How many of you are looking to move out of Michigan? (Greenville: relocation, houses)

[basco]

Originally Posted by MIhome

No this just comes from people who visit areas other than michigan for a few days,then they are experts in that area.Typical,michigan mentallity,and unfortunately,this is why michigan is in the shape it is in,again no visionaries,for anything,not even their own future's,and their children's,sad but true.

Well, your latter comment about lack of visionaries is true but you don't have to an expert to know there are better places to live and work.

[princessemichigan]

Originally Posted by redwingsfan19

We lived there almost 13 years and just loved it, even with the winters and the bad roads. Moving to IL. you wll not escape the snow
So many memories, so many good times but change is good, it is very hard in the beginning but just like anything else you'll get used to it. Do you know the Horvath's by any chance?

Sorry, That name doesn't ring a bell. Thanks!

[FERRETI]

Leaving here too with my family ,but we have to sell our house first and that looks like it`s gonna hold us for a long time.I may not have a college degree,but that does not get me anywhere in this state.The only jobs here are few restaurant jobs such dishwashers,bussers and servers.There is no future for me and my nephew in here.

[soothsayer1234]

Originally Posted by northernguy1960

Or in our case....there is no grass, unless you irrigate

But seriously....

If you can get a good job elsewhere or you just have always dreamed of living in another area, I say go for it! But before you make the sacrifices needed in order to leave, really take a good look before you leave Michigan.

When construction went down, so did our bread and butter, which was a drywall contracting business. We were able to sell our home and we relocated to Phoenix, Arizona. Our house sold so fast (a miracle, really, as we did not underprice it) that we didn't even have a chance to find work. But we were told not to worry by people who had moved down here, that there were construction jobs and economic expansion, not to mention lots of sunshine and beautiful weather. We were able to rent a house from a relative, so off we went. Goodbye Michigan!!

I'm not saying that Arizona is a horrid place, not at all. There is a lot to like about it and there is a lot of natural beauty. But since Phoenix is where the jobs and action was supposed to be, let me tell you about our experience. The construction job market greatly tightened up between the few months when we researched the area and when we arrived there. Because so many were trying to get in they could be ultra-picky. Things had slowed down, but everyone was saying it was temporary and that so many people were moving to the southwest that any problems would be shortlived. Then the bottom totally fell out. The unsold new home and foreclosure problems here are serious and mounting. Home prices are plummeting, which is good for a buyers market, but they still don't know how this will effect the economy, which expanded right along with the housing boom. Where we are renting, they are predicting double digit drops in home values in the next few months. There are deserted homes all over the city due to overspeculation and foreclosure. I have been hearing that there is about a 16 month supply of new homes and that the number is rapidly growing. A healthy number is no more than 6 months. And that is not taking into consideration the foreclosures.

Cheaper houses mean living so far out that you're looking at a very long commute, like two hours. ("Drive until you qualify", was the saying here) The roads are very crowded and rush hour means crawling bumper to bumper for the two hour drive. The workmanship of the homes really lacks. They were thrown up in a hurry during the boom.

You'd better have a good opinion of HOA's because nearly every housing community has them. Many of them are very strict. You'll also find that the houses look pretty much alike. Brown. Stucco. Not much variety here. Each development has a matching strip mall for your convenience. Someone posted a funny one on the Phoenix board about needing a GPS to find their friends house and then still discovered they were at the wrong back yard pool party. I got a great laugh out of that one, because it was so on target!

Property taxes are lower here, but there is lots of talk about raising them in order to pay for the needed infrastructure. They whipped all those houses up in a big hurry, but they are still catching up to expand roadways and build medical facilities and schools. With the construction boom over down here, someone has to pay for these things.

License plates are much higher here than in Michigan. It's based on the year and worth of your car. My husbands new truck cost us over 400 dollars to plate for the year. I have heard of RV's costing $3000 a year for an Arizona plate.

Sales tax is almost the same, but add to that city or county sales tax. Some areas have tax on food.

Gas is cheaper, but you're going to drive so much that you end up buying more. It costs a couple hundred dollars a week for the workday drive.

