I often wondered about how youth unemployment is calculated. I mean, aren't students excluded? So who's 16 and not in school? Can it really be all that many people?

I did read somewhere that the high school graduation rate nationally is only about 70%. Where does this underclass go? I can't even imagine how hard it must be to find a job without a high school diploma in an economy where people with four year degrees are even having a hard time getting shitty jobs.

Unemployment is usually calculated based on people who are attempting but not succeeding to find a job, so students don't really factor into the percentages at all unless they are working or trying to work and failing. It can be really tricky when it comes to youths, since things like "claiming unemployment benefits" are a big research tool (and they usually can't claim them).

Quite a few of the high school drop outs these days get a GED. I know the joke "Good Enough Diploma", but I am familiar with several people who have done relatively well for themselves with GED's. Usually the people who get these are people who had other environmental concerns during high school or people who suddenly discovered there were no opportunities for them.

The problem with four year degree people getting shitty jobs is that shitty jobs don't want them, as they're a turnover risk. You have an Econ degree, McDonald's knows that you're going to try to get an Econ job as soon as you can and are just filling in time there. You have a GED and no college education, McDonald's knows there aren't many places you can go. Turnover is bad, because training is costly.

Thanks for the number Invictus. I read a Gallup article that said only 43.6% of 18-29 year old Americans have full-time jobs.

Dude, 18-22 is typical college age so that group (over 1/3 your age range) most likely work part time if they work at all. Add in those who continue on to grad school and you get even more who don't work full time.

40% of 18-24 year olds enrolled in two year and four year schools. 60% of 18-24 year olds aren't enrolled at all. Only 15% of 24-29 year olds enrolled 85% are not.
Pew Research

So how many 18-24 year olds are there and how many 24-29 year olds.

Assuming they are even (too tired to bother to research) that would mean 27.5% off all 18-29 years olds are enrolled in college of some sort. Assuming that it may as well be all of them that don't hold down full time jobs, that means 28.9% of your age group are potentially unemployed. Now, lets look further at how many of that age group is incarcerated...

I don't know anything about Detroit specifically so please stop reading if you don't want an outsider's view.

Detroit went bust because of capitalism. I'm not knocking capitalism here. Just pointing out that the market weeds out the poorly managed and corrupt as well as those that try to be innovative and get it wrong. Bankruptcy sometimes is the salvation of organisations. People face up to their mistakes and the become leaner and fitter and move on to prosperity. Bankruptcy also attracts the sharks to pick over the remains. Again this can be good. Assets can be acquired ultra cheap and capital can flood in to redevelop an area. Some people will lose out, but others will gain big time. Detroit and other states can rise again.

Not a bad take Maniac.

.743% incarceration rate for the United States.

I think Sacred hit the nail on the head. People left Detroit. You can't sustain high pensions and a large urban core with decreasing population and a decreasing tax base. Demographics killed Detroit, though corruption and poor planning didn't help either.

Iasked for the age group, not the whole US. I seriously doubt there are many infants or 95 year old women in prison.

@Maniac - When did Detroit become a state?

If you are too lazy to look it up yourself you take what you get without complaint and like it.

I am on a phone at almost 3:30 in the morning. Don't make me.plant a verbal foot up your ass.

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

"White flight" excuse is bullshit for why Detroit died (It's called suburbanization, by the way, if you aren't trying to be racist). Flight is a symptom....try 1968 riots as a cause for that. There is nothing wrong with people leaving the city when housing is full and out of reach of a worker's income - especially if they come back every day to work and spend money.

Analogy - fill a glass with water....then keep pouring. Extra water pours out, glass stays full - no problems. Glass is still fully utilized and self-actualized as to its purpose.

So "white flight" excuse is bullshit. The REASON for suburbanization is the problem -- LOWER taxes outside the city. SAFETY outside the city. Better SCHOOLS outside the city. Thosebare the causes - you describe a symptom....But your racist label for suburbanization describes your political motivation behind the argument quite clearly.

Did suburbanization destroy the tax base that led to the precipitous decline of Detroit's school system, or did the decline of the school system drive parent's out of the school district beginning a death spiral for education in the city?

My feeling on it is that it was suburbanization destroying the tax base that led to the decline. I'm not dealing with facts here, I'm dealing with my personal overall feeling, so I'm stating up front: these are not facts.

It's my feeling that a large portion of people want to live in the least dense area they can afford, while still being near the amenities offered by a major urban area. When an industrial city, such as Detroit, gets going, the urban core is where people can afford to live because they can walk to work, et cetera. Then, as they become more prosperous, they look to move to less dense areas. And some of the reasons krellin mentions are in that mix, as there's a relatively clear correlation between population density and violent crime.

The joke is now that Detroit itself has a lower population density than many of the suburbs due to suburbanization.

There's also the strong history of these less dense areas trying to showcase something in order to convince people to move there. Wyoming was the first state with women's suffrage because they wanted people to come live there, particularly female people. It wasn't any type of statement on how they felt people should be treated. Likewise, having a good school system is a relatively inexpensive perk for an area without a very high population density. At least, a school system perceived as good.

I'm rambling and not making much sense, but hopefully at least some of it is parse-able.

It seems like the city has to address its schools before it will attract people back. I read somewhere that the test scores of the school system are in the bottom 5% nationally.

No Child Left Behind was supposed to help schools improve that by disincentivizing bad schools, but what it really does is make no one want to go teach at the schools that are underperforming. The way it functions, which is different than the way it was intended, is unfortunately punitive to the point of making sure a bad situation stays bad.

But I don't think it needs to fix the schools first, so much as attract a demographic that doesn't really care if the schools are shitty, for instance, people in their early 20's. And that's what they're focusing on now.

