Was Detroit the Canary in the Coal Mine for American Workers?

From Grateful Ed's Medium

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What if the real crisis isn’t poverty, but what we do when there’s more than enough?

Two cities. Two futures. And one defining question: who gets to decide what happens to the surplus?

In postwar China, deliberate investment, long-term planning, and public accountability helped turn Chongqing into a modern economic force.

Detroit had resources, too — more than most cities ever will. But over time, that money stopped helping the people who kept the city running. People above them made the critical decisions, and most individuals ended up dealing with the consequences.

What happened in these places isn’t just local history; it’s a part of our shared heritage. It’s what you get when too much gets stuck at the top and almost nobody asks why.

Chongqing: A City Built by Planning, Not Just Profit

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Forget about Chongqing’s rise being accidental. That kind of growth comes from a game plan that’s out in the open, by design, and thinking way ahead.

Instead of chasing quick gains in a single industry, its leaders cultivated strength across multiple sectors, including manufacturing, logistics, education, and infrastructure. The city wasn’t reacting to the future. They designed it.

Chongqing isn’t just expanding — its leaders guide the city with intent. Local and national leaders are implementing targeted policies to foster steady, long-term growth. The city is carving out its role as a rising inland hub, with technology, logistics, and manufacturing at its center.

Instead of letting growth pool among the few, leaders are putting that value back into the community. They’re investing in things people depend on — better transit, stronger schools, and more accessible housing — so that growth improves everyday life.

Detroit’s Rise Felt Unstoppable — Until It Wasn’t

[Image Credit: Pixabay]

For a time, the city thrived. Factories ran nonstop, paychecks built comfortable lives, and many believed the good years would never end.

The future of 1.7 million people depended on a few unelected board members from three auto companies, highlighting a dangerous flaw in their prosperity. As long as the money rolled in, there was no urgency to think ahead.

Eventually, those few chose to shift production, cut costs, and abandon local communities.

Public services withered. Neighborhoods hollowed out. The company used the surplus to buy political influence, suppress unions, and relocate jobs overseas, rather than investing in the future of its workers.

Again and again, we’ve seen the same pattern: labor gets squeezed, companies send jobs overseas, power concentrates at the top, and stock buybacks drain resources. The worker who creates the value receives nothing in return.

The city didn’t foresee the crisis and had no plan in place to respond. Detroit’s decline didn’t happen overnight — it unfolded gradually, shaped by choices that treated planning as an obstacle rather than a preparation.

Who Should Decide the Future?

In the United States, planning by elected officials is often criticized as overreach. But we rarely question when unelected, self-interested executives do planning. We call that the free market. That’s the contradiction we’ve lived with for decades — and one that’s led us exactly here.

We’ve split capital and labor so completely that most workers no longer have a voice in what gets built, what gets kept, or who benefits from it.

We convinced ourselves that public planning is tyranny, but private planning by unelected billionaires is freedom. That contradiction has cost us everything from pensions to public trust.

Meanwhile, the cycle repeats: corporations consolidate, buy back shares, and hoard surplus, not to strengthen society, but to extract more from it.

WTO Inc.: Connecting Workers to Their Work and Their Future

The founder of Worker to Owner, Inc. (WTO) built the company on a simple yet effective idea: working together is most effective.

It isn’t about charity, and it’s not some distant utopia. It’s about reclaiming the power to plan, and about using surplus in a way that benefits everyone involved.

The WTO encourages individuals to be their best, to act righteously, to treat others fairly, and to participate in decisions regarding the use of surplus. The company reinvests the shared surplus, rather than letting it sit or siphoning it off.

At WTO, the surplus isn’t a bonus to be stashed or spent. It’s a shared tool. A means to invest in people, heal the system, and keep the cycle of dignity alive.

It’s about building an economy where the people doing the work also have a say in how things run. Not decisions handed down by a small group in a distant boardroom, but choices made by the people who understand the work because they live it.

The WTO refers to this cycle of reinvestment and responsibility as worker-led planning. It’s not just a model — it’s a moral choice.

At a time when just a handful of companies hold outsized power over the U.S. economy, the WTO isn’t simply offering a new business model.

It’s a course correction for a system worn down by years of unchecked mergers, backroom influence, and wealth piling up in the same few places. What it gives workers goes beyond a paycheck — it hands them some real say in how things run and where their effort takes them.

Surplus Isn’t Extra, It’s the Beginning of Everything

Surplus isn’t just leftover money. It’s momentum. Capacity. Freedom. The breathing room needed to make smarter choices.

Used wisely, it creates a cycle of growth, stability, and shared success. When used poorly or hoarded by a few, it becomes the root of collapse.

Chongqing chose the path of planning. It flourished.

Detroit left planning to a few. It fell.

WTO Inc. offers something radically simple: a way forward where surplus is no longer a private asset, but a public opportunity, where work and ownership meet. And where long-term prosperity doesn’t rely on a gamble, but on a plan.

The lesson is clear: when workers and capital work together, society not only survives, but thrives. It thrives.