Illegal immigration is a huge problem. I had no idea why the border states were so up in arms before I got here and figured it was racism. That is not the problem at all, although I'm sure there are racist people here just like anywhere. The trouble is that businesses love to hire illegals because they are cheap and expendable, and they don't have to offer them any kind of health insurance. They are a real drain on the tax system, because they have no health insurance but still need to have medical care. Many of them drive uninsured. And they have all the labor jobs in construction, landscaping, etc. If you want to be a foreman, you will need to speak Spanish in order to talk to your workers.

There are what they call "drop houses", even in the nicest neighborhoods, which are houses that are a place for the illegal workers to stay until they get established. You can have 30 people or more living in a house. Sadly, there is also a human trafficking problem as well. People are kidnapped over the border to be cheap labor here in the U.S. On the west side of the city there seems to be big busts every week.

Yes, the sun shines over 300 days a year here and right now the weather is awesome: mid 80's, no humidity. But just like you are feeling stuck in the house all winter in Michigan, you will feel the same way here in the summer. When the temperature soars over 110, it is not only hot, it is dangerous heat. You can die in it if you are not smart. There won't be a cloud in the sky, so that sun just bakes everything. The neighborhoods are quiet all day because everyone stays in the air conditioning. At 10:00 at night it will still be 101 degrees. During monsoon, there are big dirt storms, followed by major storms that cause flash flooding. You might end up waiting a long time to cross a roadway until the water clears. And if you get caught in a big dust storm you just pull over and turn out your lights so no one follows you.

And though we complain about the humidity in Michigan, after awhile you wish you had some here! When the humidity level is 3-5%, your skin stays dry, your sinuses hurt, and when you go grocery shopping you get big shocks everytime you touch a freezer door.

Phoenix has a lot of crime, actually. Yes, there are nice neighborhoods in the city and just outside, but they are higher priced. Or you live very far out and have that 2 hour commute to work. Car theft is very high. Identity theft is sky high, too. There are street businesses that arrange fake drivers licenses and social security numbers for illegal immigrants. Your number could be used no matter where you live.

Moving out of state isn't easy because of what you leave behind. We have met some nice people here, but we also left behind a lot of great friends and our families. It's something else to consider.

If you are in the medical or teaching fields, there is work for you in Phoenix. But wages are lower here. They like to point out that this is a right to work state, but those evil unions that are so popular to b*tch about right now really do keep wages more even. Add to that the illegal labor force being paid so much less, which drags everyones wages way down in many areas of work. I read this Sunday in the Arizona Republic that the states biggest employer is Walmart.

We're working, but it's not all that great. If we are going to just have to scratch out a living for awhile, we'd rather do it where we wish we were living and near those who mean so much to us. We came out here thinking we'd better ourselves. It has made us tougher, so I guess that's a good thing, lol!

I don't mean this as some anti-Phoenix rant, I'm illustrating that the grass might seem greener on the other side, no matter where you want to live, but it might not be the answer that you think it is. Don't jump as fast as we did. Do your homework thoroughly. We had a monkey wrench thrown into our plans because our house sold so shockingly fast: in one week! Our original plan was for my husband to stay with some friends in Phoenix and look for work, leaving me to hold things up in Michigan. Had he learned what we know now we would have found another way and saved Arizona for a possible winter retirement area one day. For everything we left Michigan for, there is something equally as frustrating or more in our new area.

Anyway.....we have been able to get a mortgage on an inexpensive older home on the west side of the state, where we always wanted to live anyway. We'll be there before the serious snow flies! We might not get rich, but we're pretty sure we'll be happy once we get ourselves up and working. I miss grass. And trees. And water. There are some serious water problems going on both south and southwest.....don't take Michigan's abundant resource for granted!

So...sorry so long, but that's our story.

Northernguys Other Half

Everyone should read your post before they uproot their entire world to move to Phoenix or Vegas. I've never seen the attraction of moving to a desert with a low-wage pay scale. The influx of new residents is slowing now in Vegas AND Phoenix. It will slow much more as the housing market continues to get out of whack, and the economies slow. It is hardly a given that huge in-migration will continue indefinitely. There is a chance that both metros will actually net start losing people if economic indicators continue to bite. Both metros' economies are built on a house of cards. Vegas relies on an eternal interest in folks to gamble and casinos to continue to build. If we get into a national recession, people will continue to gamble, but in place, where they live. The home equity ATM machine will not spit out those vacation dollars. In Phoenix' case, their economy is largely predicated on growth itself, per construction and home building. When that slows or stops, there goes the Phoenix economy.

