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Gee magellen, no one ever said you hadn't see tough times. I'm sure almost everyone in this thread has. I have, and I expect I will again. Maybe soon.
The question is whether current good times mean future good times. My point, for the third and final time, is that other people in this state thought that things were going well in their neck of the woods not that long ago and now things are falling apart. Your mileage may vary. For those who think everyone considering leaving is somehow a Michigan hater or just not tough enough to stick it out, just wait until the foot is on the other shoe. (You read that right.)
Too serious.
And while we're at it: exactly who am I supposed to fight and about what?
"Funny because these bad things are happening to someone else, or funny because you don't think they know what you know, and if they did they'd stop complaining? I would humbly suggest you try walking a mile in their shoes before you say such things".
Your words bob. You're implying I've never walked in the shoes of someone on hard times.
When I say "fight", I mean work to make Michigan better. I know there are thousands of people out there who love Detroit and Lansing. I'm just trying to get their competitive juices riled up.
There's nothing magical about GR (or anywhere for that matter). But people here seem to not have that "sky is falling doom and gloom", even when things have been bad. I'm not advocating everyone move to Grand Rapids (my kids' classes are already overburdened).
Hello everyone, Thanks for the great advice....I'm still looking forward on becoming a Michigan resident I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed weekend!
Hello Michigan residents, I live in California and I've been wanting to move to Michigan...I've been reading all the postings and it makes me sad to hear that alot of you have lost your faith...I've been looking at Michigan for awhile now and I love your small town feel, the four seasons...
I guess it depends on what's important to you. If a church will provide your income for you then you could come to Michigan. You'll find plenty of poor and distressed people to help. I'm sure they will appreciate your help.
On the otherhand, if you have to work at a private sector job to earn a living, you might be better off moving to Wisconsin or Minnesota.
Here's a thought--what if the Church tried to help the poor move to other states? It's not like the local Michigan economy is helping them, so why not help the poor, who are the least equipped to move, relocate?
Sure housing prices are cheap here, but only if you compare them to CA. We are not even close to CA but do you really want to spend even 200k on a 1100sq ft 60 year old home? I sure don't. Parts of Texas that would buy me a 5000 sq foot brand new home. Down south It would also be brand new but maybe more like 1500-2500 sq ft. Make sure you move to Michigan for more then home prices because we have nothing else. Small town feel? Nothing that is affordable or where I would want to live.
Two weeks ago I browsed through the "Homes" magazines. I know that housing prices have soared over the past couple years and that Michigan's housing prices are falling relative to the rest of the country, but holy cow! I still thought they were pretty expensive! If this is what prices are like in Michigan, imagine what they're like in other parts of the country.
I suspect that many of the houses aren't selling for their asking prices and that eventually these homeowners are just going to have to accept large losses. The winners were the ones who sold their homes at the height of the Michigan housing price boom and then moved to other states but are renting instead of buying.
In other news, a prominent West Michigan retired Republican legislator came out yesterday with guns blazing at fellow Republicans in Lansing for their "tax cuts at all costs" philosophy:
--------
Paul Hillegonds, the former state House speaker who represented the Holland area 18 years before retiring in 1996, delivered a tough message: Lower taxes have hurt Michigan economically in the long run.
The answer is to invest in higher education and infrastructure that will develop, retain and attract a young, well-educated and entrepreneurial work force, said Hillegonds, senior vice president of corporate affairs for Detroit-based DTE Energy.
Hillegonds appears to be just another moron who's drinking the education cool-aid. For decades it has been trendy for politicians and pundits to try to sell Americans on education as the solution to economic problems. It has become a veritable opiate of the masses and Americans just gobble it right up. So, instead of identifying and addressing the nation's real problems, such as global labor arbitrage (mass immigration, foreign work visas, foreign outsourcing), they just tell people that better education will magically make it all better. It's much more politically correct and it gives people warm-fuzzy feelings.
