Michigan economy and impression. (Grand Rapids, Lansing: real estate, houses, lease)

[Cato the Elder]

Originally Posted by Indentured Servant

I think that the first thing that people should do is to check their political biases at the door and take an honest look at what is happening in America. Michigan is only having a problem because AMERICA is having a problem. Unfortunately the state of Michigan does not have its own currency and Monetary instrument the equivalent of the Federal Reserve to simply print more money or extend credit via cheap interest rates when it wants to stimulate economic growth. Moreover, the state does not have the ability to control the metrics used to calculate the consumer price index (CPI) to make the GDP of the state appear healthier than it actually is.

Michigan’s economy has traditionally been a leading indicator of the direction of the national economy. There is no “one state recession”. We are in a national recession right now but people do not know it because the government is using statistics that are observably bogus. The US has likely been in recession for the last 2 years, but the fact that inflation is being understated hides this fact and hence manipulated consumer sentiment to be more optimistic than it actually should be. Things are going to also get a lot worse before they get better and when things get better they will not return to peak highs as the standard of living of Middle America will be in decline for the foreseeable future.

Free market capitalism will from hence forth provide diminishing returns for Middle Americans, the equal and opposite consequence of the increasing returns it offers for people in China, India, Brazil and other nations. The truth is that you were never taught the truth of how America made it to the top. World Wars I and II decimated all the major economies of the world except the US. That created a monopolistic global position for America. Countries needed our loans, resources, goods and services and the like, which created such strong economic demand that it created unsustainable prosperity for this nation. Everyone who has taken econ 101 knows the wealth to be gained from a captive market monopoly…..and that is why anti trust laws exist in this nation.

As more countries recovered from the aftermath of WW I and II the US monopoly was eroded via competition. However, the growth of China and India and their combined third of the global population of humanity have really sunk the US worker. Think of it this way. The US is like K-mart in the retail sector. Once mighty discount retailer K-mart really had no competition in that discount market. It had a monopoly and the company was booming. Then came Target which started taking market share from K-mart then Wal-Mart exploded onto the seen and K-mart eventually diminished due to market competition. The same is true of the US auto Industry before a host of other nations started building cars too. China and India and the growth of their economies and production do to the US economically what Target, Wal-Mart, Toyota and Honda did to Kmart and the US auto industry!

There are many more undeveloped nations and peoples who will enter the global competition for production, consumption and resources and as they enter the market they erode the standard of living of the American worker who price themselves out of the market with high wages and benefits. The only way that the American worker can compete is if they reduce their rates of pay to compete with third world pay…..lest they lose their jobs altogether to third world nations….courtesy of American corporations seeking to find the path of least resistance to corporate profits, which is cheap labor and environmental cost.


I have a lot more that I could say…..but I think that people need to stop focusing on Michigan as the source or epicenter of this problem and start looking globally.

Excellent post - unfortunately, those who are determined to use MI as their whipping boy will continue to focus on minutiae and highlight data in their favor, regardless of the overall picture.

800 new jobs in Grand Rapids, that's a drop in the bucket! (Two weeks later) They're closing down a metal plant and 200 people will lose their jobs - it's the end of the world! LOL

[mejami]

I love hearing all the good comments about Detroit. I am in the central part of the city. In my neighborhood, there has been a lot of renovation. Where a lot of boarded up houses and burned out houses used to be, there are now brand new homes that are occupied. I have seen other areas the same (not just single homes, but blocks of brand new homes). This area is being cleaned up of the drugs and prostitutes. I am still waiting on new businesses to begin to open. I have no doubt in my mind that Detroit is going to improve when we get leadership that will make wise choices.
I look at all the trouble with the WATER situation down south, and the fires out west and wonder if the ones that fled Detroit would reconsider returning. My son lives in Montgomery where he went to school. He says its laid back there, but he misses DETROIT. I am really believing that Detroit will turn things around.

