Should Detroit be bailed out?

[KharmaTrain]

53. Unless There's Some Kind Of Economic Base...

...this city will continue to decay. Detroit is not alone...right up the road is Flint that's been in total decline or Gary, Indiana...a once mighty steel town that is now used to film "life the day after" productions. The three cities have something in common...they were single industry towns and the industries no longer exist. A combination of technology and globalization means Ford no longer needs as many people to make their cars and no matter of government bailout is going to create jobs that aren't needed.

I'm in Chicago and have watched the ongoing decline of what were once vibrant working class neighborhoods where their major factory/employers moved on and the areas have never recovered. The difference is Chicago had other industries that enabled the city to weather the loss of its factories but many blighted areas still exist and decades of all sorts of government assistance hasn't helped. Some areas have come back to life due to "gentrification"...predominately young and white, who've moved back into some city neighborhoods but that's the exception, not the rule. Without some kind of return to an industrial base or developing some kind of industry that employs the same numbers of people the Big 3 once did, the city's problems will continue...and so will the need for federal assistance...