|
TheHeretic -> RE: Detroit is ablaze!!! (9/8/2010 7:18:21 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: popeye1250
Ok, who wants to explain it to the Beaver?
Well, you see, Beav, there are things called jobs. People get paid money to do things. If they have a good job (one that pays lots of money, and gives you time to enjoy it), they will do things like buy houses, and plant trees in the yard. They pay local property taxes on those homes to pay for schools, and paved roads and emergency services.
Once upon a time, Detroit was a city with a lot of good jobs. Then something happened. Popeye proposes that globalized trade agreements are largely responsible for this. I don't share his view, tending to the belief that a culture of rot set into the auto industry.
Whichever or whatever, the community started spiralling down. The jobs left. Trees went untrimmed in the yards of homes where the people gave up and left. Fewer people paying taxes meant fewer fire trucks, and fewer city crews out trimming limbs. It also meant fewer people buying electricity, which probably meant fewer company crews keeping limbs away from the lines. A fallen limb causing a fire happens all the time. (Hell, we had a fire here in CA, where a bobcat electrocuted himself on a power line and started a fire where he landed.) A firestorm sweeping through a city is not the automatic result. This was a tragedy caused by economic devastation.
Popeye believes that was caused by the transition to a global economy.
Clear as mud?
|
|
|
|