[suydam]

Originally Posted by mejami

I love hearing all the good comments about Detroit. I am in the central part of the city. In my neighborhood, there has been a lot of renovation. Where a lot of boarded up houses and burned out houses used to be, there are now brand new homes that are occupied. I have seen other areas the same (not just single homes, but blocks of brand new homes). This area is being cleaned up of the drugs and prostitutes. I am still waiting on new businesses to begin to open. I have no doubt in my mind that Detroit is going to improve when we get leadership that will make wise choices.
I look at all the trouble with the WATER situation down south, and the fires out west and wonder if the ones that fled Detroit would reconsider returning. My son lives in Montgomery where he went to school. He says its laid back there, but he misses DETROIT. I am really believing that Detroit will turn things around.

Detroit is a big city, it takes a long time to turn things around...but I have confidence that as soon as Kwame gets voted out things will get better even more quickly than they already are.

If you go into the city of Detroit today and compare it to 20 years ago, it's night-and-day...so much safer downtown, so much more to do, many more places to eat, drink, be merry.

Detroit is not all doom-and-gloom, even while the economy suffers greatly in the entire area, The D is trying to turn things around and I think succeeding in many ways. Every time I drive to Wayne State I see new loft condos going up...that stuff makes the news in Grand Rapids (and fuels the optimism of its residents). I don't know why you never hear about that stuff going on in Detroit...it IS there, and things ARE getting better in the city. It's just 5 times the size of Grand Rapids, so it takes 5 times as long for things to improve.

[Indentured Servant]

Originally Posted by tecpatl

The scandal is how unaware some (many) people are to the changing world and, thus, how unprepared they are to meet it.

A metal plant closes...terrible news for South Haven and for the employees, and a symptom of the old world going away. And it won't come back. Guys who put nuts & bolts together on an assembly line for a living are all in danger of losing their jobs, and that situation, as sad and terrible as it is, is only going to get worse. It's the old world, like it or not. The auto companies and the UAW are both scrambling to make themselves relevant and successful in the new world, and I very much hope it works. It will be an uphill battle.

New jobs happen, new industries happen. Who thought Google would be...well. GOOGLE, 10 years ago?
Not too long ago a woman who lives near me in Leelanau County was operating a business out of her home with a couple employees. She had some bright ideas and worked hard to make them happen. She just bought a huge (for our area) office building from an oil exploration company to accomodate the huge growth of her business...a NEW world business. And one that's hiring as fast as they can find qualified people.
Leelanau Enterprise » Oneupweb moves to plush building overloooking Bay

I think we should look at the “changing world” abstractly instead of nominally. In other words, instead of seeing the assembly line worker or the nuts and bolts worker as the poster child of who will be hurt by the changing world, we need to look a little deeper so that no one is given a false sense of security. Manufacturing jobs were threatened because people in other nations could assemble goods a lot cheaper. Well…..manufacturing is not the only profession that can be done cheaper someplace else. Engineers, Computer scientist, Architects and a host of others professions can be just as easily off shored as manufacturing and in fact are. The only professions in America that are safe are professional services where it is imperative that the service provider be local….like a doctor, physical therapist or any health care related profession, lawyers, judges, police, fireman, cashier, waitress, retail clerk, food service personnel….for example.

America for a long time drained the brains from the rest of the world. The best and brightest of many then third world nations could only find opportunity in the US. Many were attracted here to attend prestigious US universities which are in abundance and lacking in their own nation. If you look at the graduate schools of American universities, they are close to being majority foreign students. The trend now is that more of these bright foreign students are going back to their native country and finding opportunities and not become a benefit for the US economy. Another trend is that many nations like China and India are evolving their own highly accredited top notch universities. Therefore, the “brain drain” trend that benefit the US economy is slowing as the best and brightest of many nations are staying in their own country to the benefit of their countries economy and competitiveness.

