General

Debate: 75 Years after A-Bomb – Did Welfare Cause Detroit’s Decline and Lack of It Cause Hiroshima’s Rise?

01/04/2020·

George Frobisher

I received an email today which I will republish below exactly as I received it.

****

What’s the Story Here? Be Sure to View All The Way to the End.

HIROSHIMA — 1945

We all know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed in August 1945,
after explosion of atomic bombs.

However, we know little about the progress made by the people of that land
during the past 75 years.

HIROSHIMA — 75 YEARS LATER

DETROIT — 75 Years after Hiroshima

What has caused more long term destruction? The A-bomb, or government welfare programs created to buy the votes of those who want someone to take care of them?

Japan does not have a welfare system. (READ THIS SENTENCE AGAIN AND ASK, ‘WHY NOT?’)

Work for it or do without.

These are possibly the 5 best statements you’ll ever read and all applicable to this social experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

****************************************

Editor’s Notes:

Let’s analyze this email

Detroit in the 1930s.

Hiroshima was destroyed – needlessly – by a Democratic president, Harry Truman, whose view of the sanctity of human life was startlingly nonexistent. While he lied to the American people that Japan still represented a threat to American military lives, scholars have completely debunked that. Japan had agreed to surrender before the A-bombs.

Truman’s decision to drop the A-bomb and kill men, women and children, in the teeth of almost every one of his advisers’ counseling against it – as unnecessary killing – had other, darker motives other than saving American lives. That is a topic for another day.

But it was done. The blast at Hiroshima instantly killed 80,000 of the city’s 420,000 residents. Within a year, the death toll rose to 141,000, as survivors succumbed to injuries or illnesses connected to their exposure to radiation.

The present-day urban decay of Detroit may also have been needless – and possibly was caused by policies of the Democratic Party. This is not anywhere near as clear.

The email I republished above is not exactly new. One or another variation of it has been circulating since 2009.

Let’s analyze a few of its statements.

The email purports that “Japan does not have a welfare system.”

That is not 100 percent true. Compared to the Western welfare model where government takes on the role of the traditional family and the role of the traditional father, Japan has virtually no welfare system. Families rather than the government provide the social safety net in Japan. There is very little government interference with parenting also. There is no CPS industry like in the US that financially incentivizes the official governmental abduction of children from their parents as there is in the USA.

***

One of the pithy statements in the email above is that: “The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else”.

This, of course, is true but it needs a codicil.

The government actually has to take more money from working people [by force, i.e., taxes] than they can hand out since there are fairly heavy middleman costs for government to do the taking [taxing] and administrating the handouts [bureaucracy and the poverty industry].

This is why the heavy taxing of productivity almost always leads to financial collapse and is what the fool forgets. It costs $150-$200 of productivity to give out $100 of welfare – corporate or private. So heavy taxation creates not only a welfare state, with many dependents, but creates a large welfare industry as well.

***

The implication that Democratic policies are wholly to blame for Detroit’s decline since World War II may not be fair.

It is fair to say that Hiroshima was rebuilt from its ashes and is now a modern city. But it should also be mentioned that US taxpayers paid billions [in today’s dollars] to help Japan rebuild – and that included Hiroshima.

Japan got welfare from America – even though they started the war.

It might be worth analyzing which city got more money from US taxpayers – Hiroshima or Detroit.

***

Is there a simple reason for Detroit’s bankruptcy?

Part of it was caused by Japan – having been propped up by US tax dollars – competing with Detroit’s auto industry.

Another cause of Detroit’s decline was that the Big Three automakers chose to produce cars closer to regional markets. This was caused in part by the ‘free market” since Detroit was heavily unionized and automakers could build more cheaply where unions were not as strong.

Then the corporate welfare policies of the US also helped sink Detroit.

In the 1970s and 1980s, municipalities and states began to compete with each other for jobs by offering corporate tax breaks and other taxpayer-funded inducements to lure business. This game of corporate welfare saw Detroit as a huge net loser.

Detroit’s decline also is tied to the fact that they were dependent on a single industry (automobiles) and between their unions, Japan’s skill at auto-making and corporate welfare, it lost a huge chunk of its main industry and did not have another main industry to offset it.

Between 1947 and 1963, the city lost over 140,000 manufacturing jobs. In the next decade, Japanese car imports took up a greater share of the US market, which took more jobs from the region.

