Quoted on Fox News Sunday this week in reference to the bankruptcy in Detroit:

…Steven Rattner, who is the former car czar for Detroit, wrote a story this week and he says that he believes — an essay — that he believes Washington should help. Let’s put on screen what he said.

He writes, “The 700,000 remaining residents of the Motor City are no more responsible for Detroit’s problems than were the victims of Hurricane Sandy for theirs, and eventually, Congress decided to help them.”

I have more than a few problems with that statement. The remaining residents of the Motor City are responsible for Detroit’s problems–they voted for the officials that made the decisions that brought the city to this point.

On Friday, Rich Galen posted an article at Townhall.com that pointed out the following:

But it’s not the unions’ fault. It is the fault of the elected officials — Democrats in Detroit — who didn’t have the guts to say “No” to their largest voting bloc.

It has been said that the difference between public and private unions is this: Private union leaders know that if their demands become too high, the company will go out of business and everyone will lose their job.

Public unions, until recently, just kept demanding, and getting, more and more while producing nothing new in terms of services they render. Union pensions tend to be so generous that taxpayers end up paying almost full wages to three or four workers, only one of whom is still actually working, to do exactly the same job that one person had been paid to do in an earlier age. According to some estimates, retirees outnumber active workers 2-1.

The problem is unfunded liabilities. If workers pay a small percentage of their salaries into a pension fund, that money can be set aside for the future. If workers are not required to contribute anything to their future pensions, those pensions become an unfunded liability and eventually overwhelm the system.

The bankruptcy of Detroit was the result of bad fiscal policies, raising taxes in the hopes of collecting more money (it doesn’t work–see the Laffer curve), and a population fleeing increased crime and less effective law enforcement. All of those things are avoidable–none of them are natural disasters.