Gay marriage.

Where what factors played a part?

Omit where.

How did gay marriage contribute to Detroit's bankruptcy?

30 - 40 years of 100% Democrat policy implementation. Period. end of discussion.

Blind-sighted, unionism

Myth - the "death" of the auto indutry caused Detoroit's bankrupcy: This is a *complete* falacy, as the automotive industry is *strong* in the USA...it has just *left* Detroit. High taxes, high crime, no point in staying in Detroit when other communities offer a better deal. Same thing happened to Flint and Pontiac.

Throw in corruption and theft by damned near every administration and governmental department, stripping away even more of the cash that they didn't have...Detroit is a Federal Prosecutor's wet dream....lot's of jail time has come (will conitnue to come) out of Detroit.

Pittsburgh transitioned from the collapse of its steel industry without going bankrupt so I agree that arguing the slowdown of the auto industry drove Detroit bankrupt.

Add to Detriot's woes as an automotive city, was a State of Michigan that enacted a *horrifying* business tax that drove business from the state. Couple that with *not* being a "Right-to-Work" state, meanign unions had a strangle hold on the automotive industry...this helped drive automtoive from Detroit...so state policy impacted the City for sure.

But, even while Detroit died, Oakland County and other immediately surrounding counties have, and continue, to thrive....so the fault of Detroit's demise lies squarely on Detroit, as everyone else has diversified, has had more reasonable tax policies, etc and not suffered the same fate, even though sharing a border with the City.

But, the bottom line is the bottom line...UNION PENSION bankrupted the city.

Failure to provide Barry Sanders with a sufficiently competent supporting cast.

Sacred Digits has an interesting read of that history. You should consider asking him.

The Detroit Lions became bankrupt long before the City of Detroit.

Sacred Digits and all others are welcome to post in the thread.

The public employee unions represent the largest creditors against the City of Detroit by far so the argument that pension obligations contributed has legs.

Oftentimes, in the United States, when a city is prosperous, the middle class will start to want to move out of the city proper because it's too congested, they want a safer environment, don't mind the commute, et cetera et cetera. We'll call this the first ring of suburbs. Then, the first ring of suburbs start to be as congested as the city, so they move just a little further out. By the time they get to a third ring, the businesses have decided that it's a better idea to be where the people are, so they start moving to the third ring, vacating the city proper. By the time people are living in the sixth ring, the city starts to become a deserted hellhole and needs to find a way to reinvent itself to pull people back in.

Detroit's starting to do that, but due to a number of other factors including but not limited to Kwame Kilpatrick stealing millions of dollars from the city and short sighted negotiations on contracts (a lot of those deals were extremely backloaded because the government side wanted to punt paying money into the future without thinking that perhaps the future would have less revenue streams than the present).

I have other opinions on it that I may go into later, but these are a few reasons.

I think Cachimbo mentioned talking to me about it because I don't really hit the board that hard anymore, and I spoke to him at length offline about it. I'm kind of an urban development nerd, that sort of thing really fascinates me.

I'm not an expert, it's just an interest.

Detroit is the only city to go through the six rings of suburbs? Not Los Angeles, Chicago, Philly, etc. etc. etc.

All American cities are going bankrupt because of suburbia?

Chicago was dying from it. And reinvented itself.

Areas of Los Angeles have had issues with it as well.

The first ring suburbs in many of those cities tend to be really rough right now. Look up, for instance, Harvey, Illinois. Or Inglewood, California.

The Red Wings.

The Red Wings can be blamed for EVERYTHING.........

Fucking Red Wings.......

I earned my red wings with my first girlfriend. Also earned the strawberry popsickle with her.

A corrupt government in Chicago reinvented itself, but a corrupt government in Detroit didn't. So leadership is the key factor or lack of it?

White flight has killed just about every big city and its taking dedicated efforts and urban revitalization in downtown areas to get residents to return. Car ownership among millennials is actually down from the generation before because the tide is slowly turning away from cars, long commutes, and living in the exurbs and shifting toward urban living, integrated urban transportation systems, and repopulating downtowns of American cities.

I'm also saying that it's in combination with totally backloading those contracts based on expecting revenue streams to stay the same or go up. I think we all know in our personal lives the dangers of "gladly paying you Wednesday for a hamburger today."

Newark, New Jersey (and several other east coast cities) are also experiencing that exact problem. It's nice to expect the future is going to continue to be great, but it's also foolish.

Also, when a lot of the initial negotiation happened on those contracts, municipal workers had pretty short life spans. Pensions for the rest of their lives didn't sound like as bad of an idea as it became once several of those occupations (and I'm going to just toss out sewer work as an example) got better safety regulations and equipment.

Is Millennial car ownership down because one-third of them didn't move out their parent's house yet?

Good analysis SD. Doesn't help when your tax base moves out and you're stuck with long term pensions. When the jobs leave as well, you're really in a tight spot.

"Is Millennial car ownership down because one-third of them didn't move out their parent's house yet?"

Also playing a factor, I'm sure. Its not the entire reason. Millenials just don't value ownership as much.

The argument of backloading in budgets, unrealistically optimistic revenue forecasts, and kicking the can down the road fiscal policy really has legs.

The average age of a first driver's license keeps increasing as well. Public policy has something to do with this as does the expense of insurance and a lack of jobs for the under 25 crowd. Isn't unemployment near 30% for under 25?

longer life, later starts, not accounted for by planner?

Is that all there is to it?