Posted on 04/03/2009 5:20:29 PM PDT by Kaslin
Bailouts: It may no longer be the case that "as GM goes, so goes the nation." But it's certainly true for Michigan. That's not very good news for Michiganders, who are leaving the state in droves.
Today, Michigan's 12% unemployment rate is the highest in the nation, and likely to go higher. Meanwhile, a Detroit News series notes that 109,000 more people left Michigan last year than moved in, four times the level of 2001. Another family leaves the state every 12 minutes, and half the graduates from Michigan's fine university and college system leave each year.
They're leaving because the economy is imploding. As Michigan's Mackinac Center think tank notes, the state ranked 16th highest in per capita GDP in 1999. Today, it's 41st. From 2002 to 2007, it was the only state to have a negative growth rate, and its personal income growth today is just over half the U.S. average.
How did it get so bad? Certainly the automakers' demise plays a huge role. So does the United Auto Workers union, which due to years of gold-plated labor deals has made it impossible for the domestic industry to make cars profitably in Michigan.
That's a big reason why Michigan's economy has been decimated, and why U.S. taxpayers ultimately could spend more than $100 billion to bail out GM and Chrysler — and possibly Ford, too.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Stop voting democrat may be a good start
There’s a term limit on our stupidity. (Granholm)
I am afraid that it is more true than ever that:
“So goes GM, so goes the USA.”
Look at GM and look at the USA, the same.
We are a state with an environment that mixes the Mediterranean in Summer, Scandinavia in Winter, almost surrounded by seas (no hurricanes), and some of the best farmland, and hunting on Earth.
Detroit used to be the Paris of America. Flint and Saginaw were manufacturing powerhouses. West Michigan were full of skilled craftsmen and old Dutch work ethic, and the U.P. had a Scandinavian soul and the frontiersman’s pride.
And this is the best we can do with ourselves today...
Great column.
Here in Jackson we used to have some big players like Goodyear, Clark Equipment, and Lawn boy. Now we have target Walmart, and McDonalds.
There is like eight voters that read IBD. It’s pointless.
We can not win on facts and ideas, a nation that have gotten itself into a position that they did not think or reason themselves into.
Anger and emotion are our friend. Obama and the Democrats are fully tapped into the national emotion, meanwhile we, and especially Republicans are giving boring policy speeches about marginal tax rates.
Yeah. That gets people’s blood flowing.
You forgot the Cascades, Maybe the Democrats can flip you a bunch of money to build another one Cascades with an Obama theme park. < /sarcasm>
But I've got to ask is the Cascades still in operation.
Yeah Cascades is still going strong. The thing about Cascades and Ella Sharp parks is the fact that they were both privately built and donated.
“How did it get so bad? “
Because the lazy pigs and fat welfare mommas wanted to sit on their fat asses and not work.
The typical liberal Michigan worker, where I live, is a stupid, useless slob that wants to work as little as possible for 6 months and collect unemployment for 6 months. If he can’t do that, there’s plenty of shyster lawyers who can dial up a quack to swear that he’s disabled and qualifies for workmen’s comp. Or there’s always the scam vet who suffered 100% disability fueling jets off the Iraq coast in 1990.
This fat slob “worker” is surrounded by 10 or 20 fat slob welfare mommas who need welfare checks to attract their equally fat boyfriends with cases of beer and free food, paid for by people who work.
(And for all you good women who fear obuma’s civilian army, this where he’ll draw his troops - from fat, lazy, stupid slobs who wouldn’t lift a finger unless there’s free beer involved.)
Other than that, hundreds of thousands of productive Michigan citizens have left this socialist paradise state and moved to conservative states, to the advantage of free state Americans and to fascist obuma’s disadvantage.
Michiganders who have escaped Granholm’s socialist paradise can shoot real well and knock a tick off a fly’s nose - blindfolded.
:-)
How did it get so bad? When unions and their supporters became the majority in the state and began extorting unreasonable wages and benefits from businesses, when the state government looked at companies as the golden goose that could be plundered and pillaged in taxes and punishing regulation indefinitely, and when the governor herself and her moron supporters began to openly undermine the business community, viewing it as the enemy, creating such a disincentive and burden on job creation and new business that nobody in their right mind would consider opening or operating there, the state’s decline accelerated unceasingly. In short, the liberal business model is what killed Michigan.
I left Michigan in the mid-1990s and I’m glad I did. This is a state that CONTINUES to vote Democratic and it’s a state that NEVER learns.
ping
I find the condition of Michigan to be very ironic. When I was a girl in rural Tennessee during the Great Depression, one could scarce find an able-bodied man. They had all “gone to Detroit” to find a job.
You're exactly right! It did used to be called that. Detroit was beautiful, before the riots and subsequent Democrat leadership that's gone unbroken since the mid 60's.
Here's Detroit today:
This is an area called Indian Village, which gives you a sense of pre-riots Detroit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2Tg7YIOL7s
Here's some of the more typical neighborhoods today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHr2mLQZUtU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8dz40AOOmA
When CP closed the transformer plant, that killed JXN.
Which political party was in control as Michigan went down?? Draw you own conclusions.
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