As the city grew poorer, racial tensions did not help much either. It made Detroit an unattractive and comparatively dangerous place to live.

In the end, of course, Democrats had control of the city. Every Detroit mayor since 1962 has been a Democrat.

But to say Detroit’s downfall was caused by the spread of social welfare programs is not really true.

The high incidence of dependence on social welfare programs came as a consequence of the city losing its main industry, leaving behind an impoverished and shrinking population. Detroit shrunk by more than 60 percent from 1950 to the present. From a high of 1.8 million to an estimated 670,000 today.

The bulk of those who stayed behind are the poor and the elderly. Many of these are on social welfare programs.

It is unfair to say that Democratic social welfare programs destroyed Detroit, although I think it is fair to say, they won’t be able to fix Detroit either.

Comments (28)

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Scott Johnson01/04/2020

Most situations are not governed by a single, simple factor. Instead, there are multiple factors involved. However, the factors suggested by the person sending the email are major factors in the rise of Hiroshima and the fall of Detroit.

LaLaLad01/04/2020

Mr. Frobisher Sure, blame welfare for Detroit's decline, or Democratic politicians. But I was there, born and raised there, and tho there were many factors for its decline, the simple answer (for simple minds like yours) is that the major blame goes to whites. Around 1960 Detroit's population was almost 2 million, with less than 20% black. By the 1980's the population was under 1 million with about 60% black. The whites had fled from a semi-segregated and racially intolerant city to the wide open lily white suburbs, And jobs went there too, but blacks were not welcome to follow. With half the population and most of the jobs gone, so was the tax base. There wasn't even enough tax revenue to fund a Kristin Kreuk TV show, let alone run and rebuild a city. People used to live and work within the city limits. Detroit used to be the city with the highest percentage of families living in single family homes. So when the jobs and half the families left the city, you were left with hundreds of thousands of empty houses, surrounded by abandoned stores, shops and factories. That's why the city looks like a bomb went off. Welfare (AKA blacks) didn't cause it, and thinking so is as foolish as your thoughts on the end of WWII.

Fool Me Not01/04/2020

Interesting perspective. Are you saying the same for Baltimore, LA, Chicago etc.? Are shootings in Chicago the result of “White Flight”??

DaLaLa01/04/2020

Typical left wing turd thought process. Blame Whitey for leaving. And why did Whitey leave numnut? You are the current leader for most idiotic post of the year so far.

to DaLaLa01/04/2020

As I said, “the simple answer (for simple minds like yours) is that the major blame goes to whites”

To To DaLaLa01/05/2020

Yes stupid I saw that. Please take your black guilt and shove it up your ass. Play the race card, that is all simplistic morons like you do. The majority of the blame belongs to you and yours.

AnonyMaker01/05/2020

“Whitey” left in part due to irrational panic caused by what were sort of conspiracy theories spread by developers who stood to profit from the flight to the suburbs – that “white” women and children wouldn't be safe, the same sort of thing that in previous decades had led to lynchings and mob attacks. People were selling houses on blocks that were still all-white, for less than they paid for them, the stoked-up fear became so great at times. Problems were also exacerbated by “redlining” practices discriminating against African-American home buyers, even veterans who had served in the war and qualified for GI Bill loans. The racial aspects aren't the whole story, but they're a significant part that can't be trivialized, either. Many aspects of discrimination including in employment (African-Americans were also almost entirely excluded from auto industry management jobs after the war) are documented, proven, and an incontrovertible part of the historical record, It also reflects some of the same unfortunate human tendencies towards ill-based group-think and culty behavior, that we see epitomized in something like NXIVM.

Anonymous02/17/2026

You should look up The Curley Effect, named after the Boston Mayor James Curley, “When politicians seeking to stay in power use distortionary policies to force out their political opponents, the elastic response renders bad policies more, rather than less, attractive.” Curley used every trick in his political toolbox to cater to his poor Irish constitutents, with the result that wealth fled Boston. He remained in power for decades by impoverishing Boston. This is the story of the Democratic Party, writ large. Chicago. Detroit. NYC. Portland. Hell, all of California. Anywhere there is a permanent Democratic majority, you'll see the various stages of the decline to Third World status.

Fool Me Not01/04/2020

This was circulated by Carl Paladino today, the first time I saw it, and why it's circulating again. First: the dropping of the bombs were absolutely necessary. The island hopping campaign was coming at a big rate of American casualties. With the Japanese behavior in China and their mass slaughter of civilians, they maintained a social conscience as relevant as the Nazis. What funded the growth of Japan, China and Germany and others has been the tariffs Trump now is fighting to undo. They were set to expire decades ago and have been sucking wealth from our country ever since.

