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Old 06-01-2011, 07:40 AM
 
7,357 posts, read 11,687,825 times
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I saw yesterday in the Freep that the Big Three are planning to hire 62,000 people in the immediate future. These are full-time, hourly and salaried positions with bennies.

And yet I see no threads devoted to this here at the Michigan forum, no down-and-outs doing handsprings on streetcorners, no unluckies throwing away their "Will Work For Food" signs. Do people not want to believe it until they see it?
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Old 06-01-2011, 07:52 AM
 
Location: Grand Rapids Metro
8,882 posts, read 19,775,119 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cliffie View Post
I saw yesterday in the Freep that the Big Three are planning to hire 62,000 people in the immediate future. These are full-time, hourly and salaried positions with bennies.

And yet I see no threads devoted to this here at the Michigan forum, no down-and-outs doing handsprings on streetcorners, no unluckies throwing away their "Will Work For Food" signs. Do people not want to believe it until they see it?
People have been clamoring for Michigan to become more "diversified" and divest in manufacturing and look what it did to our State? It decimated almost a million jobs and drove hundreds of thousands out of the State.

Yet, if any Southern town was announcing that they were getting even 1700 automotive jobs, they'd be shutting down the town square and having the biggest celebration in history (see Volkswagen Tennessee in the latest news). 62,000 jobs is friggin phenomenal, not even counting the spinoff jobs that manufacturing jobs create.
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Old 06-01-2011, 07:59 AM
 
Location: Loving life in Gaylord!
4,120 posts, read 8,865,145 times
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I think people are kinda scared. Are we really in a recovery or just a tiny...short lived upswing. If things go bad there be massive layoffs again, so most arent getting real excited about it just yet.
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Old 06-01-2011, 08:46 AM
 
4,861 posts, read 9,259,226 times
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^ What he said.

I think it's going to take a long time for the Big Three to rebuild trust in the American public, particularly those of us who live in "Big Three Country" and have seen first hand what happened when they didn't try to run a tight ship or work hard to outdo the foreign competition. Right now, I would bet my Ford Fusion against any Honda or Toyota product, but I still teeter between believing that the Big Three are "in it to win it" and wondering if they are going to sink back into apathy if they get too successful again and don't keep the right guys at the helm. Time will tell, and in the meantime, I think that Michiganders are going to be very cautiously optomistic about news like all these new jobs being created until time proves that the Big Three are back to stay and that it's permanent and not just something to depend on until the next big wave of layoffs.
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Old 06-01-2011, 08:47 AM
 
Location: FLINT (yeah you read that right!), MI
336 posts, read 904,967 times
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Like many, I'm in "I'll believe it when I see it" mode.
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Old 06-01-2011, 08:47 AM
 
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If you let other people or news headlines decide your happiness, then you need to take a close look at yourself. :-)
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Old 06-01-2011, 09:31 AM
 
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What people fail to realize is that a large component of economics is this psychological phenomenon known as “confidence”. Economics is largely a confidence game where optimism and pessimism create self-fulfilling prophecy. I would say that 60% of Michigan’s economic problems are structural and 40% the self-reinforced impact of negativity. Detroit’s, the city proper, problems are 40% structural and 60% psychological. Suburban and Outstate Detroit willed the death of Detroit by their self-reinforcing pessimism and negativity which hurt trade, commerce, tourism, population and the like.

Michigan structurally hit bottom a couple of years ago. The wages in the state are way down and union pay is way down, there is a new business tax climate which businesses seem to favor, real estate is dirt cheap…..This is what companies look for…..exploitable factors that increase their bottom lines, unfortunately at the consequence of labor rates. Companies simply seek the path of least resistance to profit and they flow to areas with low taxes, low wages and low regulation. I am hardly a Republican (or democrat for that matter), but I understand economics very well and I understand that businesses gravitate to such environments. It’s not an issue of whether I agree or disagree or condemn or advocate such…..it’s just the way things work.

