Why a bankrupt Detroit treats the auto industry like a charity case

There's no framing device used more often in writing about Detroit than juxtaposing the plight of the have and the have-not. It's inevitable in a city where stadiums, casinos and high-end restaurants sit side-by-side with abandoned factories and overgrown lots. Today's New York Times offers another such piece, noting how the city of Detroit's bankruptcy comes even as the U.S. auto industry surges to new heights of profits.

Bill Vlasic's story, "Detroit is Now a Charity Case for Carmakers," details how General Motors, Chrysler and Ford have increased their charitable giving in the city as it now faces its greatest financial crisis. And the story lays out how despite the comebacks at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, the three corporations simply don't employ enough people to lift the city back to prosperity as they once did.

But there's a flip side to this comparison: As much as the auto industry pays alms to Detroit, Detroit has given carmakers millions of dollars in tax breaks over the past decade, even as it went broke.

Well before the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, the auto industry had whittled away many of its jobs inside Detroit; today, there's only one plant — Chrysler's Mack Avenue factory — building motors in the Motor City. Ford hasn't had a factory in Detroit in decades; Chrysler has one full-size plant building SUVs and another small shop for the Viper, while GM builds the Chevy Volt, Malibu and Impala at its Detroit-Hamtramck plant, for a total of about 7,000 workers. As for white-collar jobs, only GM has corporate headquarters inside city limits; Chrysler moved to Auburn Hills, Mich., in 1993, and opened a small satellite office downtown last year.