Signs of Hopelessness

December 21, 2008
Average home price $18,513 - Unemployment rate 21%

The Great Depression has reached Detroit. The average price of a home is now $18,513 and unemployment has reached 21%, and it’s expected to get worse.

Compare and contrast to one year earlier.

December 19, 2007
Signs of Hope in Detriot

1. Thousands of people thronged to the renovated Detroit Institute of Arts when it reopened on Thanksgiving weekend, offering 32 hours of free admission.
2. Two new casinos opened this fall, creating thousands of jobs...
3. Some of the casino's patrons include Detroit's homeless. They used to buy food with the nickels and dimes they received for collecting returnable beverage containers...
4. More jobs will arrive when Quicken Loans, a mortgage company, chooses the site downtown where it will move 4,000 employees...
5. "If there's a bad economy, the Book Cadillac doesn't know about it."

Using hindsight, what went wrong? If hopelessness can happen in a city where even the city's homeless can afford to gamble in its newly established casinos, then it can probably happen anywhere. That's the truly scary part.

Okay, maybe that's not the truly scary part come to think of it. Attempting to set new personal sarcasm records tends to scare me more. There's SO much pressure to perform. I long for the days when the economy would only mildly implode and I could therefore just be mildly sarcastic. Those days seem a distant memory.

This post inspired by a link left anonymously in the comment section.