Quote:
Originally Posted by Cliffie
I think we're in pretty deep kaka right now, but saying it can never get better is just crazy. It's just as crazy as the way everyone was saying, before the stock market crashed, that things would never get worse. The pendulum always swings, people.
Why, I heard just yesterday about a company in this state that can hardly keep up with its hiring needs because they're expanding so much. No, it was not a meth lab.
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There are a few stories here and there about business' that are having success even in this economy. My father's is one of them. He bought the business in the fall of 2002 when Michigan was supposedly at as far down as it would go economically, (Granholms words in her first election). He bought the business from bankruptcy so he got it cheap. He revived it and grew it three times over in the five years he has had it.
So you do hear a few stories here and there. However, the amount of business' leaving the state or closing their doors far outweigh the one's that are doing good. Hence why more people are leaving the state every year than coming in. There is no way about it... this economy is horrible.
I personally do not see how it is going to come out of this in the next five years. The numbers do not make sense. Michigan is not a state that is welcoming to small and medium sized business'. The taxes and regulations are too imposing. I have posted on other threads on these boards about how I service computer networks for small and medium sized company's in West Michigan, and how we have lost many clients. Some have closed their doors permanently, and a few have moved across to the border to Indiana, and are having far greater success.
Here is an example of one business I used to service that was on the Michigan Indiana border:
The business took RV's and converted them into mobile command units and labs for the F.B.I., first responders, and law enforcement. The owner found a plot of land in Sturgis Michigan, got the appropriate permits to start building on his site. After the building was built, it was inspected and he had a green light to open the business. Six months later a Michigan fire marshal from Lansing comes in. He inspects the building unannounced, and cites the owner for not having a sprinkler system. The owner tells the marshal based on his dealing with the local city inspectors that they passed all their inspections. The fire marshal informs the owner that the laws have changed in the last six months since he opened up shop, and that they city could not have gotten the appropriate information on time for the proper up to date codes.
So the marshal tells the owner he will be fined $1000.00 a day until the sprinkler system is in. The owner insisted it was not fair, and needed time to get bids and that alone would take a couple of weeks. The marshal says, "hey I have job to do, and the law is the law".
So the owner takes this all the way to Lansing to fight the insane fines, insisting he did everything by the books according to the law at the time he opened up shop. Lansing agreed to only fine him $1000 a month rather than a day. The owner took the deal.
It took two weeks to get three bids in to the shop. Once the owner settled on a bid, the work began. It took the sprinkler company one month to complete the job. Once it was done, the owner paid $200,000 for the new sprinkler system, and $1000 in fines to Lansing. The owner called the fire marshal in Lansing for a re-inspection. He says he will be out to inspect the new system on the day that the day that happens to be the very last day before he gets fined another $1000. Well... the fire marshal "mistakingly" over booked himself that day so the owner got fined another $1000.
When the marshal finally inspected the sprinkling system, he passed it, but cited the owner for a drain in a paint booth that was draining to a retention pond. The marshal tells the owner that he will send the DEQ out to inspect that.
The DEQ comes out, and shuts the shop down for this drain. The owner understands and agrees after he is explained to, as the why it cannot drain into a retention pond. But the owner insists again, he did everything to code from the city, and that they passed his shop for all inspections. Well this was another regulation that recently changed in the last 8 months.
The cost to the changes was so much, that the owner decides to build a separate, smaller building on his property just for painting. So he spends another $500,000. It passed the DEQ, and all state inspections. Then in comes the fire marshal a year later. He tells the owner that he needs to separate the water line to the new paint building, so it is not on the same one as the main building, and put it on its own generator, and not share with the main one.
That's when this owner closed the shop in Michigan and went 20 miles south into Howe Indiana. There he found a building he could remodel, have everything under one roof like he wanted. The taxes overall were cheaper, the regulations were clear, and once they were inspected they were signed saying he would not have to update anything for five years. The state and the local city to offered to give him a tax free status on the property for five years, which he took.
He was able to hire more help just based on the money he was saving in taxes alone.
The moral of the story is Michigan is not easy on the little guys. But yet they hold the hands of the auto union, and auto industry which is a dying industry in this country let alone state.
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10-05-2007, 07:51 AM
I mean if they are working way would they complain, I have lower my prices and most of the work I do is paid by the Insurance Companies but the thing is most people I do estimates for take the Insurance Money and fix it themselfs and pocket what's left. I have spent my time working on estimates only to be under bid by some guy laid off or if you go on Craig's list most of the companies on there under bid cause they don't have Insurance or License and because most people know they can get a low baller to come in and do the job cheap.
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