Michigan already has plenty of universities including three Research I universities, one of which is (or used to be) a "public ivy". Education is not Michigan's problem. Rather, the problem is the ability to attract knowledge-based jobs that will retain college graduates.
However, contrary to popular belief, over the past several years the U.S. economy has generated few net new knowledge-based jobs. Rather, those jobs, often in high-fallutin' fields such as computer programming and engineering R&D (not to mention patent law, financial analysis, radiology, and much more), are being sent overseas to India and China. If you read the monthly employment reports, you'll find that most of the new jobs that are created are in low-wage service jobs and that the number of jobs isn't keeping up with the increase in the population growth of the working-aged popluation.
Consequently, the other 49 states are also competing for those jobs and all 50 states are competing for those jobs with India and China and Americans are competing for knowledge-based jobs here at home with foreigners on work visas (H-1B, L-1, H-2B, etc.) and illegals.
The housing boom and borrowing-aganst-home-equity brought on by the low interest rates and irrational speculation by lenders (who are now seeing their stock values reduced to junk bond status while being threatened with getting de-listed from the NYSE) is about to end and soon the real state of the U.S. economy will be unmasked.
Is there a solution for Michigan? If by "solution" you mean is there a way for Mighican to prosper, I don't think so because Michigan's economy is also connected to the health of the U.S. economy and the outlook for it is not good. The issue may be not whether Michigan can improve its economy, but whether it can maintain what it has while the other 49 states experience the upcoming recession/depression.
I do know that more and better education is not the solution for Michigan's economy. Rather, Michigan needs to focus on trying to create the nation's best business climate.
The Education Myth is national in scope. Over the past several months the airwaves have been bombarded by the politicians and the media pointing out that college graduates tend to earn more than non-college graduates. However, they are assuming that increasing the supply of college graduates (the supply of labor) will magically increase the demand for college graduates (the demand) at prevailing price points (wages, standard of living). To show just how silly this claim is, perform the following thought experiment:
If we double the number of MBAs, lawyers, and engineers produced, will that double the number of jobs (at currently prevailing wages) for MBAs, lawyers, and engineers?
Of course not! We already have an oversupply of lawyers, MBAs, and engineers. We already have people who are qualified to work in those fields who are either unemployed or underemployed involuntarily-out-of-field. The same could be said for just about any field.
In reality, education is not a substitute for sound economic policy. That's why I don't think Michigan will benefit by squandering its economic resources on education. Rather, it nees to focus on its economic policy and business climate. Businesses want to earn a profit. Find ways to make doing business in Michigan more profitable than it is to to business in other states and the businesses will come. (Whether or not we can make doing business in Michigan more profitable than doing business in other countries without accepting third world wages and environmental standards, I don't know.)
Last edited by Bhaalspawn; 03-16-2007 at 07:40 AM..
- We're spending too much money on education and not getting the results we had hoped for
- We can't attract high tech jobs because we don't have the qualified workforce
It would seem to me that we would be better off trading for those smart kids you hear about in India and Korea and paying to educate them here instead of our own stupid kids. Most of ours are going to work minimum wage jobs anyway, so what difference does it make if it's here or in some third world country? They'd probably love the warmer weather in that part of the world anyway. Give them a computer and that MTV and they'll be pretty happy.
It would be a better use of our tax dollars to educate kids that actually have some potential. The new state motto could be "Come to Michigan: We Have Smart Foreign Kids!"
We already have an oversupply of lawyers, MBAs, and engineers. We already have people who are qualified to work in those fields who are either unemployed or underemployed involuntarily-out-of-field. The same could be said for just about any field.
Not every engineer field is overstocked...some are seriously UNDERSTOCKED with qualified personnel. Of course, in some areas you have to be willing to 1) relocate 2) live in a smaller area or be prepared for a long commute.
The field: nuclear engineering or energy engineering.
My husband is a mechanical engineer with 15 years of nuke work behind him. He is one of the YOUNGEST in his specialty at 46 years old. There aren't more than 300-400 in his specialty and a vast majority of them are nearing retirement age. And the engineering depts in the colleges are NOT putting out enough engineers for that field.
