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01/31/2006:

"Super Bowl Host Is U.S.'s Poorest Big City"

...Nearly 2 million people lived in Detroit in the 1950s; today it has fewer than 900,000. According to the Census Bureau, more than a third of those people lived at or below the federal poverty line in 2004, the largest percentage of any U.S. city with a population of 250,000 or more.

Detroit's 2005 unemployment rate was 14.1 percent, more than 2 1/2 times the national level.

The city has announced deep cuts in services over the past year to cope with an enormous deficit. Hundreds of municipal employees have been laid off, bus service has been scaled back, nine recreation centers have been shuttered, and bulk trash pickup has been canceled.

"We're forgotten people," Workman said.

Walking home from a bus stop, 54-year-old Raymond Parker said recent development in the city would not help him.

"They're building up for the middle class," said Parker, who works at a soup kitchen and does not have a car or a telephone. "I don't knock it, but until I get to that pay scale, it wouldn't affect me."

Detroit, which logged 374 homicides last year, consistently ranks at or near the top of an annual list of the most dangerous cities compiled by Morgan Quitno Press.

City officials say Super Bowl visitors should not be intimidated by the statistics, saying downtown is relatively safe.
breitbart.com

The gutted industrial midwest is one of the fruits of globalization. "Motor City": right.