Detroit hits 50% unemployment rate

Detroit was a manufacturing industry from the beginning. Sure, we shouldn't have put all of our eggs in one basket, and now most of our workforce isn't prepared for anything else. But a lot of these unemployed and underemployed individuals are now going to school to become employable. The economy has changed, and our workforce is taking the steps to change with it. However, that takes time.

So please, get off your high horse and talk to me about education and decency when you know the difference between "do" and "due."

oooo no! I mixed up do and due everything I said must be incorrect. Go step onto Wayne's campus and pick 10 people at random, more than half of them are there with no real purpose or understanding of what they're studying and the ones that do are getting the hell out of dodge once they graduate.

If you deal with BizdomU or some of the other employment getting organizations then you will hear about the mass amount of students who can't be bothered to shave or take of the gym shoes before an interview. Wayne is a fantastic school and if you care then you can get an excellent education but there are too many students just going through the motions and coming out worse than they went in.

The one hope that Detroit does have is to become a strictly college town and try to expand the Wayne and Cass Corridor areas. They need CCS and Wayne to further expand on-campus living and then pray that the east side and most of the west side floods or burns to the ground.

הו, סופיה
עינייך כמעיינות!
חבל רק, שאת בת 87.

Go on any inner city campus and tell me you don't find the same exact thing. We have our fair share of lazy, ignorant people, as does every city. Stop bashing an entire city's population because of the actions of a few.

And yes, if you're going to attack anyone's education level or intellect, please do so with correct grammar, otherwise you undermine your own statement.

Detroit has many, many positive attributes. It's negative attitudes like yours that have caused the high amount of damage that good, responsible people are now working diligently to fix!

Would working with Wayne's Cultural Diversity Council and coaching high school robotics teams at two Detroit schools count as trying to do good? You don't have to pretend that shits not fucked up in order to try and fix things.

step one: Admitting you have a problem

Praying for the destruction of the east and west sides is hardly helping. It's one thing to focus on building up a specific area (one person can't fix everything), but completely condemning every other area is arrogant and counter-productive.

In short blame the unions and the government! they drove the automakers into bankruptcy and gov't rewarded the unions with bailouts. Government bailouts of anything is not a characteristic of capitalism.

Today, Union's sometimes go a bit too far, but get off the fricking high horse and stop blaming them. The companies had thousands of chances to change their direction to prevent this problem, it had little to do with Unions.

Ford finally changed their direction and they are doing just fine, and posting a profit in the bilions. Guess what, the Unions are heavy in Ford.

The only reason Ford did not need any bailout cash is because they took out a shit ton of loans right before the crash...

הו, סופיה
עינייך כמעיינות!
חבל רק, שאת בת 87.

Thanks. I was thinking the exact same thing.

Every city has that potential.

lol, wow, just think about what you said. The companies shipped their jobs off to places that dont protect labourers and pay very small wages.

I always thought the same thing. Here we are calling ourselves the United States, when we are anything but; bi-partisan this, bi-partisan that, red states, blue states, democratic/repukelicans. It's more like the fragmented states of America

Wow, way to doom everything. Just because a state goes for one candidate doesnt mean everyone voted for that person. Missouri went for McCain, but I think around 48% voted for Obama there.

I do think the party system does cause plenty of problems in Congress, but to say this country is divided between red and blue states is a bit of an offshoot. In terms of the mob, it mainly revolves around ideology and where people get their information; somebody considers themselves conservative or republican they seem to only listen to conservative news (same for dems and libs). Unfortunatly today's media (and even the past media) is a sore sight in terms of information.

What definatly needs to stop is labeling the media as liberal. As Helen Thomas said in an interview, she couldnt find a liberal in the media if she wanted too.

I agree, but in all fairness it's probably 50% right about... now

oh...me ... me ... I know the answer to that.... NO HE DIDN'T

poor howdydo didn't like my response so you flag it. You fight like a girl

I didn't flag it - must have been someone else.

@cmdinc
Did YOU make any personal financial sacrifices before you laid off 1/2 of your staff (take less home)? Do the rest of your staff see YOUR life changing since you laid off 1/2 of your staff? That is the real testament, if you ask me.

I'm sorry, you're going to have to speak english.

I speak English, Russian, French, and ASL, but I don't know how to speak 'Crazy.'

No point in arguing. Small business owners are among the most blindly, rabidly, unthinkingly conservative right wing nuts on the planet. They would go to every teabaggin event, but instead send their underpaid, underinsured staff while they sit at home and masturbate on piles of money.

lol touch a nerve there slarabee. It's ok for you to piss in everyone elses wheaties but when the tables are turned you are the victim. i don't care if you respect me, as a matter of fact any positive acknoledgment from you wouldd mean that i must have made a mistake.

@cmdinc

Regardless of your position, I think this argument is (or perhaps should be) about large capital. If you fired 1/2 your staff on the hunch that Obama would institute an anti-small business policy, I don't think you are the large capitalist. For the most part, the rest of us (including you) live on the crumbs that the large corporations miss, or don't find worth while.

