Why Liberals Wonât Face Facts on Detroit Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 07.23.2013 - 2:50 PM After the initial shock, liberals have responded to Detroitâs bankruptcy crisis with their usual vigor while attempting to answer conservatives who have rightly asserted that what happened to the Motor City was an inevitable result of liberal policies. Whatâs more, some, like Steven Ratner in the New York Times, are claiming that rather than forcing the city to face the consequences of misgovernment and reckless spending, the federal government should step in and bail the city out in much the same way it did with the auto industry. If, as I wrote last Friday, most Americans were under the impression last November that Barack Obama had already âsaved Detroitâ from the bankruptcy that he claimed Mitt Romney wanted to force upon it, the goal now should be to finish the job. But while that dubious proposal is at least rooted in a sense of obligation to the beleaguered retirees and workers of Detroit who are the chief victims of this debacle, Times columnist Paul Krugman is unafraid to confront conservative doomsayers head on and declare the whole thing an insignificant blip on the radar. While Krugman is dismissed by many on the right as an ideological extremist, his point of view about the mess actually goes straight to the heart of not only the crisis in Detroit but the impending tragedy of debt that threatens every other American city and municipality. If liberals wonât face facts about Detroit, it is not because they arenât paying attention so much as because they see the sea of debt that their policies have created as merely the natural order of things that must be accepted. As far as he is concerned, if some people are talking about Detroit being âthe new Greece,â that ought to be a signal for Democrats to stop listening because he doesnât even think the problems of that bankrupt European nation are worth worrying about. The âdeficit scoldsâ that he now regularly flays from his perch at the Times and his sinecure at Princeton University are, he says, trying to sell the country on an austerity mindset that is not only wrong but unnecessary. But try as he might, the example of liberal governance that Detroit (and Greece) provides shows that the liberal social welfare project is a one-way path to insolvency with desperate consequences not only for taxpayers and bondholders but to the ordinary citizens that liberals purport to want to help. Rather than confront the problem, Krugman merely says what happened in Detroit is âone of those thingsâ that just happen in a market economy that always creates victims. He also claims that the underfunded pension obligations that threaten the future of virtually ever state, city, and municipal government in the country are no big deal. The trillion-dollar shortfall may strike Krugman as a mere detail, but Detroit may be just the first of many other large cities that will find themselves in similar predicaments. As Nicole Gelinas writes today in the New York Post, even New York, which unlike Detroit faced and overcame not altogether dissimilar problems involving debt and urban blight in the last generation, may eventually be put in the same position unless something is done to deal with a bill for retiree medical benefits that dwarfs that of Detroit. Though, as she points out, New York has a smaller bond debt, Detroitâs sea of red ink was created by a similar confidence that they could keep borrowing money indefinitely. Krugman is right to say that there are always winners and losers in a free economy. Every city has its own story and Detroitâs is one that is particularly heavy on bad luck as well as mismanagement. But his Adam Smith-style warning that anyone could wind up being the buggy-whip manufacturer of the future ignores the factor that powerful unions and their political protectors play in exacerbating such problems. His claim that Detroitâs situation is the result of chance rather than primarily the result of âfiscal irresponsibility and/or greedy public employeesâ simply isnât credible. A bailout of Detroit sets a precedent that canât be repeated elsewhere because there just isnât enough money to pay for every city that will eventually face similar problems. The wake up call that Detroit is sending Americans is one Krugman and other liberals would like us to ignore because they are confident that the federal leviathan, controlled by Democrats and fed by liberal assumptions, will always be able to squeeze enough cash out of productive citizens to pay for the leftâs follies. They wonât face the truth about this because to do so would require Americans to do some hard thinking about a society where virtually everyone has their snouts in the collective trough of big government and thereby is a stakeholder in its survival in its current form. But what Greece showed Europe and what Detroit tells Americans is that sooner or later the well of public funds will run dry if obligations to liberal constituent groups continue to grow unchecked. And when that happens it is exactly the little guys who are hurting in Detroit who will be forced to suffer for Krugmanâs ideology.
As usual, doesn't go far enough. "Eventually face"? WTF? Not to pick on you Max, but this is seriously washed down BS. Most likely because brain dead racist libtards will already have too hard a time swallowing this quarter truth - there's no way they are ready for the real stuff. I mean, look at this forum for instance. The racist, bigoted libtards think that Zimmerman is guilty of murder 2 if not murder 1. There's no getting through that shell of refusal to know. The reality is, once it becomes acceptable to ask and receive bailouts by cities and *shudder* states, WTF would any politician anywhere do anything to limit spending? And tax cuts, for that matter. Shit, I'd run for office, stand up and say "OK, no taxes of any kind in our state plus everyone gets free health care, a free house, free cars, free education, free retirement, free dinner every night at Morton's, free stacks of gold bars, free vacation houses, free prostitutes and an unlimited credit card to buy anything else I left off! plus a 20% cash bonus on that card!" Race to the bottom. Only `tards can't see that. And they are everywhere.
Tgagg, you sound like you have other, bigger problems. Edit: good piece, Max, thoughtful. One thing to consider, just because something was affordable then, but it's not affordable now, does not mean that buying it then was a bad move. By the way, the author's wording re Krugman's argument about the $1 trillion pension shortfall seems to imply that the entire $1 trillion shortfall is Detroit's. Without having read Krugman on it, I don't believe that's the case.
The thing about politicians is qualifications, they don't have any. What this country needs is a black man for president or what this town needs is a hispanic or a gay mayor, wtf is that? People voted me in so I must be a great guy, seriously, that's it?
Do you have any idea how retarded it is to add "racist liberal" to every argument...? You don't know what a "liberal" is... The worse part is most of you who claim to be a "conservative" don't have a fucking clue as to what that is either... (Not to pick on you TGregg... It's more of an all around problem) For instance if I'd brought up "Gladstonian democracy" you wouldn't have a clue as to what that was... Gladstone was a liberal in England and a Tory. That's a CONSERVATIVE for you people. For the most part you don't get that conservatives don't always clash with liberal values... It's only in the USA where conservative is associated with republican and liberal with democrat regardless of political ideology. This is a recent development that started during the Bush years and was cemented with Obama. The USA today is white trash retards vs black political gangsters.... The cool people with an education disappeared around the time mullets became cool and people started wearing the "I'm with stupid" T-shirts with pride.
Detroit is the new normal, a burned out derelict. The whole USofA is a burned out derelict: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-23/how-does-america’s-middle-class-rank-globally-27
That article (which surprisingly I support) would suggest that not ALL of America is a burned out relic. Some are doing quite well.
It's mind bending. We've ALLOWED this to happen, and I don't see it getting any better any time soon.