Reshared post from +Don Denton
Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit
Conservatives want you to think high taxes drove people away. The real truth is much worse for their radical agenda
Excerpt:
In the wake of Detroit’s bankruptcy, you may be wondering: How could anyone be surprised that a city so tied to manufacturing faces crippling problems in an era that has seen such an intense public policy assault on domestic American manufacturing? You may also be wondering: How could Michigan officials possibly talk about cutting the average $19,000-a-year pension benefit for municipal workers while reaffirming their pledge of $283 million in taxpayer money to a professional hockey stadium?These are fair questions — and the answers to them can be found in the political mythology that distorts America’s economic policymaking.
As mythology goes, the specific story being crafted about Detroit’s bankruptcy is truly biblical — more specifically, just like the fact-free mythology around the Greek financial collapse, it is copied right from the chapter in the conservative movement’s bible about how to distort crises for maximum political effect.
In the conservative telling of this particular parable, Detroit faces a fiscal emergency because high taxes supposedly drove a mass exodus from the city, and the supposedly unbridled greed of unions forced city leaders to make fiscally irresponsible pension promises to municipal employees. Written out of the tale is any serious analysis of macroeconomic shifts, international economic policy failures, the geography of recent recessions and unsustainable corporate welfare spending.
This is classic right-wing dogma — the kind that employs selective storytelling to use a tragic event as a means to radical ends. In this case, the ends are — big shocker! — three of the conservative movement’s larger long-term economic priorities: 1) preservation of job-killing trade policies 2) immunity for corporations and 3) justification for budget policies that continue to profligately subsidize the rich.
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/23/dont_buy_the_right_wing_myth_about_detroit/?
Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit
Conservatives want you to think high taxes drove people away. The real truth is much worse for their radical agenda
Hmmm, so you are saying that there is no responsibility for the actions of Detroit city officials. That, according to your thesis, these are all external geo-poilitical factors that lasered in on Detroit and did not affect any other city in the US to the same extent.
Next are you going to tell us the ACA is affordable for most Americans?
Don't buy the Liberal's Kool Aid, oh wait, you already drank the cheap version; Obama's.