[Cato the Elder]

Originally Posted by northernguy1960

Or in our case....there is no grass, unless you irrigate

But seriously....

If you can get a good job elsewhere or you just have always dreamed of living in another area, I say go for it! But before you make the sacrifices needed in order to leave, really take a good look before you leave Michigan.

When construction went down, so did our bread and butter, which was a drywall contracting business. We were able to sell our home and we relocated to Phoenix, Arizona. Our house sold so fast (a miracle, really, as we did not underprice it) that we didn't even have a chance to find work. But we were told not to worry by people who had moved down here, that there were construction jobs and economic expansion, not to mention lots of sunshine and beautiful weather. We were able to rent a house from a relative, so off we went. Goodbye Michigan!!

I'm not saying that Arizona is a horrid place, not at all. There is a lot to like about it and there is a lot of natural beauty. But since Phoenix is where the jobs and action was supposed to be, let me tell you about our experience. The construction job market greatly tightened up between the few months when we researched the area and when we arrived there. Because so many were trying to get in they could be ultra-picky. Things had slowed down, but everyone was saying it was temporary and that so many people were moving to the southwest that any problems would be shortlived. Then the bottom totally fell out. The unsold new home and foreclosure problems here are serious and mounting. Home prices are plummeting, which is good for a buyers market, but they still don't know how this will effect the economy, which expanded right along with the housing boom. Where we are renting, they are predicting double digit drops in home values in the next few months. There are deserted homes all over the city due to overspeculation and foreclosure. I have been hearing that there is about a 16 month supply of new homes and that the number is rapidly growing. A healthy number is no more than 6 months. And that is not taking into consideration the foreclosures.

Cheaper houses mean living so far out that you're looking at a very long commute, like two hours. ("Drive until you qualify", was the saying here) The roads are very crowded and rush hour means crawling bumper to bumper for the two hour drive. The workmanship of the homes really lacks. They were thrown up in a hurry during the boom.

You'd better have a good opinion of HOA's because nearly every housing community has them. Many of them are very strict. You'll also find that the houses look pretty much alike. Brown. Stucco. Not much variety here. Each development has a matching strip mall for your convenience. Someone posted a funny one on the Phoenix board about needing a GPS to find their friends house and then still discovered they were at the wrong back yard pool party. I got a great laugh out of that one, because it was so on target!

Property taxes are lower here, but there is lots of talk about raising them in order to pay for the needed infrastructure. They whipped all those houses up in a big hurry, but they are still catching up to expand roadways and build medical facilities and schools. With the construction boom over down here, someone has to pay for these things.

License plates are much higher here than in Michigan. It's based on the year and worth of your car. My husbands new truck cost us over 400 dollars to plate for the year. I have heard of RV's costing $3000 a year for an Arizona plate.

Sales tax is almost the same, but add to that city or county sales tax. Some areas have tax on food.

Gas is cheaper, but you're going to drive so much that you end up buying more. It costs a couple hundred dollars a week for the workday drive.

Illegal immigration is a huge problem. I had no idea why the border states were so up in arms before I got here and figured it was racism. That is not the problem at all, although I'm sure there are racist people here just like anywhere. The trouble is that businesses love to hire illegals because they are cheap and expendable, and they don't have to offer them any kind of health insurance. They are a real drain on the tax system, because they have no health insurance but still need to have medical care. Many of them drive uninsured. And they have all the labor jobs in construction, landscaping, etc. If you want to be a foreman, you will need to speak Spanish in order to talk to your workers.

There are what they call "drop houses", even in the nicest neighborhoods, which are houses that are a place for the illegal workers to stay until they get established. You can have 30 people or more living in a house. Sadly, there is also a human trafficking problem as well. People are kidnapped over the border to be cheap labor here in the U.S. On the west side of the city there seems to be big busts every week.

Yes, the sun shines over 300 days a year here and right now the weather is awesome: mid 80's, no humidity. But just like you are feeling stuck in the house all winter in Michigan, you will feel the same way here in the summer. When the temperature soars over 110, it is not only hot, it is dangerous heat. You can die in it if you are not smart. There won't be a cloud in the sky, so that sun just bakes everything. The neighborhoods are quiet all day because everyone stays in the air conditioning. At 10:00 at night it will still be 101 degrees. During monsoon, there are big dirt storms, followed by major storms that cause flash flooding. You might end up waiting a long time to cross a roadway until the water clears. And if you get caught in a big dust storm you just pull over and turn out your lights so no one follows you.

