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9-Year-Old Boy Is the Only One With Any Idea of How to Save Detroit

9-Year-Old Boy Is the Only One With Any Idea of How to Save Detroit

Detroit is in rough shape. Almost everyone knows that Detroit has become the symbolic center of the recession, with everything threatening to go belly-up at any moment, and the looming threat of bankruptcy hanging over the entire city, which is almost impossible to fathom. Fortunately, while politicians haggle and companies crunch numbers, Joshua Smith—a 9-year-old Detroit resident—has decided to actually just do something practical: open a lemonade stand, make some money, donate all the proceeds to the City of Detroit. Which sounds very sweet and sort of naive until you read the part about Joshua raising a whopping $3,450 from his lemonade stand, getting donations from all over the world, hosting the members of the Michigan men’s basketball team and earning a nice little $2,000 scholarship for down the road. “I’m really happy that a lot of people supported me,” said the savvy businessman. “It was successful but tiring.” Successful but tiring sounds like as good a business model as anything, so let’s hope Detroit’s politicians are paying attention to Joshua Wise’s shrewd strategy …

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