Bad government: “The city’s operations have become dysfunctional and wasteful after years of budgetary restrictions, mismanagement, crippling operational practices and, in some cases, indifferences or corruption,” Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr wrote in May.”Outdated policies, work practices, procedures and systems must be improved consistent with best practices of 21st-century government.” It would not be a stretch to apply Orr’s words to the federal government.

Broken promises: The group most at risk in Detroit’s bankruptcy may be the city’s 20,000 retirees (including my father as well as many friends and family members). Of Detroit’s overall debt, about half represents pension and health benefits promised to retirees, according to the Washington Post. This is because city leaders borrowed against pension funds and mortgaged the future – not unlike what Washington’s leadership is doing to Social Security and Medicare.

Rigid institutions: Government agencies, businesses, schools, churches, the media, and virtually every other city institution failed to help residents weather the tumult of the last four decades of the 20th century. In particular, Big Labor never managed a second act after anchoring the rise of the American middle class in Detroit. Union membership and influence has declined in Detroit and elsewhere, considered by many to be more of an obstacle than solution.

Racial tensions: Racism and racial polarization have a long and an ugly history in Detroit. The 1967 riots caused many whites to leave the city. White flight increased in the 1970s, when school busing and a ban on real estate “red lining” threatened the nasty traditions of segregation. Craven real estate agents hired black women to push baby strollers through white neighborhoods, then knocked on doors urging residents to sell “before it’s too late.”