And though we complain about the humidity in Michigan, after awhile you wish you had some here! When the humidity level is 3-5%, your skin stays dry, your sinuses hurt, and when you go grocery shopping you get big shocks everytime you touch a freezer door.

Phoenix has a lot of crime, actually. Yes, there are nice neighborhoods in the city and just outside, but they are higher priced. Or you live very far out and have that 2 hour commute to work. Car theft is very high. Identity theft is sky high, too. There are street businesses that arrange fake drivers licenses and social security numbers for illegal immigrants. Your number could be used no matter where you live.

Moving out of state isn't easy because of what you leave behind. We have met some nice people here, but we also left behind a lot of great friends and our families. It's something else to consider.

If you are in the medical or teaching fields, there is work for you in Phoenix. But wages are lower here. They like to point out that this is a right to work state, but those evil unions that are so popular to b*tch about right now really do keep wages more even. Add to that the illegal labor force being paid so much less, which drags everyones wages way down in many areas of work. I read this Sunday in the Arizona Republic that the states biggest employer is Walmart.

We're working, but it's not all that great. If we are going to just have to scratch out a living for awhile, we'd rather do it where we wish we were living and near those who mean so much to us. We came out here thinking we'd better ourselves. It has made us tougher, so I guess that's a good thing, lol!

I don't mean this as some anti-Phoenix rant, I'm illustrating that the grass might seem greener on the other side, no matter where you want to live, but it might not be the answer that you think it is. Don't jump as fast as we did. Do your homework thoroughly. We had a monkey wrench thrown into our plans because our house sold so shockingly fast: in one week! Our original plan was for my husband to stay with some friends in Phoenix and look for work, leaving me to hold things up in Michigan. Had he learned what we know now we would have found another way and saved Arizona for a possible winter retirement area one day. For everything we left Michigan for, there is something equally as frustrating or more in our new area.

Anyway.....we have been able to get a mortgage on an inexpensive older home on the west side of the state, where we always wanted to live anyway. We'll be there before the serious snow flies! We might not get rich, but we're pretty sure we'll be happy once we get ourselves up and working. I miss grass. And trees. And water. There are some serious water problems going on both south and southwest.....don't take Michigan's abundant resource for granted!

So...sorry so long, but that's our story.

Northernguys Other Half

This is one of the most spot-on posts ever written here. There is such a kick-MI-while-it's-down-and-talk-about-how-great-every-other-place-is mentality here that reality is often difficult to gauge.

[stock66]

[quote=northernguy1960;1878763]

If you can get a good job elsewhere or you just have always dreamed of living in another area, I say go for it! But before you make the sacrifices needed in order to leave, really take a good look before you leave Michigan.

Rep points for you, a well thought out post.
If anyone considers moving away as the answer to all your problems think again. Every area has it's challenges.
I moved to LA. Jobs are super easy to come by and the pay scale it quite high compared to MI. My 20YO daughter makes $30,000 a year after working for a company for a few months with no previous experience or college. Great right? Not so much, she lives at home cause that isn't near enough to have your own place. Forget buying a home unless you are making enough to get a mortgage for at least $600,000. At that you might get a 50 year old 1200 sq. ft. house in a so-so area. Most people I know can't afford a house and probably never will unless someone in their family dies and leaves them one or they make very serious coin.
Illegals do low level work. If you want a job in construction or manufacturing you have to speak Spanish. You can't manage folks in those industries without it.
Traffic sucks, 24 hours a day. You give up going places cause the drive just isn't worth it.
I miss MI. I miss family, friends, friendly Midwesterners, seasons, how fresh things are after rain, the rich green of plants that get rain! I miss being able to drive places without building in hours or travel time. I miss English being most peoples language of choice.
It certainly isn't all bad here or there. Just think carefully before you leap!

[Lovegun]

Very well said. I see so many people from Michigan moving to Phoenix.

Construction jobs are done with cheap labor. Huge sprawl with traffic problems. Unbearable summer heat. High auto insurance / DMV costs. Brown/tan everywhere...Homes, strip malls, polluted brown skies.

