lost market share to them. They responded too slowly and inadequately to the need to develop new fuel-saving technologies. And, perhaps most tellingly, they responded to their own failures by deciding to move production out of Detroit so they could pay other workers lower wages.

The automobile companies' competitive failures, and then their moves, had two key economic consequences. First, they effectively undermined the economic foundation of Detroit's economy. Second, they thereby dealt a major blow to any chances for an enduring US middle class. The past 40 years have displayed those consequences and the capitalist system's inability or unwillingness to stop, let alone reverse, them.

Real wages in the US stopped growing in the 1970s, and have not grown since, even as workers' rising productivity generated even more profits for employers. Rising consumer debt and overwork postponed for a few years the impacts of stagnant real wages on consumption. But by 2007, with wages stagnant and further consumer borrowing capacity exhausted, a long and deep crisis arrived. Employers used the resulting unemployment to attack job security and benefits and the public sector built up in the 1950s and 1960s to support the middle class (for example, by low-cost public higher education).

Auto industry capitalists took the lead and Detroit exemplified the economic decline that resulted. In the deep crisis since 2007, General Motors and Chrysler got federal bailouts, but Detroit did not. The auto companies got wage reductions (via the tiered wage system) that assured Detroit's wage-based economy could not recover, even as auto company production and profits did. The failures of private capitalism thus drew in the complicity of the federal government.

Despite what the heroic sit-down strikes and other actions of the United Auto Workers had earlier won for their members, the auto companies' decision-making powers remained in the hands of major shareholders and their boards of directors. They used that power to evade, weaken and eventually undo what union struggles had won. The unions proved incapable of stopping that process. Detroit's capitalists thus undermined the middle-class conditions workers had extracted from them – and thus destroyed the "capitalist success" city built on those conditions.

Detroit's decline, like the parallel decline of the United Auto Workers, teaches an inescapable lesson. The very contracts that militant unions win with employers give those employers great incentives to find ways around those contracts. They usually do.

The top-down structure of capitalist enterprises provides major shareholders and boards of directors with the resources (corporate profits) to cut or remove the good conditions unions can sometimes win. That's how this system works. Detroit has "been there and done that". The solution is not more contracts.

If the autoworkers had transformed the auto companies into worker co-operatives, Detroit would have evolved very differently. Worker co-operatives would not have moved production, thereby undermining their jobs, families and communities, including especially Detroit. Workers would not have destroyed themselves and their communities that way. Moving production, a distinctly capitalist strategy, was key to Detroit's population dropping from 1.8m in 1950 to 700,000 today.

Workers co-operatives would also have searched and likely found alternatives to moving that might have saved Detroit. Workers co-operatives, for example, would likely have paid less in dividends to owners and salaries to managers than was typical at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Those savings, if passed on in lower automobile prices, would have enabled better completion with European and Japanese car makers than Detroit's Big Threemanaged.

We cannot know how much more Detroit's auto industry might have benefited from technical progress had it been organized as a workers' co-operative. We can guess that workers have greater incentives to improve technology in co-operatives they own and operate than as employees in capitalist enterprises. Finally, worker co-operatives would likely have switched to producing (and helped to promote) mass-transit vehicles or other alternatives to the automobile to retain jobs and well-being once they saw that continued automobile production could not secure those priorities for worker co-operatives.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

When those capitalists' decisions condemn Detroit to 40 years of disastrous decline, what kind of society relieves those capitalists of any responsibility to help rebuild that city?

The simple answer to these questions: no genuinely democratic economy could or would work that way.

Detroit s Decline Is a Distinctively Capitalist Failure Common Dreams Breaking News Views for the Progressive Community

proving me right?

Thanks!

or did you not know that Progressive is another word for lying fucking leftist?

I didn't prove you right, facts scare you.

 

[Edgetho]

scumbag....

Obama Chastises White People For Only Paying Attention To Black Communities “When A CVS Burns”…
Because white people don’t have families and jobs to worry about.

 

[Rotagilla]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

No.

It was built up by capitalist and destroyed by leftist.

any honest person can see that.

Capitalism as a system ought to be judged by its failures as well as its successes.

The automobile-driven economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s made Detroit a globally recognized symbol of successful capitalist renewal after the great depression and the war (1929-1945). High-wage auto industry jobs with real security and exemplary benefits were said to prove capitalism's ability to generate and sustain a large "middle class", one that could include African Americans, too. Auto-industry jobs became inspirations and models for what workers across America might seek and acquire – those middle-class components of a modern "American Dream".

True, quality jobs in Detroit were forced from the automobile capitalists by long and hard union struggles, especially across the 1930s. Once defeated in those struggles, auto capitalists quickly arranged to rewrite the history so that good wages and working conditions became something they "gave" to their workers. In any case, Detroit became a vibrant, world-class city in the 1950s and 1960s; its distinctive culture and sound shaped the world's music much as its cars shaped the world's industries.