AnonyMaker01/04/2020

Good points. War planners were also looking at the recent example of Okinawa, where Japanese troops had not only fought one of the most bitter battles to date with massive kamikaze attacks and heavy American casualties, but had forced many civilians including women and children to either to fight with primitive weapons or commit suicide, resulting in the deaths of half of the island's population. On such bases they were projecting American casualties for an invasion of Japan that could run into the millions, and Japanese casualties that might exceed 10 million.

Missouri01/04/2020

Fool me Not….it is neither here nor there. But a cute little story. My mother was a small child in New Zealand. The Japanese situation was so scary that even NZ citizens were scared. She remembers when US military stayed at her family home. Apparently they stopped over on their way to fight Japan. Today she is a very old woman but maintains whole heartedly that US troops saved NZ from the Japanese. She adored the US military men that stayed over in her house and maintains enormous respect to this day.

AnonyMaker01/04/2020

Besides veering far into the weeds as far as topicality, this gets into a complex multi-factored problem, though at least the commentary at the end recognizes that there are not simple explanations or easy answers. I now spend most of my year at a second home in an area that is a longstanding epicenter of seemingly entrenched and almost exclusively “white” poverty and dysfunction, and people were wringing their hands about aspects of the problem for a century before there even was government social welfare. It's eye-opening to see things from such a different perspective. But no, it's simply not true that the scholarly consensus about the end of the war with Japan has shifted like that – thought it might see so if one ready only media from a particular ideological viewpoint – or coalesced around a revisionist view. The newest scholarship on the matter (2017) with a summary that I can readily cite, says: “In August 1945, even after the atomic bombings and Soviet entry, as the Suzuki government moved toward surrender, some military men outside Tokyo had pushed for a last battle, perhaps partly to undercut the peace move. When US Admiral William F. Halsey later read Toyoda's testimony, he found it supporting his own belief that the A-bomb had been unnecessary, that Soviet entry was not important, and that the planned invasion of Kyushu would have been avoided. On 11 December, Hisatsune Sakomizu, the Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Suzuki government, was interrogated. His answers stressed the role of the A-bomb in producing Japan's surrender in mid-August 1945. The critical examination of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) early-surrender counterfactuals focuses primarily on the pre-November 1945 conclusion, which has been heavily used by analysts of the A-bomb decision, and only secondarily and briefly on the less interesting thesis about a pre-31 December 1945 surrender, which has seldom been employed by such analysts.” https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315237145/chapters/10.4324/9781315237145-17 As the Wikipedia entry summarizes: “Over the course of time, different arguments have gained and lost support as new evidence has become available and as new studies have been completed. A primary and continuing focus has been on the role of the bombings in Japan's surrender and the U.S.'s justification for them based upon the premise that the bombings precipitated the surrender. This remains the subject of both scholarly and popular debate. In 2005, in an overview of historiography about the matter, J. Samuel Walker wrote, “the controversy over the use of the bomb seems certain to continue”.[3] Walker stated, “The fundamental issue that has divided scholars over a period of nearly four decades is whether the use of the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the war in the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States.”[3]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

shadowstate195801/04/2020

Slavery is returning to Africa! Whose Fault Is It?

shadowstate195801/04/2020

Note Japan and Germany rebuilt themselves after World War 2 without slaves.