Everyone here from "somewhere else" don't get me wrong there are postives to Phoenix/AZ just wish people would think twice before moving here..I didn't and want to leave.

Originally Posted by northernguy1960

Or in our case....there is no grass, unless you irrigate

But seriously....

If you can get a good job elsewhere or you just have always dreamed of living in another area, I say go for it! But before you make the sacrifices needed in order to leave, really take a good look before you leave Michigan.

When construction went down, so did our bread and butter, which was a drywall contracting business. We were able to sell our home and we relocated to Phoenix, Arizona. Our house sold so fast (a miracle, really, as we did not underprice it) that we didn't even have a chance to find work. But we were told not to worry by people who had moved down here, that there were construction jobs and economic expansion, not to mention lots of sunshine and beautiful weather. We were able to rent a house from a relative, so off we went. Goodbye Michigan!!

I'm not saying that Arizona is a horrid place, not at all. There is a lot to like about it and there is a lot of natural beauty. But since Phoenix is where the jobs and action was supposed to be, let me tell you about our experience. The construction job market greatly tightened up between the few months when we researched the area and when we arrived there. Because so many were trying to get in they could be ultra-picky. Things had slowed down, but everyone was saying it was temporary and that so many people were moving to the southwest that any problems would be shortlived. Then the bottom totally fell out. The unsold new home and foreclosure problems here are serious and mounting. Home prices are plummeting, which is good for a buyers market, but they still don't know how this will effect the economy, which expanded right along with the housing boom. Where we are renting, they are predicting double digit drops in home values in the next few months. There are deserted homes all over the city due to overspeculation and foreclosure. I have been hearing that there is about a 16 month supply of new homes and that the number is rapidly growing. A healthy number is no more than 6 months. And that is not taking into consideration the foreclosures.

Cheaper houses mean living so far out that you're looking at a very long commute, like two hours. ("Drive until you qualify", was the saying here) The roads are very crowded and rush hour means crawling bumper to bumper for the two hour drive. The workmanship of the homes really lacks. They were thrown up in a hurry during the boom.

You'd better have a good opinion of HOA's because nearly every housing community has them. Many of them are very strict. You'll also find that the houses look pretty much alike. Brown. Stucco. Not much variety here. Each development has a matching strip mall for your convenience. Someone posted a funny one on the Phoenix board about needing a GPS to find their friends house and then still discovered they were at the wrong back yard pool party. I got a great laugh out of that one, because it was so on target!

Property taxes are lower here, but there is lots of talk about raising them in order to pay for the needed infrastructure. They whipped all those houses up in a big hurry, but they are still catching up to expand roadways and build medical facilities and schools. With the construction boom over down here, someone has to pay for these things.

License plates are much higher here than in Michigan. It's based on the year and worth of your car. My husbands new truck cost us over 400 dollars to plate for the year. I have heard of RV's costing $3000 a year for an Arizona plate.

Sales tax is almost the same, but add to that city or county sales tax. Some areas have tax on food.

Gas is cheaper, but you're going to drive so much that you end up buying more. It costs a couple hundred dollars a week for the workday drive.

Illegal immigration is a huge problem. I had no idea why the border states were so up in arms before I got here and figured it was racism. That is not the problem at all, although I'm sure there are racist people here just like anywhere. The trouble is that businesses love to hire illegals because they are cheap and expendable, and they don't have to offer them any kind of health insurance. They are a real drain on the tax system, because they have no health insurance but still need to have medical care. Many of them drive uninsured. And they have all the labor jobs in construction, landscaping, etc. If you want to be a foreman, you will need to speak Spanish in order to talk to your workers.

There are what they call "drop houses", even in the nicest neighborhoods, which are houses that are a place for the illegal workers to stay until they get established. You can have 30 people or more living in a house. Sadly, there is also a human trafficking problem as well. People are kidnapped over the border to be cheap labor here in the U.S. On the west side of the city there seems to be big busts every week.

Yes, the sun shines over 300 days a year here and right now the weather is awesome: mid 80's, no humidity. But just like you are feeling stuck in the house all winter in Michigan, you will feel the same way here in the summer. When the temperature soars over 110, it is not only hot, it is dangerous heat. You can die in it if you are not smart. There won't be a cloud in the sky, so that sun just bakes everything. The neighborhoods are quiet all day because everyone stays in the air conditioning. At 10:00 at night it will still be 101 degrees. During monsoon, there are big dirt storms, followed by major storms that cause flash flooding. You might end up waiting a long time to cross a roadway until the water clears. And if you get caught in a big dust storm you just pull over and turn out your lights so no one follows you.