That's because for many years, people thought nuclear was dead or dying. But a plan called Nuclear Power 2010 is changing that.
http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=3&catid=1201 (broken link) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Power_2010_Program
So blanket statements aren't always appropriate here either.
IF we didn't want to get back south to family, my husband would probably have reapplied for an AOV (air operated valves) or MOV (motor operated valves) job back at DTE. Liz
Hillegonds appears to be just another moron who's drinking the education cool-aid. For decades it has been trendy for politicians and pundits to try to sell Americans on education as the solution to economic problems. It has become a veritable opiate of the masses and Americans just gobble it right up. So, instead of identifying and addressing the nation's real problems, such as global labor arbitrage (mass immigration, foreign work visas, foreign outsourcing), they just tell people that better education will magically make it all better. It's much more politically correct and it gives people warm-fuzzy feelings.
Michigan already has plenty of universities including three Research I universities, one of which is (or used to be) a "public ivy". Education is not Michigan's problem. Rather, the problem is the ability to attract knowledge-based jobs that will retain college graduates.
However, contrary to popular belief, over the past several years the U.S. economy has generated few net new knowledge-based jobs. Rather, those jobs, often in high-fallutin' fields such as computer programming and engineering R&D (not to mention patent law, financial analysis, radiology, and much more), are being sent overseas to India and China. If you read the monthly employment reports, you'll find that most of the new jobs that are created are in low-wage service jobs and that the number of jobs isn't keeping up with the increase in the population growth of the working-aged popluation.
Consequently, the other 49 states are also competing for those jobs and all 50 states are competing for those jobs with India and China and Americans are competing for knowledge-based jobs here at home with foreigners on work visas (H-1B, L-1, H-2B, etc.) and illegals.
The housing boom and borrowing-aganst-home-equity brought on by the low interest rates and irrational speculation by lenders (who are now seeing their stock values reduced to junk bond status while being threatened with getting de-listed from the NYSE) is about to end and soon the real state of the U.S. economy will be unmasked.
Is there a solution for Michigan? If by "solution" you mean is there a way for Mighican to prosper, I don't think so because Michigan's economy is also connected to the health of the U.S. economy and the outlook for it is not good. The issue may be not whether Michigan can improve its economy, but whether it can maintain what it has while the other 49 states experience the upcoming recession/depression.
I do know that more and better education is not the solution for Michigan's economy. Rather, Michigan needs to focus on trying to create the nation's best business climate.
The Education Myth is national in scope. Over the past several months the airwaves have been bombarded by the politicians and the media pointing out that college graduates tend to earn more than non-college graduates. However, they are assuming that increasing the supply of college graduates (the supply of labor) will magically increase the demand for college graduates (the demand) at prevailing price points (wages, standard of living). To show just how silly this claim is, perform the following thought experiment:
If we double the number of MBAs, lawyers, and engineers produced, will that double the number of jobs (at currently prevailing wages) for MBAs, lawyers, and engineers?
Of course not! We already have an oversupply of lawyers, MBAs, and engineers. We already have people who are qualified to work in those fields who are either unemployed or underemployed involuntarily-out-of-field. The same could be said for just about any field.
In reality, education is not a substitute for sound economic policy. That's why I don't think Michigan will benefit by squandering its economic resources on education. Rather, it nees to focus on its economic policy and business climate. Businesses want to earn a profit. Find ways to make doing business in Michigan more profitable than it is to to business in other states and the businesses will come. (Whether or not we can make doing business in Michigan more profitable than doing business in other countries without accepting third world wages and environmental standards, I don't know.)
But what good is making a business-friendly environment (which I would argue Michigan already has), where companies would want to expand or set up shop, when there is not an educated workforce? Or the State has drained all of its amenities, cut back on infrastructure, cut back on its higher education, or squandered its natural resources so that no one will want to move here and work here? In addition to job availability, people make decisions to move to a place or stay in a place based on a lot of other factors then what they do inside a cubicle all day. In addition, there are a lot of mobile entrepreneurs that can virtually live anywhere because of technology. Why would they choose to live here or stay here if there is no quality of life outside of making sales calls?
