'Toontime: Kicking Detroit

Inevitably the pundits are airing their post motems for Detroit's bankruptcy and most of them miss the point of a decades long process that involved all sectors of Detroit's establishment, not just greedy unions or too liberal government. Race factors also played a significant role in the exodus from Detroit. But Detroit's heart and lungs was the auto industry. As anybody who has been awake for the last fifty years knows, that industry has undergone a global transformation most of which adversely affected American manufacturers' business model. America still makes cars, but never again on the scale envision by Henry Ford in centralized assembly lines staffed by highly paid skilled workers. Just as most big businesses in the United States have done, work has been transported to low-wage areas of the globe. When a worker cannot work, he cannot pay taxes, and eventually he moves on.

[credit: Bob Gorrell]