Detroit is lost

From yesterday’s news: “DETROIT (Reuters) - To understand why critics say the market-based tax foreclosure system is failing in Detroit, drive up Desoto Street near the city's geographic center. The street is a mix of older ranch-style homes, new construction financed by a local church and wide-open green spaces where homes have been demolished or burned down. Fifteen vacant lots on the street were listed in the October auction by Wayne County officials after owners failed to pay taxes for the past three years. None of the lots sold at the minimum bid of $500. Americans have grown used to the idea that Detroit -- a one-time industrial powerhouse -- is a dying city with unemployment of 28 percent.” It seems Detroit’s residents were somehow not motivated to keep the good times rolling. Most of the upper middle class left and the employers of the middle and lower class went bankrupt. Even this topless woman left. So who pays the taxes now?

Starving Artists

From an article about executive pay: “Many musicians approve of high executive salaries – if, that is, the orchestra is doing well. But when it is not, frustration arises, as it also does over inequities in players' pay scale. The base pay of a New York Philharmonic musician is now $103,000. According to 2003 tax records, Glenn Dicterow, the New York Philharmonic concertmaster, was making $366,000 (this does not include income from engagements outside his orchestra schedule.) The have-nots in this scheme are primarily section string players, who have to pay for instruments costing significantly more than woodwinds or brasses – often in five or six figures. And in the case of brand-name soloists, the disparity is even more enormous. The violinist Itzhak Perlman and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, two of the most reliable box-office draws in the field, are reliably said to make from $65,000 to $70,000 per night. That is as much as full-time players at orchestras like the Dallas Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony and the St. Louis Symphony make in a year.” This, of course, is peanuts compared to the salaries and bonuses of some of the country's large corporations. I think the average salary among those ranks is about $14 million. The woman at left is not an orchestra player, but that is entirely irrelevant.