Sacred --- If "suburbanization" killed Detroit, than how come cities across the border are *thriving*. I.e., stand in one spot, and be in bankrupt Detroit, stand and inch in another direction and you are in a prosperous, thriving city? i.e. the exact (or more) urban density than Detroit...so people didn't flee density, they fled 10 feet to the left to get a functional government.

The bullshit that suburbanization killed the city is simply not supported by the facts on the ground when you examine the region as a whole. Suburbanizaiton - the "flight" away from the city - should have caused a dead zone for the cities that immediately surround Detroit as well - but this simply isn't the case. The only two cities affiliated with proximity to Detroit that are also failing are Hamtramck and Highland Park which are in financial distress but are also *wholly contained within* the city of Detroit..*ie. city within the city. (yes, weird)

If fleeing the city was the problem to kill the tax base and thus the city, then the cities that immediately neighbor the city would also have suffered the same decline of population and be going through the same fate - but they are not.

The difference in the cities bordering Detroit? A functional police force, schools that students can attend, no high city income tax to drive businesses out, etc.

You want to keep talking about the drain on the tax base -- but you refuse to accept that this is a symptom, not the cause, of the problems.

Further, if you have a city goes from 1.5 million people to 700K, but you never reduce the size of the government, and you don't reduce the amount of Union employees (not) providing the services to the citizens, then you have created an unviable economic condition.

If you have 4 people living in your house, and then 2 grow old and leave the home, you cook smaller meals at night, you reduce the level of services, etc. This similar thing did not happen in the city. YEs...some costs are fixed (heating the home is the same for 2 or 4), but other costs are/should be flexible.

Why does a city keep open schools that are emptying out? Consolidate them and reduce overlap....but no....that puts a union job on the line to be cut. This is the story we here over and over....half the population, but you can't let any employee go because of reduced need...and every one wants a pension that makes non-governmental employees blush.

Suburbanizaiton did not kill the city.

Plenty of schools in Detroit have been closed.

I dunno, I don't find Warren and Roseville as some for instances to be significantly better regarded than Detroit proper. Or Allen Park, or Lincoln Park. They're all better, but only slightly so. They're less dense than an optimally populated Detroit, but only slightly so.

But actually, I agree on not keeping the city staffed as if it was fully occupied, but unfortunately, vacant homes attract arson, so as long as they stood, you needed a fire department. I liked...was it Bing? One of the recent mayors. He had a plan that he said no one would like and so he wouldn't be able to do it, but it involved essentially hitting a one time expense to bulldoze a third of the city. Pay people in affected areas to resettle in other areas, then shut it all down so you're no longer running sewer and water to empty lots, no longer paving roads no one's going to drive on, et cetera.

Sacred - if "suburbanization" / "white flight" was the only reason Detroit is in bankruptcy, then the cities immediately around Detroit -- that border Detroit -- would have suffered the same decline in population/tax base, etc.

The question isn't about whether Detroit lost its tax base -- yes, it did, people left the city. I'm not questioning that -- I pointed out that the city went from 1.5 million people to 700k - 800k, somewhere in there. Yes, huge loss to the tax base in term of tax payers, and accompanying loss of business.

But the automotive industry didn't die in the US....it left Detroit.
Other communities that have suffered losses in population didn't go bankrupt...they changed their level of services, etc.

As for closing schools...yes, they have closed schools...they closed a bunch of them once an EFM (Emergency Financial Manager) took over and closed them. And the response? Idiots and fools marched in the streets, fighting to keep half-empty schools open.

Bottom line is the bottom line - other cities adapted to changing conditions, did things to attract different businesses, etc.

The City of Detrtoit? They are offered a lease of Belle Isle to the State, saving them millions of dollars, keeping possession of it, but now having the state cover all maintenance costs....and they say no. Perfect, classic example of Detroit politics.

The zoo was failing under city management...now it's thriving since the city is out of the picture.

The Police just got a new chief...first thing he did was kick the unionized trained police officer out of the garage where his sole responsibility was to wash and keep gases to cars....so why is there so much crime on the street? Everywhere they turn they have unionized, trained police officers sitting at desks, pushing pencils, NOT ON THE STREETS fighting crime.

And this is how the entire city operates....no private services, everything, from garbage pick-up, to bus drivers to the guy wiping your ass, is covered by the city under insane union contracts. The city has something like 47 differernt unions they have to deal with, each one threatening to walk out and shut down "vital city services" if they don't have their demands met.....so, for decade after decade DEmocrat / Union-supporting politicians bought and paid for the unions that would keep giving them the vote...now you have a city that bought itself 47 different unions worth of massive pension plans and health care plans of a nature that you and I will never dream of. People working for the automotive OEM's don't have pension. IBM employees don't have pension. But public unions? They alllll have untouchable pensions, or else they walk out and shut down "vital services".

The unions sucked the city dry of every last dime...and *still* they get in front of the TV cameras and say they won't give up a dime. And you need to ask what killed Detroit? It's obvious. It's the exact same thing that killed GM and Chrysler...both of whom....now financially stable....owned massive unions debt.....they cut the wages and benefits packages in half for new employees, and bam....GM and Chrysler are financially solvent and guess what? No problem finding employees to take the lower waged jobs.

And those lower waged jobs? They pay enough, because foreclosures are massively decreased...the housing crisis is over, meaning that the union line workers are housed and surviving.

Unions killed the city, just like they did GM and Chrysler, and once a Federal judge tells the 47 unions to pack sand, Detroit will become financially stable, too.

Interesting idea Sacred Digits, using a base of 20 something hipsters without children to revitalize Detroit, but what what consumers would they produce products and services for in the metropolitan market besides their own demographic with its limited purchasing power compared to 40 somethings with kids?