On Thursday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said the bankrupt city of Detroit’s inability to adapt to economic changes is a preview of what’s ahead for the rest of the United States.
“It’s sort of a classic example of a city that was once at its peak and as its economic success began to go away, it was unable to adapt,” Krauthammer said. “So I mean it was a thriving city, obviously the auto industry was running the world in the ’50s, after the Second World War when there was no competition. So they got used to the great union benefits, the retirement, health care — they got used to all of the other, you know, handouts and money from the government. And when hard times arrived, it was impossible to, in the end, do anything because it would be seen as a cruel reduction of x, y and z.”
He then predicted what is to come from the Motor City’s bankruptcy filing, which could be a signal of what the United States faces under the pressure of all the entitlements it grants citizens.
“And now they end up in a place where everybody is going to get a haircut — the bond holders, the retirees and the citizens. The question is, you know at large — the story of the United States which dominated the world economically, created all of these programs, entitlements, Social Security, Medicare, and now added on Obamacare, living on the glories of the past where we were the most dominant, without any rivals in the world, and now having to adapt to a reduced economy — are we going to be able to have commensurate cuts? And when you see all of the resistance to anything of that sort by especially Democrats and liberals, it doesn’t give it a lot of hope. In the end, you can have a bankruptcy for a city, but not for a country.”
