Conservatives want you to think high taxes drove people away. The real truth is much worse for their radical agenda
Obviously market forces and public policy choices can't be ignored in this saga, but they can't totally explain it, either. I base this on the fact that when we say "Detroit is bankrupt", we mean Detroit, not the metropolitan region. For example, my birthplace, Rochester, MI, has a million dollar McMansion on every ugly corner. While they lack many things in Oakland County (imagination and culture, mostly), money is not counted among them. If this were purely a market story, then we would expect the region as a whole to be dead weight, but it isn't. I'm not saying that I know better than anyone else what the hell happened here, but my personal opinion is that the story in complex and nuanced, with no single answer sufficient to explain all of our myriad problems. Tax cuts are necessary. Ever seen a property tax bill in Detroit? It's about 90 mils or something ridiculous. And what do we get for that incredible amount of cash? I'm not sure, as I've yet to see a return. I love Detroit, but as one of the city's very few residents with a high tax bill (property and income), it annoys the hell out of me to see wasted money. The only thing that will "save" Detroit (not sure I even know what that means) is more residents like me, residents who have civic responsibility and are willing and able to pay high taxes. The only way to get these hypothetical people to move to the city is for it to be attractive to them. Getting big and small businesses into the city (which is actually already happening at a decent clip) is probably the only way for this to happen. Until such time as there is a drastic overhaul of the tax code, targeted tax breaks are the only thing that will work.
If you actually want to see the city of Detroit once again vibrant, then there needs to be tax incentives for small businesses, and large corporations alike. There needs to be incentives for people to move their organizations there. Once large corporations are there, there will be money there. Once there is money, there will be spending at local restaurants etc. Tax incentives for large businesses aren't the problem, they are part of the solution.
The thing is, until you've been down there it's hard to convince people that there is something special happening there. Midtown detroit is a fantastic cultural scene, with a lot of awesome businesses emerging all the time. It's growing, due to small entrepreneurship and large money interests like Dan Gilbert et al. Will Detroit once again be a 2mm person city? No, not likely. Will it remain a 700k person city? Possibly, but maybe not. Perhaps the city limit shrinks and the suburbs end up absorbing the exterior. But it's not beyond saving and it's worth saving. There are a lot of people that have bet on the future of Detroit, and I'm talking some BIG money. That, to me is the most encouraging evidence of it's viability.
No, it's Durham's tobacco district/campus with bigger money interests, a surrounding infrastructure ripe for manufacturing and major waterways for transport. Get rid of the crack heads and it's a pretty good bet post bankruptcy. ....now how to get rid of those crack heads...? That there is the real question.
Uh, well, except for three R1 universities and a favorable tax/regulatory environment. Detroit is suffering from a reverse network effect. I have no idea how one reverses that, but I suspect that, absent drastic and brilliant effort, it can't be reversed. See also Polaroid, Kodak, etc, etc. -XC
As for the Universities, Detroit has Wayne State, Oakland University and UofM Dearborn. Plus they have Henry Ford hospital, Beaumont Hospital, the Detroit Medical Center etc. It's a hell of hub for medicine. Lot's of positives. Detroit needs people to reverse that reverse network effect (I just swallowed my tongue), and in order to do that needs an influx of capital investment by big corporations. How to get those corporations? Tax incentives and land for $1.
Again, network effect. Those are fine schools, but have fractional throw weight compared to our local. One reason Boston has it over RTP is their university density. Ditto for Silicon Valley over Boston and NYC. (NYC is seriously short on universities) You'd have to talk to the boss over how to get people in, that's her field not mine. But I can't see any big company bothering to move up there - it's just the reverse direction that everything is moving in. There's literally not a job that could pay me enough to move up there. -XC
How is NYC seriously short on universities? Oh wait, you're being sarcastic.
The corruption here runs very deep, indeed. Here's a fun story. True. But not at all uncommon. There's a tiny restaurant in an OK neighborhood not far from where I live. The restaurateur tried his ass off to get a liquor license, because what's a French lunch restaurant without wine service? He paid thousands of dollars only to be told to fuck off, because he wasn't greasing the right wheels. So he let his patrons BYOB. Of course this man thought the with hour response times that the police couldn't possibly have time to regulate whether his patrons were bringing bottles of wine to his humble little establishment. They did. Regular patrols stopped by and harassed this business owner and his customers. Being a good citizen, he told everyone they couldn't bring booze anymore, because of the police, but he continued to serve water in old wine bottles. Then the police harassed him about that, too! This incident is illustrative but by no means unique or remarkable. Basically, my point (and I'm sure you are just a bit sympathetic to it) is fuck these bastards. They could all have their pensions slashed to 0 and I could really give a fuck. They are interested in themselves and don't care about public safety. If the police want me to care about them, then they have to care about me, too. So, in the end, you are right; the same people will be running the city, both elected and non-elected. The question is whether this can be a reset. I don't know that it can, but I don't know that it can't, either. As we talked about the other day, new leadership might have a chance of winning, at least in the mayor's office (not that Bing is a bad mayor, he just isn't up to the task at his age and with his health). That combined with the very high profile corruption cases that have been prosecuted lately may give leaders pause. Maybe.