And though we complain about the humidity in Michigan, after awhile you wish you had some here! When the humidity level is 3-5%, your skin stays dry, your sinuses hurt, and when you go grocery shopping you get big shocks everytime you touch a freezer door.

Phoenix has a lot of crime, actually. Yes, there are nice neighborhoods in the city and just outside, but they are higher priced. Or you live very far out and have that 2 hour commute to work. Car theft is very high. Identity theft is sky high, too. There are street businesses that arrange fake drivers licenses and social security numbers for illegal immigrants. Your number could be used no matter where you live.

Moving out of state isn't easy because of what you leave behind. We have met some nice people here, but we also left behind a lot of great friends and our families. It's something else to consider.

If you are in the medical or teaching fields, there is work for you in Phoenix. But wages are lower here. They like to point out that this is a right to work state, but those evil unions that are so popular to b*tch about right now really do keep wages more even. Add to that the illegal labor force being paid so much less, which drags everyones wages way down in many areas of work. I read this Sunday in the Arizona Republic that the states biggest employer is Walmart.

We're working, but it's not all that great. If we are going to just have to scratch out a living for awhile, we'd rather do it where we wish we were living and near those who mean so much to us. We came out here thinking we'd better ourselves. It has made us tougher, so I guess that's a good thing, lol!

I don't mean this as some anti-Phoenix rant, I'm illustrating that the grass might seem greener on the other side, no matter where you want to live, but it might not be the answer that you think it is. Don't jump as fast as we did. Do your homework thoroughly. We had a monkey wrench thrown into our plans because our house sold so shockingly fast: in one week! Our original plan was for my husband to stay with some friends in Phoenix and look for work, leaving me to hold things up in Michigan. Had he learned what we know now we would have found another way and saved Arizona for a possible winter retirement area one day. For everything we left Michigan for, there is something equally as frustrating or more in our new area.

Anyway.....we have been able to get a mortgage on an inexpensive older home on the west side of the state, where we always wanted to live anyway. We'll be there before the serious snow flies! We might not get rich, but we're pretty sure we'll be happy once we get ourselves up and working. I miss grass. And trees. And water. There are some serious water problems going on both south and southwest.....don't take Michigan's abundant resource for granted!

So...sorry so long, but that's our story.

Northernguys Other Half

[Br1234]

Originally Posted by Cato the Elder

This is one of the most spot-on posts ever written here. There is such a kick-MI-while-it's-down-and-talk-about-how-great-every-other-place-is mentality here that reality is often difficult to gauge.

Spot-on only because its someone who agrees with you.

You can't deny the actual facts. MI is #9 in taxes and #1 in unemployment. Sure every state has its problems but if MI doesn't fix itself fast, it will get worse, a lot worse. Kicking back with the wool pulled over your eyes and saying MI is great is just plain irresponsible.

I'm putting a small business together and SERIOUSLY considering bailing on MI so I can keep more of my HARD EARNED moula and not send it to the welfare recipients in Detroit and the corrupt ms. grandholm.

[Cato the Elder]

Originally Posted by Br1234

Spot-on only because its someone who agrees with you.

You can't deny the actual facts. MI is #9 in taxes and #1 in unemployment. Sure every state has its problems but if MI doesn't fix itself fast, it will get worse, a lot worse. Kicking back with the wool pulled over your eyes and saying MI is great is just plain irresponsible.

I'm putting a small business together and SERIOUSLY considering bailing on MI so I can keep more of my HARD EARNED moula and not send it to the welfare recipients in Detroit and the corrupt ms. grandholm.

Give me a break - the poster doesn't agree with me b/c I've had zero opinions about Phoenix. I have no opinions about the nitty-gritty specifics of Phoenix that the poster detailed so eloquently b/c I am not familiar with them. So stop with the accusations about axe grinding when it's plainly obvious that you have the axe to grind. You want to bail? Then bail already and take some cheese with you to go with your whine. Point out one post by me that states that MI is doing so great. At most, I point out that it's not nearly as bad as you Michigeddon people make it out to be, but that wouldn't be that difficult, would it? I could point out ways that Baghdad's better than the way some of you describe MI these days. But we say ONE thing positive about MI, and your pity-party is ruined and out comes the "wool over the eyes" posts, LOL.