Somehow American seems to have this notion that we are inherently the smartest people on earth. We keep thinking that knowledge capital is ultimately what is going to keep the US economy on top of the world. What? Did I miss something? The last I checked US students were not even ranked in the top 10 globally in math and science testing and the trend is that we keep falling further behind. As I pointed out earlier, the majority of Graduate students at the best universities in this country, certainly in disciplines like, Engineering and computer science, are foreign students. If we cannot drain the brains of other nations like we have done in the past, how do we expect to maintain intellectual advantage? We can’t.

This country is going to take a BIG hit reality check over the next 10 years that will force some structural changes in America. Old paradigms will have to be scraped and our nation will have to be “reinvented” to stabilize itself to compete in a changing world.

[tecpatl]

Originally Posted by Indentured Servant

I think we should look at the “changing world” abstractly instead of nominally. In other words, instead of seeing the assembly line worker or the nuts and bolts worker as the poster child of who will be hurt by the changing world, we need to look a little deeper so that no one is given a false sense of security. Manufacturing jobs were threatened because people in other nations could assemble goods a lot cheaper. Well…..manufacturing is not the only profession that can be done cheaper someplace else. Engineers, Computer scientist, Architects and a host of others professions can be just as easily off shored as manufacturing and in fact are. The only professions in America that are safe are professional services where it is imperative that the service provider be local….like a doctor, physical therapist or any health care related profession, lawyers, judges, police, fireman, cashier, waitress, retail clerk, food service personnel….for example.

America for a long time drained the brains from the rest of the world. The best and brightest of many then third world nations could only find opportunity in the US. Many were attracted here to attend prestigious US universities which are in abundance and lacking in their own nation. If you look at the graduate schools of American universities, they are close to being majority foreign students. The trend now is that more of these bright foreign students are going back to their native country and finding opportunities and not become a benefit for the US economy. Another trend is that many nations like China and India are evolving their own highly accredited top notch universities. Therefore, the “brain drain” trend that benefit the US economy is slowing as the best and brightest of many nations are staying in their own country to the benefit of their countries economy and competitiveness.

Somehow American seems to have this notion that we are inherently the smartest people on earth. We keep thinking that knowledge capital is ultimately what is going to keep the US economy on top of the world. What? Did I miss something? The last I checked US students were not even ranked in the top 10 globally in math and science testing and the trend is that we keep falling further behind. As I pointed out earlier, the majority of Graduate students at the best universities in this country, certainly in disciplines like, Engineering and computer science, are foreign students. If we cannot drain the brains of other nations like we have done in the past, how do we expect to maintain intellectual advantage? We can’t.

This country is going to take a BIG hit reality check over the next 10 years that will force some structural changes in America. Old paradigms will have to be scraped and our nation will have to be “reinvented” to stabilize itself to compete in a changing world.

Great post, Indentured Servant! I was trying to use the nuts n bolts vs. new idea (web search optimization firm) just as an example for ...ahem...some people who need to have things spelled out clearly with examples and pictures.
There is huge creativity and energy in the USA, but so much of popular culture, as seen in mass media, is not concerned with anything more important than what club Paris and Britney were partying in last night. We scorn and mock hard working students and employees.
You're correct that US students don't rank very highly in science and math when compared to other countries, and that fact alone is very dangerous for us in the long term. Americans also tend to be pretty ignorant about the rest of the world.
The idea that the USA must be the logical destination for everyone else in the world is so widely held..and so wrong. This might have been (somewhat more) true decades ago, but today the notion is a fantasy of Americans who are up to their necks in exceptionalism and know no better. So many well educated people head right back home after getting a degree or three in the US, and this trend will continue to grow as worldwide communication continues to improve.

This is true not only of the educated classes, but the blue collar folks as well.