Over the past 40 years, capitalism turned that success into the abject failure culminating now in the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

The key decision-makers – major shareholders inGeneral Motors, Ford, Chrysler, etc, and the boards of directors they selected – made many disastrous decisions. They failed in competition with European and Japanese automobile capitalists and so lost market share to them. They responded too slowly and inadequately to the need to develop new fuel-saving technologies. And, perhaps most tellingly, they responded to their own failures by deciding to move production out of Detroit so they could pay other workers lower wages.

The automobile companies' competitive failures, and then their moves, had two key economic consequences. First, they effectively undermined the economic foundation of Detroit's economy. Second, they thereby dealt a major blow to any chances for an enduring US middle class. The past 40 years have displayed those consequences and the capitalist system's inability or unwillingness to stop, let alone reverse, them.

Real wages in the US stopped growing in the 1970s, and have not grown since, even as workers' rising productivity generated even more profits for employers. Rising consumer debt and overwork postponed for a few years the impacts of stagnant real wages on consumption. But by 2007, with wages stagnant and further consumer borrowing capacity exhausted, a long and deep crisis arrived. Employers used the resulting unemployment to attack job security and benefits and the public sector built up in the 1950s and 1960s to support the middle class (for example, by low-cost public higher education).

Auto industry capitalists took the lead and Detroit exemplified the economic decline that resulted. In the deep crisis since 2007, General Motors and Chrysler got federal bailouts, but Detroit did not. The auto companies got wage reductions (via the tiered wage system) that assured Detroit's wage-based economy could not recover, even as auto company production and profits did. The failures of private capitalism thus drew in the complicity of the federal government.

Despite what the heroic sit-down strikes and other actions of the United Auto Workers had earlier won for their members, the auto companies' decision-making powers remained in the hands of major shareholders and their boards of directors. They used that power to evade, weaken and eventually undo what union struggles had won. The unions proved incapable of stopping that process. Detroit's capitalists thus undermined the middle-class conditions workers had extracted from them – and thus destroyed the "capitalist success" city built on those conditions.

Detroit's decline, like the parallel decline of the United Auto Workers, teaches an inescapable lesson. The very contracts that militant unions win with employers give those employers great incentives to find ways around those contracts. They usually do.

The top-down structure of capitalist enterprises provides major shareholders and boards of directors with the resources (corporate profits) to cut or remove the good conditions unions can sometimes win. That's how this system works. Detroit has "been there and done that". The solution is not more contracts.

If the autoworkers had transformed the auto companies into worker co-operatives, Detroit would have evolved very differently. Worker co-operatives would not have moved production, thereby undermining their jobs, families and communities, including especially Detroit. Workers would not have destroyed themselves and their communities that way. Moving production, a distinctly capitalist strategy, was key to Detroit's population dropping from 1.8m in 1950 to 700,000 today.

Workers co-operatives would also have searched and likely found alternatives to moving that might have saved Detroit. Workers co-operatives, for example, would likely have paid less in dividends to owners and salaries to managers than was typical at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Those savings, if passed on in lower automobile prices, would have enabled better completion with European and Japanese car makers than Detroit's Big Threemanaged.

We cannot know how much more Detroit's auto industry might have benefited from technical progress had it been organized as a workers' co-operative. We can guess that workers have greater incentives to improve technology in co-operatives they own and operate than as employees in capitalist enterprises. Finally, worker co-operatives would likely have switched to producing (and helped to promote) mass-transit vehicles or other alternatives to the automobile to retain jobs and well-being once they saw that continued automobile production could not secure those priorities for worker co-operatives.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

When those capitalists' decisions condemn Detroit to 40 years of disastrous decline, what kind of society relieves those capitalists of any responsibility to help rebuild that city?

The simple answer to these questions: no genuinely democratic economy could or would work that way.

Detroit s Decline Is a Distinctively Capitalist Failure Common Dreams Breaking News Views for the Progressive Community

detroit is a predominantly negro city run by negroes who were elected by other negroes. Dysfunction in detroit has nothing to do with "capitalism".
It's all about racial solidarity among negroes, no matter HOW bad things get.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Baltimore won't become Detroit because its port industry will always exist. What's more, lots of white democrats are pricing the blacks out of town and the city is going through a renaissance. They call it gentrification. When non-white democrats do that it's called racism.

so it will end up like Nework

a shitty little town with shitty little jobs that no one wants to visit.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

No.

It was built up by capitalist and destroyed by leftist.

any honest person can see that.

Capitalism as a system ought to be judged by its failures as well as its successes.

