Sleeping in Detroit City

Denninger takes Little Bobby Reich to task. 

Reich is what passes for a celebrity economist in our current Statist culture.  As might be expected of Statists, Reich's solution to the problem in Detroit is to expand the tax base and increase taxes on the "fortunate", the people "rich" enough to move out of the City of Detroit and into the suburbs.  In other words, Reich suggests that Michigan or perhaps the all-mighty, all-knowing, great and powerful federal government stick a gun in the faces of honest citizens and force them to pay even more to support the indolent inhabitants of the Detroit Reservation, along with the public sector unions and their pensions.

If I could get rid of one single evil in America today, I would be tempted to pick public sector unions.  Police, firefighters, teachers, government employees at all levels and of all strips should not be allowed to form unions.  They normally don't strike for higher wages.  The government pay-off is subsidizing health insurance plans and pensions.  Someone who can work at a relatively low-paying job for twenty years then spend the rest of his life drawing down almost the same money for doing nothing with no penalty for part-time or full-time work does not need to worry about saving, doesn't have to worry about the tax burden, doesn't have to worry that their investments might be too risky.  He has, as the old timers put it, "rocking chair money".  

It is the burden of funding these pensions that puts a huge drain on the taxpayer.  The federal government, states, and municipalities have been surreptitiously added to the working man's burden through inflation while claiming that Americans are under-taxed.  By piling up bonds on top of bonds that are never paid off, governments have managed to avoid an out-and-out revolt on either side of the balance.  They have managed to do it for many years, and all the Really Smart People™ like Reich think that it will go on forever if we just ask more people to "share".  

We have the whole world "sharing" at the moment to the point that all of the developed countries in the world are going off into the abyss together.  Detroit demonstrates the fallacy, and whatever may be done to "save" Detroit will only make the end that much worse.  St. Louis, Chicago, and numerous other cities are in exactly the same situation.  They just haven't hit the bottom yet.  California and Illinois are probably doomed to bankruptcy as well.  Illegal immigrants don't seem to have saved the Golden State.