We are just sure that all Mexican immigrants, especially illegal ones, are here to put down permanent roots because they couldn't possibly want to live in their own country.
When one travels long and hard in Mexico one discovers lots and lots of people who used to live in the USA, but happily returned to their native land after making enough money to get a leg up at home. They had no desire whatsoever to live permanently in this country and eagerly returned to home and family as soon as they had enough money to build a house, start a business, whatever.
Try and tell the 'fence builders" that....they just can't buy it. But it's very, very common, and when the economy of Mexico improves it's another trend that will grow.
Maybe some of the Britneys and Paris's we're training can take over those strawberry picking, busboy and roofing jobs!
I hate to sound too gloomy, maybe it's just the November weather.
Anyway, great post.

[100%Michigan]

Thanks for the post everyone. Please countinue to post many more, I would dislike to close this thread... so keep it alive.

Even though it didnt have to do much with Michigan economy alone... you all are right about USA position. We use to be the country that everyone wanted to move to, not so much now. I was told by a few people that when they visit another country the people were polite and asked them where are you from. When they said USA their reaction to it was shock, and fearful for them. Although years before they left USA people use to always say I want to visit America I heard its a nice place. Reality hit, people image of America is starting to change... reason of is your oppinion. We as Americans should also try to stay in our country with these cooperations because if we dont we can start draging the economy in a hole. I heard most people start companies out of the USA because they can pay people cheaper and have the products shift to the USA. We want to keep America a competitive country, by giving our Americans a better economy ( My oppinion. )
I also wanted to comment on the Detroit and Grand Rapids area. I heard that Grand Rapids is starting to bloom and become a stable city. I did visit Grand Rapids and it was a very nice place. Detroit I still sorta have the image of it from years before my time. I would have to visit Detroit and see how its being brought out. I hope the downtown is very shopable and safe.
( Not long ago Michigan had one city with a population over a million people. That city population is now decreasing, I would like to see that city be brought back up. )

[Br1234]

Originally Posted by Cato the Elder

Excellent post - unfortunately, those who are determined to use MI as their whipping boy will continue to focus on minutiae and highlight data in their favor, regardless of the overall picture.

800 new jobs in Grand Rapids, that's a drop in the bucket! (Two weeks later) They're closing down a metal plant and 200 people will lose their jobs - it's the end of the world! LOL

Add 160 more to that.


WOODTV.com & WOOD TV8 - Grand Rapids news, weather, sports and video - Synergis closes immediately; 160 lose jobs

You can be the one to tell these 360 people their job loss is trivial.

[magellan]

Originally Posted by Br1234

Add 160 more to that.


WOODTV.com & WOOD TV8 - Grand Rapids news, weather, sports and video - Synergis closes immediately; 160 lose jobs

You can be the one to tell these 360 people their job loss is trivial.

Cato didn't say they were trivial. Synergis is one of the few automotive tool-n-die makers left in town. Their days were numbered.

In other news, just around the corner from them, Grand Rapids Plastics reopened recently after being bought out and destroyed by a Detroit area businessman about 4 - 5 years ago. They already have 30 new employees.

[Cato the Elder]

Originally Posted by magellan

Cato didn't say they were trivial. Synergis is one of the few automotive tool-n-die makers left in town. Their days were numbered.

In other news, just around the corner from them, Grand Rapids Plastics reopened recently after being bought out and destroyed by a Detroit area businessman about 4 - 5 years ago. They already have 30 new employees.

Yep, I was just pointing out how uneven it is that some people post headline after headline of some company doing well and adding jobs and it's at best ignored or at worst disparaged as "pulling wool over eyes" by the irrational haters out there. YET, every time some plant, usually on its last legs anyway, closes down, it's used as the poster child to supposedly represent how the entire state is doing. Yes, manufacturing was/is a big part of the state, but this mentality disrespects all the other aspects of the state that are thankfully not tied to manufacturing.

[Br1234]

[quote=magellan;1957005]Cato didn't say they were trivial. quote]


Quote from cato: "Excellent post - unfortunately, those who are determined to use MI as their whipping boy will continue to focus on minutiae and highlight data in their favor, regardless of the overall picture."