Read an in-depth Free Press analysis of the city’s financial history back to the 1950s.
— Read on www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2013/09/15/how-detroit-went-broke-the-answers-may-surprise-you-and/77152028/
This is well done but I don’t agree with much of the commentary. That is, sure they could have cut staff in the 1960’s but that’s equivalent to saying you didn’t believe then that the city could recover, and believing that then was considered bluntly racist because Detroit was becoming a black city and people who said that had no faith in a black American city. And there would be no way you could sell that idea to a city council, that you needed to renegotiate contracts because the city was going down. At that time, the emerging black city had hope. I’m not sure exactly why the borrowing binge started. By that point in time, Detroit was a total mess, so I assume they wrongly believe that sinking more money in could reverse the course. You could say that’s a classic sunk costs problem but it has many other overtones: the overlay of it being a black run city, of the potential for industrial reinvention, and as a comparison to more expensive coastal cities.
jomi: playing with perception 