The automobile-driven economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s made Detroit a globally recognized symbol of successful capitalist renewal after the great depression and the war (1929-1945). High-wage auto industry jobs with real security and exemplary benefits were said to prove capitalism's ability to generate and sustain a large "middle class", one that could include African Americans, too. Auto-industry jobs became inspirations and models for what workers across America might seek and acquire – those middle-class components of a modern "American Dream".

True, quality jobs in Detroit were forced from the automobile capitalists by long and hard union struggles, especially across the 1930s. Once defeated in those struggles, auto capitalists quickly arranged to rewrite the history so that good wages and working conditions became something they "gave" to their workers. In any case, Detroit became a vibrant, world-class city in the 1950s and 1960s; its distinctive culture and sound shaped the world's music much as its cars shaped the world's industries.

Over the past 40 years, capitalism turned that success into the abject failure culminating now in the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

The key decision-makers – major shareholders inGeneral Motors, Ford, Chrysler, etc, and the boards of directors they selected – made many disastrous decisions. They failed in competition with European and Japanese automobile capitalists and so lost market share to them. They responded too slowly and inadequately to the need to develop new fuel-saving technologies. And, perhaps most tellingly, they responded to their own failures by deciding to move production out of Detroit so they could pay other workers lower wages.

The automobile companies' competitive failures, and then their moves, had two key economic consequences. First, they effectively undermined the economic foundation of Detroit's economy. Second, they thereby dealt a major blow to any chances for an enduring US middle class. The past 40 years have displayed those consequences and the capitalist system's inability or unwillingness to stop, let alone reverse, them.

Real wages in the US stopped growing in the 1970s, and have not grown since, even as workers' rising productivity generated even more profits for employers. Rising consumer debt and overwork postponed for a few years the impacts of stagnant real wages on consumption. But by 2007, with wages stagnant and further consumer borrowing capacity exhausted, a long and deep crisis arrived. Employers used the resulting unemployment to attack job security and benefits and the public sector built up in the 1950s and 1960s to support the middle class (for example, by low-cost public higher education).

Auto industry capitalists took the lead and Detroit exemplified the economic decline that resulted. In the deep crisis since 2007, General Motors and Chrysler got federal bailouts, but Detroit did not. The auto companies got wage reductions (via the tiered wage system) that assured Detroit's wage-based economy could not recover, even as auto company production and profits did. The failures of private capitalism thus drew in the complicity of the federal government.

Despite what the heroic sit-down strikes and other actions of the United Auto Workers had earlier won for their members, the auto companies' decision-making powers remained in the hands of major shareholders and their boards of directors. They used that power to evade, weaken and eventually undo what union struggles had won. The unions proved incapable of stopping that process. Detroit's capitalists thus undermined the middle-class conditions workers had extracted from them – and thus destroyed the "capitalist success" city built on those conditions.

Detroit's decline, like the parallel decline of the United Auto Workers, teaches an inescapable lesson. The very contracts that militant unions win with employers give those employers great incentives to find ways around those contracts. They usually do.

The top-down structure of capitalist enterprises provides major shareholders and boards of directors with the resources (corporate profits) to cut or remove the good conditions unions can sometimes win. That's how this system works. Detroit has "been there and done that". The solution is not more contracts.

If the autoworkers had transformed the auto companies into worker co-operatives, Detroit would have evolved very differently. Worker co-operatives would not have moved production, thereby undermining their jobs, families and communities, including especially Detroit. Workers would not have destroyed themselves and their communities that way. Moving production, a distinctly capitalist strategy, was key to Detroit's population dropping from 1.8m in 1950 to 700,000 today.

Workers co-operatives would also have searched and likely found alternatives to moving that might have saved Detroit. Workers co-operatives, for example, would likely have paid less in dividends to owners and salaries to managers than was typical at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. Those savings, if passed on in lower automobile prices, would have enabled better completion with European and Japanese car makers than Detroit's Big Threemanaged.

We cannot know how much more Detroit's auto industry might have benefited from technical progress had it been organized as a workers' co-operative. We can guess that workers have greater incentives to improve technology in co-operatives they own and operate than as employees in capitalist enterprises. Finally, worker co-operatives would likely have switched to producing (and helped to promote) mass-transit vehicles or other alternatives to the automobile to retain jobs and well-being once they saw that continued automobile production could not secure those priorities for worker co-operatives.

What kind of a society gives a relatively tiny number of people the position and power to make corporate decisions impacting millions in and around Detroit while it excludes those millions from participating in those decisions?

When those capitalists' decisions condemn Detroit to 40 years of disastrous decline, what kind of society relieves those capitalists of any responsibility to help rebuild that city?

The simple answer to these questions: no genuinely democratic economy could or would work that way.

Detroit s Decline Is a Distinctively Capitalist Failure Common Dreams Breaking News Views for the Progressive Community

proving me right?

Thanks!

or did you not know that Progressive is another word for lying fucking leftist?

