Quote Originally Posted by Wesley Mouch View Post
Wasted on me too. What on earth are you talking about? Detroit as a source of wealth that's being 'extracted'? What?
In some ways, yes.

For all the party store owners who live outside the city.

For all the landlords who live in the suburbs.

For all the CVSs and RiteAids that vacuum up the money and send it to some regional accounting office.

For all the fast food restaurants and franchises owned by people in the suburbs.

It's just common sense, not some conspiracy. If you have a successful business in Detroit, you can afford to live somewhere better. So a lot of the money that goes into the community doesn't stay in the city.

I guess it works in reverse too, when suburbanites drive into Detroit to buy their drugs. At least drug dealers are likely to spend money in the community.

Over the years we've discussed the idea of the total tax bill of Detroiters. I'd like to see a study on that. What if you were to count in all taxes, including sales taxes and gas taxes as well as all other state and federal taxes, as well as city taxes that go to stuff it's very difficult to access [[Detroiters have traditionally paid in taxes for a MetroPark system, even though a significant percentage don't have a car and can't access them, or the way Detroit is forced to pay "tipping fees" to subsidize suburban waste systems that use the incinerator). I think you'd find that Detroiters do subsidize gold-plated roads and other services in Oakland County even as their own infrastructure falls apart. And even if it didn't tip into subsidy, I'm sure that it would be more regressive, i.e. a higher percentage of their income goes to taxes than you'd think.

Wes, your incredulity aside, and if you really are serious about regionalism, we have to get beyond this idea of the suburbs as paying for Detroit. Wealth is also extracted from Detroit and goes to the suburbs. Once there, that wealth cannot be used to fix the city.

The really sad thing is that if we could institute some sort of regional taxes to fund a center, mass transit and really subsidize the urban prospect, all 140-odd fiefdoms would see the benefits of it rapidly. Instead, Detroit is doomed because you have a system that builds out to the detriment of the center, then blame the center for being poor. If that's how you push for regionalism, you're doing it wrong.