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 ...
“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.”
Ma’am, there is an entire novel in that one sentence.
Cut Taxes,Cut Spending,Cut Regulation,Cut the Welfare rolls,Quit voting for the Communist/Democrat party.
Stay tuned for "the rest of the story."
Oooh, I would buy that book.
And, it would be apropos - given the current recession, people would eat it up.
Start writing, have fun. Remember to show it, not tell it.
;)
Unbelievable.
Detroit may as well cease to be a independent city, and just revert to a township.
The worst part is that we’ve actually done something right by giving tax breaks to Hollywood and it’s worked. The sad part is that it was limited to Hollywood and will never be a basis for an economy.
LOL. I can’t decide whether to write it as my biography or as fiction. My whole life is about six novels. Should I break it up into a series of fictionalized biographical novels, or one epic novel? Yeah, like I have time to write a book.
“We can not win on facts and ideas”
We can ONLY win on facts and ideas. That is what Conservatives do. We are not ruled by feeling but by thinking. Liberals feel, we THINK.
If we have to get into emotions, then we have lost the battle. We do not want to do what the Republicans have done, become our enemy. Either we convince people with facts and our ideas or we lose.
The Michigan St. train depot, once every bit as magnificent, if not more so, than Grand Central Station. It’s sad to see what’s become of it. To see it standing, battered and abandoned amongst the rest of the battered and decaying neighborhood is just a tragedy. It’s on the outskirts of Corktown, the Irish neighborhood that’s undergone a facelift, and right down the road from Tiger Stadium, another abandoned wreck that’s almost completely torn down, except for one corner. The city never could get it together enough to salvage it for posterity. A part of 20th century American cultural history, gone forever, in both cases.
I don’t know - I have never managed to sell a story, though I have told a few.
But I do know, you need to both base it on what you know, and divorce yourself from it.
And, what else do you do with your time - hang out on FR?
You know what makes a PhD? An original contribution to human knowlege. A book. Write one.
“Sarah looked at the dirt between her toes, dreading school today. It would not go well.”
(egads, shoot me - that was awful)
The guy who put the site together seems to have a lot of love for Detroit but has absolutely no love for Coleman Young, Kwamee Kilpatrick, or Minica Conyers.
Can you blame him?
He seems to know where blame belongs.
I am good at bad writing.
So shoot me.
You got that right!
LOL....pretty awful. What do I do with my time? Let me count the ways. I’m a retired pastor for a church of 60 members and all that encompasses ( they call it part-time). I’m a member of local Tourism Committee;Chamber of Commerce; President of the county Performing Arts Council, Directing a production of Hansel & Gretel currently, babysit my grandaugher two days a week, but I’m only 75, so I still have a lot to do.
You know what I regret?
I missed a date with granpa, to watch the quiet man.
Now that sounds like a short story. Write it.
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