I didn't prove you right, facts scare you.

you linked a leftist site that gave their leftist opinion and no facts.

leftist hate the free market, you have made that clear, therefore leftist destroyed the free market in Detroit and therefore YOU destroyed Detroit and want to do that to America.

That is the FACT

 

[RoshawnMarkwees]

Baltimore won't become Detroit because its port industry will always exist. What's more, lots of white democrats are pricing the blacks out of town and the city is going through a renaissance. They call it gentrification. When non-white democrats do that it's called racism.

so it will end up like Nework

a shitty little town with shitty little jobs that no one wants to visit.

No, more like DC. A thriving, mostly white cosmopolitan city with all of the latest and best retailers including several Whole Foods and gourmet coffee shops.

 

[Edgetho]

proving me right?

Thanks!

or did you not know that Progressive is another word for lying fucking leftist?

I LIVED it.

I'm telling you. When I was in the Army in the early-mid 60's, you got Travel Pay whenever you were sent from one posting to another.

When you went to get your Travel Pay after you arrived at your posting, they'd ask you how you traveled and I always said, "Airplane", when I actually traveled by Bus and pocketed the (substantial) difference..... unless it was across the Country or over 1,000 miles. That was just a little too much time on a Greyhound..

After going home to Cleveland sometimes I had to wait for my Dad to pick me up from the Bus Station and I'd sit there, waiting, watching, marveling at the number of Black people getting off the Buses at the Greyhound Station.

I'm like, "What the fuck? They making a Tarzan Movie in Cleveland?"

No, what they were doing was, they were importing THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of Black people from the South in order to politically take over the Cities for dimocrap filth.

You wouldn't remember the HUGE knock-down-drag-out fights in Congress over when you could vote, how long you had to live in an area before you were eligible to vote, poll taxes, etc.

America lost. dimocrap filth won.

They were bringing these people in, registering them to vote with a PO Box as an address (or a sponsor, whatever) and FLOODING the ballot boxes with dimocrap scum votes.

I WAS THERE!!!! I SAW IT HAPPEN!!

Mostly Cleveland and Dee-Troit but a little bit in New Yawk Shitty. Bawstawn was already a dimocrap scum infested pushole so they didn't need Negroes (besides that Bawstawn is THE most prejudice assholes in the Country) quite bit in Philthydelphia.

Anyway, dimocraps are scum. They destroyed our cities on purpose,

Did they INTEND to destroy our Cities? Not really but they also really didn't give a fuck either.

Don't anybody try to tell me that I didn't see what I saw

dimocraps are the scum of the earth

period

 

[Rotagilla]

Baltimore won't become Detroit because its port industry will always exist. What's more, lots of white democrats are pricing the blacks out of town and the city is going through a renaissance. They call it gentrification. When non-white democrats do that it's called racism.

so it will end up like Nework

a shitty little town with shitty little jobs that no one wants to visit.

No, more like DC. A thriving, mostly white cosmopolitan city with all of the latest and best retailers including several Whole Foods and gourmet coffee shops.

negro crime rates in dc are ridiculous...you can take chimps out of the jungle but you can't take...etc...etc...

 

[AvgGuyIA]

Detroit was destroyed by capitalists, mainly.

By the Unions greed!

 

[EverCurious]

Detroit s Decline Is a Distinctively Capitalist Failure Common Dreams Breaking News Views for the Progressive Community

Nonsense. Detroit was "lost," as it were, because the auto companies could not keep up with the cheap cars that Toyota and other foreign auto makers produced. It was a decade's long series of federal regulations, recession, high wages, and pension plans combined with longer age span that did them in. They were forced to make SUV's because of the cost of production in the US. In 2004 the EPA tightened emissions on SUV's, and essentially drove them over the fiscal cliff by forcing them to make more non-profitable smaller cars than they could stay afloat with. Following a massive loss in 2005 the stock market saw the writing on the wall for them and declared them a dead end investment - aka their stocks plummeted, their ability to get float loans required to stay open evaporated. In 2006 I believe it was they did a huge bail out through their employees and thanks to massive employee participation were able to stay afloat, but the recession in 2008 was the last straw for them. A combined a market drive for cheaper cars they couldn't make a profit on and sharp decline in SUV sales due to high gas prices (again one could attribute to the Federal Government's refusal to open US oil fields.)

Also, for the record, Ford wasn't failing financially; they only took the bailout because they didn't want to be in an unfair disadvantage against Federal government funded auto-makers.


Really if anything is to blame for Detroit's failing's it would be the higher standard of living and the overall "general welfare" arguments for invasive regulations in the USA: aka cheap labor is quite simply unavailable, Federal government regulations on oil production and retrieval as well as the clean air movement of the "global warming" scare, and the original attempt by these companies to treat their employees right (aka pension plans, expensive health care benefit programs, etc. that were designed for a different day and age and could not be sustained)