I was born in Detroit. I lived in the city for a decade and spent the first 21 years of my life in southern Michigan. I saw Detroit go from being a place where skilled workers raised families on one income, and strong unions insured good health care and retirement benefits to becoming a city that is now among the country’s poorest and most dangerous.

Now, of course, Detroit is a punchline for the decline of postwar America. On one level it’s a complicated, seemingly-intractable story about technology, economics, globalism, organized labor, race, trade and civic planning. At the same time it’s a simple tale about who benefits when an entire city collapses, and which city might be next.

Here’s Chris Hedges talking with Charlie LeDuff author of Detroit: An American Autopsy talking about deindustrialization and systemic kleptocracy…

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