The Future is Now

The Future is Now

©2013  Ross Williams

 

 

Perhaps I’ve mentioned this before, or perhaps not.  If you want to see the future of America once liberals get done with it you can look to the failed Soviet Union; to the imminent failure of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal; to the dinosaurs-on-life-support Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Bolivia … you probably cannot, though, look to communist China because – say what you will about myopic socialists, the Chinese have always looked ten generations ahead – they saw for themselves the slow toilet swirl their Soviet pals took and the Chinese caught capitalism faster than a street walker catches clap. 

But if none of those examples appeal to you as being too distant and removed in time, location or the foreign inability to pull off American Exceptionalism, then you might look instead to Detroit. 

Detroit just filed for bankruptcy. …like no one saw that coming. 

And when I say “no one”, I’m talking specifically about liberals.  Detroit has been, for two generations, the poster-child of liberal sensibility.   

Detroit had two main industries: autos and Motown.  Both rely on union labor – the United Auto Workers, and the American Federation of Musicians.  While it is perfectly reasonable, though, for the UAW to denounce Henry Ford the 7th as a sweat-shopper, which session musician is going to tell Smokey Robinson or the Jackson 5 that they’re keepin’ a brother down? 

The result is that one generation ago US auto makers started putting out Plymouth Valiants, Dodge K-Cars, Chevy Citations, AMC Gremlins and Ford Pintos.  Not coincidentally, Japan supplanted the US as the maker of the world’s best cars that same day.  Americans were so bitter over Japanese cars, and so desperate to buy a vehicle that wasn’t a US piece-o-crap, that they bought – get this – a Yugoslavian piece-o-crap instead. 

The Yugo rusted on the fly, if anything, faster than the Chevy Monza did.  You could actually watch the corrosion work its way out from a dent caused by a morning hailstorm.  With the Monza, it might take a week to see the rust bubble; with the Yugo, it popped up by lunch. 

And, of course, with union labor comes union pensions.  And early retirements.  And several other factors that Greece is suddenly discovering they can’t afford – even if Germany picks up the tab.  And the pensions that the UAW dopes thought they were so clever to secure for themselves out of the endless coffers of The Big Three’s vaults – they’ve largely gone away.  Chrysler went bankrupt, Ford restructured at least once, and GM went bankrupt and folded two of its brands – Saturn and Oldsmobile – in response to our most recent “economic downturn”. 

Couple this with Detroit’s tax rates – and Michigan’s in general – designed to compel the wealthy to pay their Fair Share®, Detroit saw its manufacturing base move out of state.  Detroit has long had the highest property tax rates of any of America’s 50 largest cities.  Yes, Ford, Chrysler and GM still have a presence in the Detroit area as well as Detroit itself, but they’re a shadow of their former selves. 

For what it’s worth, Berry Gordy moved his Motown to L.A. in the early 70s.  Even California had a better business climate than Detroit, even now.  Of today’s top ten employers in Detroit Michigan, the first eight are one form of government employer or another [or heavily subsidized by the government – like healthcare and health insurance].  It’s not until you get to 9 and 10 on the list that you see a private employer: GM and Chrysler, respectively; Ford doesn’t even appear in the top 20, although three casinos do. 

With the major private employers pulling out to the suburbs – or to Tennessee – and taking their tax debts with them, the city of Detroit found itself learning what so many liberals refuse to: small businesses thrive in the presence of big business.  This is due to a few factors.  The first being the classic economist’s explanation: a large portion of what small businesses do is done for big business; big business is the small business’s biggest customer.  Without the big business there, there’s no big customer, and the small customers aren’t enough for the small business to earn a profit … they fold. 

The second reason is the one that I may have mentioned before in response to the Occupy Wallstreet socialist idiocy: when you kill off the top 1%, there’s always, always, always going to be another 1% on the top of the economic heap.    When you remove the outer layer of the onion, there’s still a layer of the onion on the outside.  When you cut off the top rung of the ladder, there’s still a top rung.  Removing the top layer by layer is fine as long as other people are at the top.  But as the French found out during their Reign of Terror, eventually you will be at the top – and thus removed. 

Soaking the rich through government policy because they’re rich only succeeds in driving the rich to move to other … cities, other … states, other … countries.  Where the rich go, so go the jobs – check out Detroit.  The people who are left can’t afford the taxes – they don’t have jobs to earn the money – and those taxes not collected pay for all the stuff that the government has taken upon itself to do for them.  As a result, it doesn’t get done.  It’s not the rich who suffer; they’re living elsewhere under a different government, and living quite well, usually.  The ones who suffer are the poor because they can’t afford to move. 

