New York Times resident government apologist Paul Krugman argues — and we use the term loosely — that Detroit was forced into bankruptcy not because it “had especially bad governance” (which it did), but because “for the most part the city was just an innocent victim of market forces.”
But there's nothing “innocent” about market perversions that led to the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. It's all about ignorance of market forces and the fatal conceit that they can be trumped.
For more than a few decades, Detroit has been a cesspool for social “enlightenment” — kowtowing to the cartels of unionism, rabid reliance on race-baiting and a long string of crooked politicians as “leaders.” Three results of many have been the highest per capita tax burden in Michigan, a soaring crime rate and a population of blacks who have become wards of the state, if not the street.
“None of this is the product of the ‘creative destruction' of capitalism,” reminds National Review Editor Rich Lowry; “it is the destructive destruction of corrupt statism.”
Detroit is a dystopia of dysfunction and destruction at just about every level.
But Detroit had to fail, and on such a grand scale, to prove the fallacy of the “progressive” regressive state, a state that can only implode.
As another National Review commentator put it, the parasite outgrew its host.
Thus, the key to any Detroit recovery is to make certain such parasites are not saved to feed another day. And that's going to be quite the tall order for those who will continue to believe in the unbelievable.