AnonyMaker01/04/2020

Once again, you might want to use The Google before hitting the keyboard: Forced labor of Germans after World War II “In the years following World War II, large numbers of German civilians and captured soldiers were forced into labour by the Allied forces. The topic of using Germans as forced labour for reparations was first broached at the Tehran conference in 1943, where Soviet premier Joseph Stalin demanded 4,000,000 German workers.[1] Forced labour was also included in the final protocol of the Yalta conference[2] in January 1945, where it was sanctioned by UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_after_World_War_II While I can't immediately find a clear reference for what happened in Japan, I suspect it will turn out that they did something similar, just in a particularly Japanese way, such as being able to employ people at subsistence-level wages (even before the war, the Japanese lower class lived little better than medieval serfs, with per-capita income only about a tenth of what it was in the US) or as volunteers, using their social cohesion and governmental authority to implement what might look to us as virtual slave labor. I did run across this interesting piece about how Japanese society and government implemented a uniquely adapted – and American-financed – sort of welfare plan (note also that German's ample social welfare system, was part of their post-war recipe for success): “2. The welfare society in Japan In Japan, a welfare society rather than welfare state exists, characterized by total employment, including cartels of small and medium sized companies to prevent them from bankruptcy in order to maintain total employment. The welfare society and total employment enabled the Japanese state to devote much of the money it would have spent on welfare to industrial development, in the form of bank loans. The birth of the welfare society: During the American occupation:1946-49, Japanese economy was sustained by $500 million annually from the US. Despite this help, because of wartime devastation, Japanese economy was in shambles. In reaction, the American occupational forces invited the Detroit banker Dodge to balance Japanese economy, who introduced the Dodge Plan (1949): balance budget, reduce inflation, repay Japanese government debts. Fix exchange rate ($1=360 yen). (compared with $1=110 yen today) That this exchange rate made Japanese yen too expensive shows the high inflation going on in Japan before 1949. Reaction to the Dodge Plan: massive laying off of workers and economic recession, because Japanese goods became less competitive in the international market (too expensive) (Dodge hoped that after the initial pain, Japanese economy would start steady development later on). In reaction: state bank loans to private companies to prevent them from bankruptcy. In the 1950s, major concern of Japanese economy was capital accumulation and export promotion; also medium sized companies protested against tax increases. These concerns prevented the formation of a welfare state because that would require tax increases. Instead, the state promoted a welfare society through legislation. The welfare society, through maintaining near total employment via liberal government loans to private companies, dispensed with the need for unemployment benefits. Retirement pensions came largely from personal savings and company compensation, rather than benefits from the state. The welfare society saved Japanese government much money, which was liberally loaned to companies and guaranteed a secure supply of funding to many companies, leading some to competition and technological innovation. (but it also prevented some companies from upgrading themselves because of guaranteed funding, so it was a two sided story). Under the welfare society, limited unemployment benefits do exist, but they are provided by the private companies. The unemployment insurance premiums are borne by workers and employers on a fifty-fifty basis. The government pays only a partial sum of the management and operation costs–14 percent of the cost for unemployment insurance and the other services concerning unemployment is covered directly out of the national treasury account. The wage withholding is, in principle, set at 1.1 percent of the total annual salary. However, the actual rate of contribution to these schemes was lowered to 0.9 percent in fiscal 1992, and has been at 0.8 percent since fiscal 1993. Unemployment benefits were 60 percent to 80 percent of the wage before becoming unemployed for a period of 90 to 300 days, which was extended to 330 days after 2001. Conditions vary depending on age and length of time contributing to the system. The larger private companies were also responsible for subsidized housing, health benefits, retirement pension and other benefits for recreational activities in a package called lifetime employment, practiced after 1960. All these, naturally add to the cost of big corporations, which then pass the cost on to the consumers in the form of higher prices.” http://www.iun.edu/~hisdcl/h207_2002/jecontakeoff.htm

Jim C.01/04/2020

A little perspective on Detroit from “Kentucky Fried Movie”: https://youtu.be/Ny4a-oxOndo

Fool me Not01/05/2020

The Japanese were bastards. In many ways, still are. Most of you bitching about whaling drive to your protests in your Hondas, Toyotas as and Subarus.

shadowstate195801/05/2020

The Japanese Rape of Nanking in 1937 was a brutal exercise in sadism. Over 300,000 Chinese were butchered. When Chinese-American author Iris Chang dared to write a book about it, she was harassed by the Japanese to the point of suicide. The Rape of Nanking (book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_Nanking_(book)#Reaction_in_Japan Chang's death After publishing the book, Chang received hate mail, primarily from Japanese ultranationalists,[4] and threatening notes on her car and also believed her phone was tapped. Her mother said the book “made Iris sad”. Suffering from depression, Chang was diagnosed with brief reactive psychosis in August 2004. She began taking medications to stabilize her mood.[4] She wrote: I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. Whether it was the CIA or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me.[4] Chang committed suicide on November 9, 2004.[4]

