Looks like 3rd world cities in America.

[Sourdough]

50% unemployment, highest murder rate, city broke......welcome to your childrens future.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-0...-budget-crisis

[kyratshooter]

No money, no tax base, and then people show up to protest cutting services!

In our throwaway-disposible society it seems we have no ability to grasp the consept that if an institution/political entity is not working it needs to be eliminated.

Build a fence around it, pull all the decient people out and reloacte them, then nuke it.

Go back in 25,000 years and try again.

Might be a plan to consider for the entire "Rust Belt".

You know all those ancient cities that lie burried and get dug up by archeologists? This is what happened to them. It is not the first time a city has died and it will not be the last.

A city grows in order to fill a purpose, when that purpose is gone the city ceases to have a reason for existance and should be viewed as unsless, not a monument to entitlements, reservation for the poverty stricken, or haven for the outlaws.

[Rick]

Children's future? Rubbish. It's Camden, N.J. It's not like this town hasn't come up on here before. You've even posted on it before. It's just one town that grossly mismanaged itself.

2011: http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...ghlight=camden
2009: http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...ghlight=camden

[Sourdough]

Children's future? Rubbish. It's Camden, N.J. It's not like this town hasn't come up on here before. You've even posted on it before. It's just one town that grossly mismanaged itself.

2011: http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...ghlight=camden
2009: http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...ghlight=camden

Sadly Rick it is NOT just ONE city, it is a Whole country, a whole world wide economic financial system.

[Rick]

Sadly, SD, it isn't. You might want it to be but outside of a half dozen countries in Europe the rest of the world is bumping along pretty good. Much better than at any time in the last few years. Last year I, too, predicted some states would be in the dumper by this time and even that hasn't happened. It's not a good economy or economic ruin. It's not one or the other. There are plenty of ways to resolve debt.

[Geek]

I'm from NJ and can say the state has it's share of urban disasters, Newark, Peterson, Trenton, Camden. Around the country we have Detroit and similar cases. I'm inclined to think of all these places sharing an "urban" problem that doesn't reflect prospects in suburban or rural areas.

Best solution is bulldozing the vacant buildings, which Is what Detroit is doing.

[Sourdough]

There are plenty of ways to resolve debt.

Sure there is............Issue MORE debt. The Federal Goberment will bail out the states just as it did General Motors. Rick, this is not something that I give a Rats Butt about, other than I see it as the future of America, a slow decay, with higher and higher unemployment, till we either have dictatorship, military rule. I hope to be well dead by then. But your grand children won't be.

[Rick]

Okay...have it your way. We are all doomed. Nothing like this has every happened before and it's the end of all humanity. Hordes will overrun us from the city, too. I need to go clear a kill zone.

[kyratshooter]

Rick, why does it hve to be all or nothing with you?

I can point too a half dozen economic situations that are much like ours that ended in collapse of the governments involved.

I can also show you several that survived.

It is always dependent on the decisions made by the leaders of those political entities on the result of the situation. Not evey leadership unit succeeds in their goals be it through dishonesty, lack of training or intent that differs with the expectations of the people.

The good people of Camden and many other towns have voted on the economic decisions of their political units with their feet. Now all that is left in residence is the nonfunctional residue.

Migration has always been the most effective survival strategy. These useless cities should die a natural death while other more functional cities grow due to new needs in the economy and environment.

Cities exist for reasons other than sentiment. The western U.S. if filled with "Ghost towns" that prove this. In fact, I drove through a "ghost town" in eastern Ohio rceintly. Their mining industry shut down, then the stores shut down, then the people shut down and left. That is the way it works

And I am shocked that you do not already have clear fields of fire established!

[Rick]

It's not all or nothing and that's the point. Since 2007, the inception of this forum, there have been a continual string of posts about gloom and doom. The only possible outcome is a complete collapse of everything Holy. I'm one of the few that have said it won't happen because there are alternatives. Now let's discuss this cities thing.

Cities are much like any thing else. They form, they grow and they decay. The fact that the west is filled with ghost towns is testament to the fact that if Camden or Detroit go belly up it's no big deal. The sky won't fall and my grandchildren won't suffer some third world fate.

The town I was raised in was dependent upon coal mines. At one time it had a population of some 28,000 and had the coal mine with the largest production of any coal mine in the world. An explosion at that mine resulted in the Federal Coal Mine Safety Act that now governs all mining operations. But with the loss of coal the town nearly collapsed. Young folks like myself left. It saw it's heyday and now it has plenty of vacant store fronts just like any other town in the U.S. The moral? Life didn't end and it won't end if Camden or Detroit or any other city go under. It's just the natural order of things.

[Rick]

I think you just agreed with me. There must be some medicine we can take for that.

[kyratshooter]

I think you just agreed with me. There must be some medicine we can take for that.

I posted first, therefore you agreed with me.

I need to reconsider my entire train of logic, I must be wrong!

[hunter63]

This sounds like the discussion in many saloons at closing time....seems so logical at the time......
Carry on..........

[Rick]

This is not good. In the future let's exchange an outline or abstract so we know which side each of us is supposed to argue for. Let's not let this happen again!

[kyratshooter]

Agreed, just let me know which side you are going to support and I will handle the opposition view.

The crust of this particular matter is that cities do die, but the people in them do not die unless there is a war, famine or disaster that kills them. They simply leave the city, which is what causes the decay of the city to start with. Only the nonearning residue is left waiting for their subsidy checks and complaining about their misery. The largest proportion of the "earners" in the area are the police that attempt to control them. Now they are faced with not having enough outside money comming in to pay the police.

Will all our cities suffer this fate?

If they do it will be because all the earners went somewhere else!

For almost 100 years we had a mass migration TO the cities FOR the jobs they held. The inner cities have been screaming foul over the flight to the suburbs since the 1950s! First as comuters into the city for the continued work and most reciently the complete abandonment of the city due to lack of work. They knew this would be the inevetable result of the loss of their tax base.

Their first attempts to counter this were the institution of local income taxes. That way they could tax the outsiders for earning here and living there. Now no one is earning anything anywhere inside their city limits.

These attempts to gleen national sympahy for their plight and extend the fear of "the same happening everywhere if you don't save us" is simply money seeking hype.

[Rick]

Today you can live anywhere and work in the city because of technology. I worked with a guy that was "located" in Tampa and lived in Pakistan (he moved back home).

[kyratshooter]

I have several friends that do much the same. They like the region where I live but make big bucks in other major cities. They have set up LLC companites as vendors. They work in NYC, Chicago and one teaches at Rutgers in Camden NJ.

The company they service pays their company and they avoid the local income taxes of that region although they must pay our local income taxes. They would have to do that anyway and would have double taxation if they paid in the city where they work.

They do most of their work on-line and fly to the city for part of the week, but would not live/own prperty there for any amount of $$$ offered. They keep the shuttle airlines in frantic operation.

Computers have allowed employees to not only escape to the suburbs but to escape an entire region they wish to avoid.

[Rick]

Just so you have a heads up, tomorrow I plan to talk about Blondes. My position will be...Love them for their brains. I will expect you to take the other side of that argument. I don't want to go down the same path with you skipping, hold hands and singing ever again.

[2dumb2kwit]

How about if one of you argues that we have learned from the mistakes of these failed cities, and the other swear that we are repeating those mistakes?

[2dumb2kwit]

Okay...have it your way. We are all doomed. Nothing like this has every happened before and it's the end of all humanity. Hordes will overrun us from the city, too. I need to go clear a kill zone.

I hear that the first few waves of these hordes are heading for some place called Hope, Alaska.