The End of New Orleans

As busses convoy out the remaining 20% of New Orleans' population to parts unknown, you've gotta ask: who are those people, and will they come back?

The 20% of New Orleans' population were those who could not afford to heed the mayor's evacuation call -- they don't have cars, and couldn't afford to leave otherwise. They live hand to mouth, and month-to-month at best. When they get to wherever they are going (the Astrodome in Houston for many of them), they are going to have to find jobs to survive in the interim, and once they do, why would they come back? Before you've even started about rebuilding, 20% of the population is gone.

And the remaining 80%? Their factories and workplaces are wiped off the map. There won't be anyplace for anyone to work; construction will be up, but it will be months before anyone could come back to the office job they used to have. And how do they live until then? To me, this sounds like, before you even start, New Orleans has lost 50% of its population. And losing that much it's hardly likely the city could recover to its pre-hurricane economic level for decades.