I recall the days of this forum when people were talking about “the one state recession” and I would interject that the rest of the nation would follow. Many people dissented. I posted on other forum, back in like 2004 and 2005 that the nation was headed for an economic collapse……and they banned me from the sight for being “too negative”. I recognized that the unsustainable path the nation was on with its Federal reserve policies, government debt, trade deficits, the growth of China, India, the growth of oil consumption being greater than the grown of discovery of new oil reserves (meaning higher prices down the line). Unlike negatively against a place like Detroit, which results in economic decline because of the choices people make, our national decline is really beyond our control, because it’s the corollary impact of things out of our control in other parts of the world.

Michigan has hit relative bottom. The only way Michigan goes down, now, is if the nation goes down as a whole, which is still a 50/50 probability of it crashing, but almost a 100% probability of a declining standard of living for some time to come. In other words, if and when we come back as a nation it will be at a much, much lower standard of living from our peak prosperity years. The NEW MICHIGAN will not offer the prosperity of the OLD MICHIGAN in its heyday, but it will be one of the better states in the nation as far as jobs and opportunity in the next 5 or 10 years. Its already has climbed itself up from many WORST rakings.
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Old 06-01-2011, 12:01 PM
 
Location: Southern Minnesota
5,984 posts, read 13,358,500 times
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We cannot base our economy on the auto industry again. Any place that bases its economy on one industry is doomed to economic failure -- not just Michigan. Look at Las Vegas and Orlando, which based their economies around the construction industry, and are now deeply depressed. If Michigan is to become one of the most economically vital states in the country, it cannot rely on the Big Three.
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Old 06-01-2011, 12:12 PM
 
4,861 posts, read 9,259,226 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by northstar22 View Post
We cannot base our economy on the auto industry again. Any place that bases its economy on one industry is doomed to economic failure -- not just Michigan. Look at Las Vegas and Orlando, which based their economies around the construction industry, and are now deeply depressed. If Michigan is to become one of the most economically vital states in the country, it cannot rely on the Big Three.
I think that was Governor Snyder's thought when he introduced legislation to get rid of the cumbersome business tax that prevented businesses from moving to Michigan. (I'm not saying I'm for all of his legislative proposals, I'm just saying what it appears that he's trying to accomplish.) Also, these new jobs with the Big Three, at least the blue collar ones, pay substantially lower than the same jobs did until recently when the UAW agreed to concessions on a lot of things, including wages. A new worker on the line at any of the Big Three can plan on making between $14-15/hr., as opposed to the $28-30/hr. that their counterparts who started with the company in previous years make. I wonder if the Big Three cutting their wages to match those in right to work states will catch on and more businesses will move to Michigan with the idea of paying a lower hourly rate than was previously considered possible. It wouldn't be a perfect fix, since few families could survive on one wage earner making $14-15/hr., but it would definitely put more people back to work, there would just have to be more two income families than before.
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Old 06-01-2011, 12:50 PM
 
13,806 posts, read 9,642,573 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by northstar22 View Post
We cannot base our economy on the auto industry again. Any place that bases its economy on one industry is doomed to economic failure -- not just Michigan. Look at Las Vegas and Orlando, which based their economies around the construction industry, and are now deeply depressed. If Michigan is to become one of the most economically vital states in the country, it cannot rely on the Big Three.
The goal is NOT or SHOULD NOT be to limit mfg growth in the state because we don't want to be dominated by MFG again. I don't see this as being an either or issue. Furthermore, if mfg dies in America AMERICA DIES.....PERIOD. We cannot be a finance based, real estate, internet based economy. We thought it was ok to transition from the old economy to the new economy, like when we went from agrarian to industrial. However, the agrarian economy never went away.....the labor just became obsolete due to innovation. In fact, that automation has caused America and Michigan more factory jobs than any other factor. However, you cannot be a great nation and a world power without a strong manufacturing sector.
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