Detroit in Ruins. America crumbling, one city at a time.

[Peter Lemkin]

Wow. That is quite a photo essay there. One wouldn't mind if the money was scarce and they needed to spend it on people but we know that's not the case. The scarce money is not being spent on the people it is being spent on propping up an unsustainable system and rewarding the architects of this disastrous system. The money is not scarce. I've got many photos of the reconstruction of the destroyed parts of the former USSR. No Marshal plan to fund reconstruction and everything was back up, repaired and running in months even with millions killed. Different priorities. And the Detroit in these photos does look like a war zone.

It was, as one can see in the photos, once prosperous - where jobs were plentiful building cars - and paid well due to the unions. All gone....... To me the abandoned library says it all.....the Empire is crumbling into ruins faster than expected!

Almost 1 million live in this post-capitalism hell. There is not one supermarket - only fast-junk-food stores. Just put Detroit ghetto into a search engine for more photos........

Oh, the other growth industry - prisons and police, etc.

Officially, Detroit's unemployment rate is just under 30 percent. But the city's mayor and local leaders are suggesting a far more disturbing figure -- the actual jobless rate, they say, is closer to 50 percent.

As many have noted, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which culls federal unemployment data, does not account for all of the jobless in its widely-quoted national unemployment figures. Among those omitted: part-time workers who are looking for full-time jobs and frustrated job seekers who abandon their job search altogether.

(For some context, the official national unemployment rate is 10 percent, but the "underemployment rate" is 17.2 percent.)

Detroit city officials argue that, when workers who are underemployed are added to the calculation, the number of city residents who are out of work is close to one in every two.

The Detroit News reports:
"The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that for the year that ended in September, Michigan's official unemployment rate was 12.6 percent. Using the broadest definition of unemployment, the state unemployment rate was 20.9 percent, or 66 percent higher than the official rate. Since Detroit's official rate for October was 27 percent, that broader rate pushes the city's rate to as high as 44.8 percent."

The alarming numbers coming from Detroit officials are supported by another set of recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which stand in harsh contrast to the more positive national employment picture. The jobless rate in the Detroit MSA (metropolitan statistical area) increased 7.3 percentage points in just one year, the highest increase for any metro area in the nation.

Statewide, Michigan still leads the nation in official unemployment, with a rate of 15.1 percent. Homelessness, especially among those becoming homeless for the first time, is expected to jump at least 10 percent this year.