Property tax delinquency in Detroit currently exceeds 50%; whole city blocks are abandoned and in ruins.  Fire and police protection is a joke, crime rates have skyrocketed and a small fire is as likely to burn down a whole block as be put out.  It’s a good thing the Detroit Tigers lost the World Series last year: the city would have been completely torched out of celebration. 

Detroit even had their own version of a liberal savior to rescue them from themselves: Kwame Kilpatrick.  The City Savior attempted to fix Detroit’s problems in much the same way our National Savior is doing it for the rest of us; Kilpatrick will be sentenced for it later this year, and it is likely to be a lengthy stint.  He’s already been in state prison on lesser savioring.  Because the fact of the matter is, liberal fiscal politics doesn’t work without cooking the books – what federal prosecutors call extortion and fraud.  And then it typically requires payola and deceit to cover it up – what the same federal prosecutors call bribery and obstruction of justice. 

Only the Mayor of Detroit doesn’t have the same level of plausible deniability that a US President has, and Kilpatrick got caught playing Obama just as Obama was being elected to play himself.  And Obama has minions to fall on their swords for him, people like Shyster General Eric Holder, Indoctrination Secretary Arne Duncan, Poverty Perpetuation Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Disemployment Secretary Hilda Solis, and a few others, all tied into a happy knot by Head Book Cooker Timmy “The Great” Geithner. 

Because, as always, what happens when you go bankrupt is:
1] someone pays your bills for you, or
2] your creditors take a huge loss, or
3] your creditors break your kneecaps. 

If Detroit goes bankrupt, it falls under US bankruptcy law, which obliges creditors – after all the court hearings – to take a financial bath.  In the meantime, though, the rich abandon ship taking their money [and jobs] with them, and there’s no more police or fire protection, essential services – like filling potholes and replacing street lights – end in all neighborhoods, not just the poor sections, and the city gets parceled out to local gangs and to opportunists from other cities.  But that’s only until the courts sort it out. 

The US government has gotten into the sad habit of paying the bills of bankrupt entities, so Detroit may get their bailout.  Greece has Germany; Detroit may have D.C.  It’s happened before.  The opportunity to happen again isn’t even limited to Detroit; following close on these heels is any number of American cities – nearly all having a multi-generational history of liberal fiscal lunacy having guided them – and quite a few states, themselves historically liberal, such as Illinois, California, Michigan, New Jersey [etc]. 

I shouldn’t have to remind anyone that the US government is very rapidly going broke itself due to liberal Democrat [and pseudo-conservative liberal Republican] profligacy, and if the US government goes bankrupt, police and fire protection [in the form of military defense] will evaporate; essential services will die; and US territory will get divvied up by local gangs [called warlords in geopolitics] or by foreign opportunists – often called “terrorists”. 

Only the US going bankrupt would not be a matter for US bankruptcy law to handle.  It would be handled, instead, in the traditional way: the bankrupt nation selling off its territory for the cash needed to pay its bills, or foreign creditors breaking kneecaps and repossessing territory by conquest.  Or the nation simply degenerates into barbarism. 

What fun. 

The irony icing on this let them eat liberal cake is that Detroit has just petitioned the US government for a waiver from having to comply with its obligation to join the Obamacare Borg.  It seems that the city of Detroit, having more than 50 employees, is required to provide those employees – all AFSCME union members, as if it needs to be said – their health coverage.  Only this health coverage, under Obamacare, is grossly more expensive than it was before. 

This still comes as a shock to the 40% numbskulls in our country who believed the hucksters who sold them on Obamacare back in 2010; it is double-grossly more expensive than they were promised it would be.  The cost was supposed to come down, after all.  It is The Affordable Care Act.  Remember?  Employers who don’t want to pay for it are simply racist, because the cost of insurance goes down when more people join the premium pool. 

Remember?!? 

I do.  I also remember saying several times that it doesn’t work the way idiot liberals were told it does … by the politicians who desperately needed to buy their votes … because they couldn’t win otherwise.   

They’re now finding out that I was right.  Again. 

So if Greek and Soviet foolishness won’t convince the liberals what their liberal folly will bring, then they should take a drive to the Motor City and see for themselves.  Tomorrowland has never been so real.