Here it is in a nutshell. King Coleman hired a ton of people when he became mayor, a ton. That was about 28 years ago, they are now retiring. There are two lessons here for other governments, the
Detroit News warns: First, "debt does matter," even though Washington seems desperate to pretend it doesn't. Second, the city "lost focus on its core mission, which should have been providing essential services to residents. … A government that focuses on serving its taxpayers first is less likely to lose its tax base." "We should never blame the victims," writes Rochelle Riley at the
Detroit Free Press, but retired city employees "have spent years counting on Detroit city officials to forever keep promises" that they clearly couldn't. The pension crisis—retirees outnumber current workers 21,000 to 9,700—has been "a financial tsunami that began heading for Detroit years ago. Yet not a word from retirees. Where were y'all?"
Daniel Hannan at the Telegraph notes the striking similarity between Detroit and Ayn Rand's fictional dystopia Starnesville. And in real life, as in Atlas Shrugged, the culprit was "leftist administrations" that have "spent too much and borrowed too much, driving away business and becoming a tool of the government unions."