Recognize the paradox of greed: while self-promoting, the aggregate of business has caused a legion of discontented unemployed wage-earners. This, in turn, has caused wage earning Americans to become refractory, taking stronger positions on their own livelihoods. What I don't get about you is that you wonder why anyone would blame business. For you, are 50% of people in Detroit just really lazy? Over that past few years, did 5% more of the American population just get really lazy all of a sudden and not want jobs anymore? Its Obama's fault?

@cmdinc - I never got an answer -

Did YOU make any personal financial sacrifices before you laid off 1/2 of your staff (take less home)? Do the rest of your staff see YOUR life changing since you laid off 1/2 of your staff?

I resonded but it got flagged Howdy I took out the flaggable words and installed Blank...You can fill in what you like

Blank blank blank, i'm here. I actually have to work, i know it wouldn't sound familiar. Did i sacrifice? .Blank blank..................Blank. When i first started my company it was me, just me. 84 hours a week was a "normal" when i expanded i put my home up for collateral. I still put in at least 70 hours a week.
Well howdy what is your claim to fame? What sacrifices have you made? (other than having to wait in line for your Latte) What donations have you made to society?
now back to your question. Did i make any financial sacrifices? I have not paid myself in over a year. After the lay-off i had a meeting with the employees (ya the ones that have been here 13 years) told them of my feers of the future, and gave them a 3% raise. Their christmas bonus will probably be more than you make in a year there HowdyDo.
Has my life changed...well i don't know. I still get up @ 4 am to work in the office before every one gets there. So there day is planned and there is something for them to do. I seldom stop for lunch, so nope that hasn't changed. I skip out at 5pm to coach my local basketball/football/baseball team, only one team which has my own son in it. then back to the office to check the phones, handle any crisis. Then home by 10 for dinner, hug the family and go to bed...well one thing has changed, i never used to even give blank blank blank like you the time of day.

lol @ slarabee,
your cookie cutter reponse. Chill out, you might get busted AGAIN.
Merry Christmas

@cmdinc
Well, kudos to you for not taking pay for a year and giving your remaining employees a raise and bonus. Most employers I have worked for wouldn't even consider it. As for me? Well, I am a licensed attorney who has opted to start a nonprofit organization to support disabled seniors instead of practicing law. You (and your employees) probably do make a whole lot more than I do (I don't remember the last time I got a Christmas bonus) and I am OK with that. I have a car that runs (for now), a roof over my head, food to eat and good friends and family - I am rich! So have a great holiday and don't be so hard on us *blank blank blanks* - we are just trying to get to the bottom of things, here.

Not lazy auto workers but the powerfull Unions caused the layoffs. There was a time were Unions were needed but now not so much. Union involvement is worst than government involvement.

unions were useful in the 1900's when we didn't have labor laws, now they evitable force a company to not be competitive and go either go bankrupt or move to china.

no.

cmdinc^^ yes companies hire people, good that you could figure that much out, but have you ever considered that the companies firing all the employees now benefit from this, because later they can just hire new people for a lot less. This story is a bout people loosing jobs, there is no benefit in that for them, the government won't bail them out.

@ attitude. When you grow up and have learned the real world plese come back so we can chat. Let me guess, a college student in the liberlal arts program wnating to help all the poor and it's the corps fault

Nice try but not even close, but get back to me next year when you business has failed and your broke.

The 'evil companies' moved all their factories to China and Mexico, creating unemployment.

they took our jobs!!!

Blame the unions, they tell the legions that the companies can pay more and more and give more and better benefits, while the companies are telling the workers we are at the breaking point. Most companies don't mind paying a reasonable wage but look at what the unions did to the big 3 automakers, they've bankrupted them and we have had to bail them out and promise to fund their retirement packages.

I just wrote a fake news story about exactly that.

You don't think the race riots and the subsequent white flight (a term that should be corrected, it should be middle class flight), played a huge role in Detroit's decline? The surrounding suburbs are some of the richest areas in the US.

You're completely right in that the 67' riots had a lot to do with Detroit's decline, in many ways it was the tipping point; however I believe the subsequent reign of Coleman Young was far more damaging. Young was probably the most polarizing character of the last 50 years and the effects of his administrations "anti-white" sentiment carry on to this day, albeit with different faces on both sides of the line (i.e. 8 mile). Trying to be politically correct on the issue of flight to the suburbs does not do justice to incredible abandonment that occurred. By the 1970's when Young was elected the development of the suburbs was already underway and the white middle class was on their way out of the city anyway. The flight to the suburbs was most definitely precipitated by Young's inflammatory attitude towards other race which caused nearly every white left in the city to leave. It was over the course of the last 40 years that small numbers of minorities made it out of Detroit which is also why such a large dichotomy exists between the city and suburbs (both are lacking any population diversity). To be completely honest, the mistakes of the past sicken me and I hate that that's the way things are today, but the most troubling aspect is that I would be lying if I said that there was hope for the future of this region. That's a pretty sad commentary.

On a side note, despite the fact that in the past Oakland and Macomb counties were some of the wealthiest in the country, you would be surprised to know that economic predictions are still pretty bleak. The last I heard is that new job growth won't even begin to make up for loses in those counties for at least another 10-15 years.