A Weekly Standard author tackles the question. The article is old, but it’s worth reading if you haven’t already.
An excerpt:
How bad is Detroit? It once gave the keys to the city to Saddam Hussein.
Over the last several years, it has ranked as the most murderous city, the poorest city, the most segregated city, as the city with the highest auto-insurance rates, with the bleakest outlook for workers in their 20s and 30s, and as the place with the most heart attacks, slowest income growth, and fewest sunny days. It is a city without a single national grocery store chain. It has been deemed the most stressful metropolitan area in America. Likewise, it has ranked last in numerous studies: in new employment growth, in environmental indicators, in the rate of immunization of 2-year-olds, and, among big cities, in the number of high school or college graduates.
Men’s Fitness magazine christened Detroit America’s fattest city, while Men’s Health called it America’s sexual disease capital. Should the editors of these two metrosexual magazines be concerned for their safety after slagging the citizens of a city which has won the “most dangerous” title for five of the last ten years? Probably not: 47 percent of Detroit adults are functionally illiterate.
On the upside, Detroit ranks as the nation’s foremost consumer of Slurpees and of baked beans on Labor Day. And as if all of this isn’t humiliating enough, the Detroit Lions are 0-14.
At least we’ve got the Tigers…
So I’ve lived in Michigan my whole life and this article is sooo true. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here and go east coast. I don’t have a plan yet and I graduate in a month but anywhere is better than Michigan right now.