History Lesson

            Broke.  Bankrupt. Unable to meet expenses for an indefinite period. However you say it, that is what has happened to not only Detroit, but to many individuals over the last several decades.

            Detroit was the city that drove the world and in its heyday approximately 200,000 people worked in the motor city, today its fewer than 20,000.

            So what happened? To understand that, we have to go back in time. The America of today has become the land of instant gratification, where faster is better, older and outdated models are expendable and social media has replaced relationships. But in the eighteenth century, the founders of the country understood the connection between work and accomplishment: if they didn’t plant a crop, there would be no food in the winter.

            The agrarian lifestyle of the founders was replaced by the industrial revolution in the mid 19^th century, but the concept still held true: hard work equaled success.

            However, at about the start of the 20^th century, the idea began to change. It was almost as if the gamblers that had spent their entire lives roaming the world trying the find the next set of gullibles to fleece were given positions of influence. Success could be yours without the hard work; you just had to know how the system worked, because of this skewed thinking, things that should have been a good thing took on an evil twinge.  A ‘representative republic’ government became an over-reaching entity who stifled any productivity.

            The lawyers who help those who have no voice became a way to ‘get rich quick:’ by suing to right a wrong, whether real or imagined.

            The labor unions whose job it was to help workers from being taken advantage of began demanding more and more while producing less and less.

            Through this gradual evolution, the American psyche has been transformed into one waiting for the next big payoff. As of 2010, Americans spent $58 billion dollars buying lottery tickets, hoping for a quick payout from no effort. This is the evidence of our transgressions: we’re waiting for the big score be it a class action lawsuit or our own fifteen minutes of fame in the spotlight thanks to a new ‘reality’ show. Very few of us remember the equation that made our country a successful one and we are now paying the price.

            Detroit won’t be the last big city to prove there is no such thing as ‘too big to fail,’ and will eventually lead, if we stay on the road we’re on, to the collapse of what was once called the shining city on a hill.