Michigan Is Headed Back to Rust Belt Poverty
Commentary
Since the early days of Henry Ford, Michigan was the proud symbol of America’s industrial might.
But then, starting in the 1970s, things went south—in part because of the might of the unions that ran the state’s political machine. That’s when Michigan transitioned into the sad symbol of closed factories: the American “Rust Belt.” Flint, Michigan, became a ghost town.
From the 1970s to the early 2000s, Detroit lost nearly half its population. Whole neighborhoods were bulldozed, and homes were selling for less than $10,000 as poor and minority residents fled the area’s crime, lousy schools, high unemployment, and political corruption….