What's happening in Detroit??
There are a few problems, to be honest.
For starters - Detroit is a very progressively liberal city. That means they love the notion of government and embraced the idea that everything needs to be tied into the government. Further, the government should ensure basic needs are met by everyone so that there is no suffering.
Sounds good.
But that led to increased taxes. As unions began to take over industry jobs (unions are the Paragon Knights of Progressivism) - they began to demand higher and higher wages for factory labor. $20 an hour was not at all atypical for a simple job where one simply ran a rivet gun on an assembly line.
For comparison - I'm getting a job that requires technical knowledge and independent maintenance of machines that will be 'filtering' the blood of people whose kidneys have failed or otherwise can no longer adequately extract urine from the body. If I **** up - someone can die from infection or end up with an overdose of some mineral or another and cause them to act all loopy. What will I be paid? Shy of $15 an hour.
I can live quite comfortably on that income and even handle a small family on that kind of income (and it will most probably increase a good 20-40% over the next 5 years, depending upon how things in the company shift). Granted - cost of living is lower, here - but you're talking about comparing what amounts to a mindless labor job that pays better than one requiring independent thought, analysis, and the 'higher education' our government likes to waste billions on to send douchebags to get their MBA straight out of high school.
One can make the argument: "Well, Aim - you need to join a union and demand $40 an hour, as that would be more fair, right?"
Well - I'd take $40 an hour if it was offered to me - but I consider the current wage fair for my conditions of employment, for the job, and for the pay/cost ratio it provides.
And the fact is that it'd be unreasonable for them to pay that much money for the responsibilities of that position. Which - logically - means that the industries in and around Detroit were paying unreasonable labor costs for the positions they had to fill. Since unions controlled their labor supply - Unions were able to continually demand more money and more benefits from employers under threat of strike.
Few unions, these days, are noble and honorable institutions upholding the founding principles of unions (which was to train, culture, and offer support to their members). But that's another story.
Anyway - you also had other problems (all high-paying-labor regions have this)... You'll get people who temporarily relocate to the region - commune-rent for cheap - bank something like twenty to thirty thousand dollars over a couple years, and then move back to low cost of living areas. A considerable portion of the employee income goes to other regions in the nation.
Which reduces government revenue. Which causes them to increase taxes to fund all of their wonderful social endeavors to feed people simply because they are alive to feed (then they wonder why the middle class is evaporating).
It's no wonder, then, in areas with lower taxes, laws against mandatory union membership for employment, and lower costs of living (lower employee wage requirements for the same quality of life)... you see businesses moving -in-.
China has, already, mostly culled our industries of about all it can. While there are still some endangered industries - it's pretty much run its course. China's hit a wall in terms of competitiveness. They need more efficient energy production (which has them coming back to us for electrical power solutions that they can't produce themselves, and won't for quite a while), and many of their high-tech industries are still in their infancy. They are barely cost-competitive with American domestic varieties of the same quality and their industries are still fraught with the 'old mentality' that was more permissive of manufacturing defects.
So, most of the businesses 'leaving' areas of the U.S. are either relocating to other regions (state-state competition) or simply closing up due to shrinking of the domestic or global economic regions they target (... or mismanagement).
Which is exactly what you see happening in Detroit.
GM is failing due to some mismanagement and other things - they are shrinking while companies like Toyota continue right on trucking and open up manufacturing facilities all over the U.S. Toyota isn't setting up shop in Detroit because it would be stupid to do so.
The same with IBM, Google, Microsoft, and other tech companies that have been opening up centers around places like Texas and I know of a couple new projects in Missouri.
Detroit's solution to their problems is predictable within the line of progressive liberals: raise taxes, increase welfare spending (or defund other programs to keep it going), and campaign about how evil businesses are and how the government will do something about the problems people are facing.
Who is left in Detroit?
Mostly people receiving some form of government stipend. People on federal and state welfare, people who are retired or on Social Security; basically, people who didn't rely upon practical paying jobs for their existence. Everyone else has moved.
Which is, precisely, why we shouldn't help Detroit. We should simply delete it from the maps or mark it as Babylon as a sign of things to come.
I'm not saying we should go into Syria, either. Both are misguided causes, if you ask me (noble as they may appear).