There needs to be a balance, and frankly I think we're chasing after a dirt-cheap tax environment that will mean sacrificing a lot of the things that people in Michigan enjoy, such as as recreation and our Great Lakes. Like Hillegonds, I'm not suggesting that we become uncompetitive with other states, but you have to look at the tax burden not only on companies, but on individual households as well. We can't shift all that burden from companies to households.
I agree that the state of the national economy and the lending industry is on very shaky ground right now, based on a tremendous amount of borrowing and non-government backed lending (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now contain more debt than the entire Federal Government, yet people think they are government backed loans and they are not), and rife with unscrupulous lending practices. But we can't wait for the other shoe to fall, while Michigan's financial situation needs to be solved. We actually might come out better than many other states because the housing bubble here has burst, yet it continues to grow to exponential levels in other states still.
But in regard to your "oversupply of educated workers", there is a shortage of engineers, tech workers and medical workers, and I know it's not just here in Grand Rapids. I have a friend who runs a staffing agency, and they can't find enough skilled people to fill the positions they have. Spectrum Health and St Mary's Healthcare in GR keep a running tab of unfilled positions on their websites because they just can't fill medical tech positions fast enough. The Van Andel Institute desperately needs molecular and biotech scientists, adding something like 400 over the next 5 years. Problem is, there just aren't very many in Michigan, so they have to recruit overseas (or from the East coast). Another problem is, because many of these people come from bigger cities, they expect a certain quality of life, a vibrant urban center, including a good mass transit system. Nada here on the mass transit front, but several us are working on that as well.
A lot of people in Michigan are studying the wrong subjects in college and in high-school prep, and they have to look at other states and other countries to find qualified candidates. Everyone and his brother wants to be a business major in Michigan. Why?
I am a graduate student, and I plan to enroll in A Phd. program soon. What do people in my (25-30) range think about the education issue? Simply it is suppression of a generation. Regardless of what implementations are made to funding, structure, or any other politically decorated aspect of our edu system will do nothing to retain young professionals. Why? First when your older workforce looses (and I'm not downing older people) their employment, who will be first in line to receive the open positions? Not the new graduate, or the high school student student with energy to spare, it will be someone who "knows" someone at that company. Just because you put in 20 years at TRW or any other company, and you lost your job, means your at the back of the line, NOT the front. Why, then are so many kids struggling to STAY into college...is it because they know their degrees will pay off? No, it is because they know they can MOVE to another state and be treated fairly and their new and fresh ideas will be accepted rather than lick the rusted steel that belts our region. Have a buddy at GM, Ford, or any other employer? Your chances are decent, if your interviewing for a position and are fresh out of college, and the line behind you is much older and "experienced".....your college degree will wither in the trash under old ideas and memos of rigid ideas of what will never become in Michigan. Yes, it is unfortunate, the new economy forces people to change and foster new ideas and accept different roles and not to "expect" to have employment provided, but rather, obtain credentials that make you more prospective than other people. 300,000 People currently do not have a job in Michigan. All of these people are 16 or older, and most of them, are over 30. TRW sent "laid off" employees back to Jackson Community college to obtain CNC training so they could find work. How about helping millions of students in Michigan defaulting on their loans the same way? No that wont happen. The rigidity and blindness of our law makers will continuously chase away our young adults to locations they know their ideas, view, and ethics will be valued, along with the leaders in those areas who are embracing the shifts in our economy that has left Michigan ten years in the past. Curriculum, practice, or money will not stop the trend of Michigan having the largest exidous of people 20-29. I choose to break the rusted chains that tie my legs down in Michigan, and follow the potential of people who "See" the harm ignorance has upon an area. "Innovate or Die" -Marx
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