Friday, July 19, 2013
Detroit. Bankrupt.
Rich Galen
July 19, 2013
The City of
Detroit filed for bankruptcy yesterday afternoon. It owes as much as $20
billion and there is no conceivable way that debt will ever be paid. The city
offered its debtors 10 cents on the dollar but the debtors refused. A good deal of the blame - rightly or wrongly
- will be placed at the feet of municipal workers - sanitation, water, sewer,
cops, firefighters and so on.
The pressure of ever-rising wages for no additional work, leading to ever-rising pension costs, plus ever increasing benefits and ever more closely defined work rules will likely be found to be at the bottom of all this. But its not the unions' fault. It is the fault of the elected officials - Democratic elected officials in Detroit - who didn't have the, um … guts to ever say "No" to their largest voting bloc…… "As Reuters reports, in the past three decades nearly every job lost at U.S. car factories have vanished from unionized companies; meanwhile, job gains have come almost exclusively from non-union companies."
The pressure of ever-rising wages for no additional work, leading to ever-rising pension costs, plus ever increasing benefits and ever more closely defined work rules will likely be found to be at the bottom of all this. But its not the unions' fault. It is the fault of the elected officials - Democratic elected officials in Detroit - who didn't have the, um … guts to ever say "No" to their largest voting bloc…… "As Reuters reports, in the past three decades nearly every job lost at U.S. car factories have vanished from unionized companies; meanwhile, job gains have come almost exclusively from non-union companies."
Again, I don't blame the union
bosses. They did what their members paid them to do. I blame the elected
officials who never put the long-term financial health of their community ahead
of their burning desire to be re-elected by pandering to the lowest common
denominator. ….To Read More….
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