[Sherman Logan]

In 1960 Detroit had 1.6 million people. They were auto workers and auto manufacturing executives. They manufactured things and traded an honest day’s work for a decent middle class salary.

To be fair, a good deal of Detroit's prosperity was based on a tacit agreement between the car companies and the UAW to plunder the American public.

The car companies caved in to UAW demands and passed on the costs to the customer, and also produced sub-standard cars. Worked fine as long as Americans had no other cars to buy.

Then we discovered that Japan and other countries produced better cars at lower prices, and the conspiracy to defraud the American public fell apart.

It's easy to be prosperous if you have a monopoly on a necessary product. But only as long as you can maintain your monopoly.

[yldstrk]

Yo couldn’t pay me to buy an American or a German car, American is a pile of dung, German is fun to drive when it’s running and costs a fortune to fix and the parts come over on a slow boat. Give me a Japanese car and I will be set for 15 years or more.

[IbJensen]

What you say is all well and good; however, how could this city now look like a Hooverville?

Do you think it’s because of the tractor revolution in the South where cotton pickers were no longer needed and the pickers made it up to Dee-troit where the streets were thought to be paved with gold?

It takes deliberation to completely ruin neighborhoods that were once the workers’ pride and glory.

[AceMineral]

The beginning of the decline started in the midfiftes with the failure of the Packard company. They didn’t have the money to move the chrome around every year and call it a “new” model like Cadillac did. One thing the public wanted was a “new” car. Another point of the beginning of the end was the rejection of the Edsel. The car buying public finally said “no”. Also the big economic pulse that came after the war was ending, and the gears of the economy were no longer meshing so smoothly. The years from 1948-58 were very good, but then what?

[VRW Conspirator]

Then we discovered that Japan and other countries produced better cars at lower prices, and the conspiracy to defraud the American public fell apart.

But they kept running the scam until they ran out of money. This is a foreshadowing of Federal Government. I would bet that if you could take all 535 scoundrels in Washington and get an honest answer, they would tell you that they are aware that $1T deficits and ever-growing government is unsustainable and will collapse. IMO, They know it.