From the Washington Examiner comes 10 reasons why/how Detroit and its big-government pols have driven the city into the ditch. The city’s unfunded pension liability is at least $3 billion.
5. Why is the city buried in pension costs? Because it has too many public workers.
Though Detroit’s population has caved in the past several decades, the public sector just keeps on growing. In 2011, the city had more than 12,000 employees — more than any other comparably sized city in the country, according to an analysis from The Detroit News.
That works out to one public employee for every 55 residents of the city. By comparison, nearby (and financially much better-off) Indianapolis has one city worker for every 115 residents.
This is what happens when politicians govern from the premise that the bigger the government, the better.
In the meantime, crime is rampant in Detroit and the city owns 78,000 abandoned buildings.
Pity the law abiding residents of Detroit who were/are looking for economic opportunity and, sadly, were convinced over decades that government is the answer to their woes. It is not.