[soothsayer1234]

Originally Posted by Br1234

Spot-on only because its someone who agrees with you.

You can't deny the actual facts. MI is #9 in taxes and #1 in unemployment. Sure every state has its problems but if MI doesn't fix itself fast, it will get worse, a lot worse. Kicking back with the wool pulled over your eyes and saying MI is great is just plain irresponsible.

I'm putting a small business together and SERIOUSLY considering bailing on MI so I can keep more of my HARD EARNED moula and not send it to the welfare recipients in Detroit and the corrupt ms. grandholm.

I think people here are referring to jumping from the frying pan into the fire. People have always migrated to other states enmasse for work. In the 50's and 60's, reams of people migrated to Michigan from the south. The key is to have something lined up, and/or a viable skill to parlay. If you lack skills, or marketable skills anyway, no place will serve as a job mecca. This is the case more than ever with illegals, particularly hispanic illegals. Now, THEY have all those jobs that used to pay a living wage, and you will be competing with THEM in Phoenix, Florida, Nevada, and Texas, amonst other places. If you will uproot only to compete with cheap hispanic labor, may as well stay home and work with whatever local connections you have to survive, or at least develop new skills before you leave. I think most of the folks displaced in Michigan were involved in manufacturing. In that case, the power structure in this country has decided that those workers are redundant for some reason, and has outsourced and shut down reams of plants. I suppose they expect these people to move to the southwest, kiss their $30-40 hour salary good-bye, and compete with illegals for 7-10 dollar jobs, or with 21-year-olds for 8 dollar an hour home depot jobs. My advice to those leaving michigan is to stay far away from the coolie labor southwest, and try someplace in our midwest that still pays living wages. You still have a few viable cities out in our neck of the woods, like Minneapolis-St. Paul, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Chicago, Madison, Columbus, Cincinnati, and even Milwaukee. You may laugh, but at least they pay a living wage. Think before you leap................. I have included another post on this issue, so well written and informative that I thought it best to include it as well.
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Before anyone moves to Phoenix, please understand here that wages are very low, to the point where it might not be financially advantageous to do so. To those that live here permanently, it's time to start protesting low wages. I think middle and lower middle class workers (< $40,000 yr) in the Phoenix metropolitan area should start engaging in peaceful, law abiding protests that communicate to business leaders that workers in this town will no longer tolerate platry wages. Phoenix is no longer an inexpensive place to live like it used to be, and those who move here under this illusion that's "it's so cheap to live out there, who cares if most jobs pay under $10 an hour" are in for a rude awakening. Companies in Phoenix are exploiting the business and tax friendly nature of this state. Whether I'm employed or not, I look at the employment ads regularly and in the past 10 years in Phoenix, wages for most middle and lower income jobs have remained stagnant and in some cases have declined, while inflation and the cost of living continue to soar. Furthermore, because the Phoenix metro area is so crime ridden, living in a safe neighborhood, requires a rent that's on par with a similar safe neighorhood in San Diego or Orange Counties. In other words, in order to escape crime and unsavory people in this town, you have to rent in an upper class area, whereas in CA, you can feel safe in a middle class neighborhood because the crime rate is a lot lower. Check city-data.com for statistics and they will surprise you.
I think workers in this state should start boycotts and ingenious forms or law-abiding protests, info campaigns etc to tell companies that you can't live on less than $12 an hour here in metro Phoenix and that given the working conditions most employers in the valley offer and the cost of living, the new floor for most semi-skilled work should be $15 an hour. Tell CEO's they will reclaim any loss in profit by having a more happy, healthy and productive workforce, which will raise efficiency and negate any profit loss. I think it's time we start to change Arizona's reputation as a low wage state. Imagine if hundreds of thousands of people made a small sacrifice and didn't attend work for a couple days to send a message to employers about wage exploitation. What if tend of thousands of college students decided they weren't going to enroll in college because they don't see a return on their tuition and time investment, since most non engineering college grads in this town probably make less than $15 an hour. Tell employers to start rewarding a college degree since roughly only 25% of adults in the country posess one. Let's start valuing education and W2 work in this state. Let's start demanding that Phoenix metro area employers raise wages!!