Crossposted from: http://paranoidpyro8503.blogspot.com/2009/10/it-could-be-worse-they-could-be-detno.html
Ladies and Gentlemen, roll up the windows and lock the doors, we’re about to take a trip through Detriot. Except for New Orleans post-Kartrina, Detroit is about the closest thing to a 3rd world country you can find east of the Mississippi River. I admittedly don’t know about border cities in the southwest, so I’ll confine my judgment a tad.
Michigan, you see, is part of America’s derisively named “Rust Belt,” the part of the northeast that used to be called the “Steel Belt” back in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s. Michigan was once hailed as the car capital of the world, especially in the city of Detroit. But times change, and the steel and car jobs began leaking out of the country a long time ago. Now, a city like Detriot has “Unemployment Capital of the Country” as its most likely claim to fame. In fact, since 2000, Detroit’s unemployment rate has been much higher than that of the US, and usually double the unemployment of the state of Michigan itself: Read the rest of this entry »