The Curse of Detroit: Lights Out while the Motor Industry Kicks into Gear Again

You need to be in Detroit to understand what it means to live in a city where 40 percent of street lights are off in the evening due to lack of power. A city where half of public parks and gardens are closed because funds for their security and maintenance ran out a long time ago. A city that at the apex of its industrial might was the car capital of the world and that became America’s fourth metropolis with 1.8 million inhabitants has now shrunk to 700,000 inhabitants. Vast areas have been reduced to being desolate ghost towns thanks to a mass emigration unprecedented in peacetime. But the story of Detroit’s worrying decline is the penultimate chapter of the story. The most disconcerting thing in the recent events that have preceded the city’s bankruptcy, which also happens to be the largest in American history, is that the bankruptcy coincides with a period of fantastic revival for its motor industry. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are doing great; their recovery is one of the causes of the current American economic revival. Even if by now only Chrysler has a big factory within the city limits (where the new Jeep Grand Cherokee is being assembled), the other two large companies have also started to take advantage of this source of labor. The extreme gap between the two situations is striking: On the one hand, a privately owned product of capitalism that is returning to a state of strength and opulence, and on the other, a public institution reaching its peak, up until declaring its bankruptcy.

It is unfortunately the extreme representation of a contradiction that America as a whole is experiencing. The true economy has been growing for four years, but nevertheless many local and municipal governments remain “poor.” The quality of the United States’ public services is languishing, and many collective infrastructures are continuing to suffer from a shortage of investment. This occurs because in a two-headed country — where the president and the Senate are controlled by the Democratic Party while the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court have a majority on the right in addition to the numerous local governments that are in the hands of conservatives — the liberalist ideology continues to have a vast hold. “Starve the Beast” is the old slogan launched at the time by Ronald Reagan; the unclean Beast for the conservatives is obviously the state. Detroit has been utterly starved, all the way to its death.

Double standards, even in the bankruptcy proceedings.

When General Motors and Chrysler were on the brink of bankruptcy, the process, known as filing for Chapter 11, began with the aim of restoring and relaunching the two companies. Heavy sacrifices were asked for and obtained from the workers, halving the salaries of new employees, but at the same time a generous national solidarity intervened in the form of tens of billions of public donations. Detroit’s bankruptcy proceedings will only contain sacrifices. Many public servants will be laid off while others accept salary cuts, and even pensioners will make a contribution. When faced with bankruptcy, “acquired rights” don’t exist in America, not even in public employment. Some will praise the hyperflexible model that has allowed America to quickly get out of the economic downturn. But the social wounds will be painful. Obama cannot do much to help Detroit. The state of Michigan has a Republican governor and the government is controlled by white people, while Detroit has an 80 percent African-American population. Detroit’s agony will take place in a few days thanks to a vote by the House, which on the national level has reduced food stamps for poor people — one of the most important methods of assistance in the history of the American welfare state — while half the states, those governed by the right, are quickly sabotaging Obama’s health reforms in order to prevent the promise of an expanded health care system for all Americans coming to fruition.