Lee Atwater01/05/2020

Who are the biggest welfare queens in our country? Corporate Billionaire Executive Bureaucracy! Motherquackers dont pay shit in taxes, legally bribe the fuck out of politicians to shovel OUR TAX DOLLARS to their Kaiman accounts, and then have the audacity to spread this weaponized racist propaganda. You kids understand what stock buybacks are? The “free market” fairytale is about as real as “scientific communism”. Keep your rightwing and leftwing secular religions out of our economic policy! Every civilized society needs a safety net to set a level playing field. Its called public Investment in our Population, instead of billionaires taxcuts ripping off the populace. Its how countries with highest standard of living got where they are. Not shiny skyscraper billboards with corporate propaganda, but actual people having means to thrive, used for the good of all of us, not a select few obscene billionaires. They don't have million dollar yachts in Sweeden, but everybody has a boat. A Canadian kid who gets his university paid for by the commonwealth of his nation, will pay back 10-20 times his tuition in higher taxes from his white collar job instead of our flipping burger economy. Cant have that in the old US and A. We'll spend 100x that to rot that kid in a private supermax! Can't let them uppity minorities get a break, we might find out that they're not inferior! Keep em down, keep em down, keep em down, I say! They're fleecing you while pointing at the scapegoat. KKKapitalizms. Why should there be no safety net when these bastards crash the economy on schedule in their pump and dump scheme every ten years? Why, the coloreds might get uppity, ma'am! Why do we have an idiotic healthcare BILLING system tied to our work? TO TIE US TO OUR WORK. It has always been about dividing and conquering the slaves. Black or WHITE. They called white ones “indentured servants” and gave them a bit more crumbs to make sure they side with the masters instead of having solidarity with their black brothers. Amerikkkan racism only exists to keep billionaires assholes far away from our pitchforks. No one is more enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves to be free. Obligatory quotation from the father of Rethuglican dogwhistles: “You start out in 1954, by saying n*****, n*****, n*****. By 1968, you can’t say n*****, that hurts you, back-fires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights, and all that stuff and you’re getting so abstract. Now you’re talking about cutting taxes. We want to cut this is much more abstract than even the busing thing and a hell of a lot more abstract than n*****, n*****.”

NiceGuy01/06/2020

It’s called the factories closed and there were no more jobs, in Detroit. Japan had other cities and took care of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The US helped clear millions of tons of radioactive soil from the the are. The comparison between Detroit and the Japanese cities is f*cking ridiculous…. ….If you happen to know anything about post Japan and the LDP run by the Japanese noble families like Mitsubishi and Kawasaki.

NiceGuy01/07/2020

To the Anonymous author, You are anonymous so man up, and call a “spade a spade” you racist f*ck. You know exactly what you wrote. Anyone with an IQ above 70 understands your true meaning. BTW: Why is West Virginia, Appalachia, swaths of western Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma filled with poor whites? It’s not so easy to rebuild an entire region’s industries close; think Coal mining and Steele mill closures. Now please remember Detroit lost its car factories.

Comments (28)

Add Your Comment

Scott Johnson01/04/2020

LaLaLad01/04/2020

Fool Me Not01/04/2020

Interesting perspective. Are you saying the same for Baltimore, LA, Chicago etc.? Are shootings in Chicago the result of “White Flight”??

DaLaLa01/04/2020

Typical left wing turd thought process. Blame Whitey for leaving. And why did Whitey leave numnut? You are the current leader for most idiotic post of the year so far.

to DaLaLa01/04/2020

As I said, “the simple answer (for simple minds like yours) is that the major blame goes to whites”

To To DaLaLa01/05/2020

Yes stupid I saw that. Please take your black guilt and shove it up your ass. Play the race card, that is all simplistic morons like you do. The majority of the blame belongs to you and yours.

AnonyMaker01/05/2020

Anonymous02/17/2026

Fool Me Not01/04/2020

AnonyMaker01/04/2020

Missouri01/04/2020

AnonyMaker01/04/2020

shadowstate195801/04/2020

Slavery is returning to Africa! Whose Fault Is It?

shadowstate195801/04/2020

Note Japan and Germany rebuilt themselves after World War 2 without slaves.

AnonyMaker01/04/2020

Jim C.01/04/2020

A little perspective on Detroit from “Kentucky Fried Movie”: https://youtu.be/Ny4a-oxOndo

Fool me Not01/05/2020

The Japanese were bastards. In many ways, still are. Most of you bitching about whaling drive to your protests in your Hondas, Toyotas as and Subarus.

shadowstate195801/05/2020

Lee Atwater01/05/2020

NiceGuy01/06/2020

NiceGuy01/07/2020