foolmenot.comFor many years the union influence on the Democratic Party has served its members well in Michigan. We are now going through a period of payback. Michigan lost its hold on the automotive industry because it gave in to union demands again and again. The industry didn’t care because it just raised the price of the automobile… Along came foreign competitors who paid attention to quality and chose manufacturing sites in states that didn’t have union influence.
The author of the story, below, misses the point completely by not examining the real cause; it was not political bickering, that is dumb! Unions will continue to do well by their members as long as there is no competition…
Education in Michigan is suffering the same fate; albeit only the beginning… MEA influence via member dues continues to buy politicians with bottom-line results being teachers being paid more than all states except New York and New Jersey; other Democratic rock beds.
However, lurking in the background are various charter school ventures becoming more and more popular, and giving kids a better education, and less expensive.
Every time the Democrats are up against the wall, they blame both parties… This article is no exception!
Full article follows…
Michigan business
TOM WALSH: Michigan devalues education
Power: Political action paralyzed
March 9, 2006
It's easy to see why Michigan is in economic distress. We're way out of whack with the rest of America.
In Michigan, workers in auto assembly and major parts manufacturing operations made an average annual wage of $70,260 in 2004. In the other 49 states, the average wage was $52,452 for such workers.
That same year, the average wage in the information technology, financial, managerial and professional sectors was $62,747 in Michigan and $66,219 in the rest of the country.
Do the math and you see that the other 49 states pay a premium of nearly $14,000 a year for so-called knowledge workers in job categories that are expanding, compared with auto industry manufacturing workers. But in Michigan, those knowledge workers so coveted elsewhere earn $7,500 less than people in auto manufacturing.
So it's not surprising Michigan ranks in the bottom one-third of U.S. states in educational attainment. There hasn't been much incentive.
"No wonder Michigan is having such a hard time," says Lou Glazer, president of nonprofit think tank Michigan Future Inc., one of 200 business, civic and labor leaders who will participate Tuesday in an invitation-only conference at the University of Michigan on the state's distressed economy. Glazer provided the numbers above, crunched from U.S. Department of Labor data by U-M professors George Fulton and Donald Grimes.
But what can be done about the Michigan disconnect? How can the state's policy makers accelerate the transition to a cutting-edge economic model based on education, talent and innovation?
Brainstorming potential solutions in a nonpolitical environment -- no elected officeholders allowed -- is the aim of the conference, cosponsored by U-M's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and the Center for Michigan, a nonprofit group created recently by former newspaper publisher and U-M regent Phil Power.
Power, 67, a self-described moderate-to-conservative Democrat who sold his HomeTown Communications Network chain of local newspapers to Gannett Co., Inc. last year, said in an interview Wednesday that Michigan's politicians "seem unable or unwilling to enact the kind of economic policy to get through this really tough time.
"The political process is paralyzed by the ideologues of the right and the left," he said, noting the failure of the state Legislature and Gov. Jennifer Granholm to agree on a major overhaul of the Single Business Tax.
But even if Republicans and Democrats work in harmony, what can political leaders really do anyway to fix Michigan's economy when the overriding problem is that the state's two largest corporations, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., and many of their suppliers are sick?
Power conceded that there's not much state officeholders can do directly to help GM, Delphi Corp. and UAW fix Delphi so it can emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
U-M economics and industrial relations professors Joel Slemrod and Fulton will be among the experts presenting papers on Michigan's tax structure, industrial outlook and other issues. Breakout group discussions will be led by Glazer, former state economic czar Doug Rothwell and others.
No state government, acting alone, can fix its economy or make it suddenly attractive to the next innovative job-creating companies, Power added.
"But the state can help create an environment where lightning has a better chance of striking." he said. "Our tax system is loony. We can do things to fix the chronic state budget deficit. We can help fix the problem of educating our citizens."
Rather than let the state's image as a rust-belt industrial backwater continue to erode, Power suggested that a unified effort of all factions could reposition Michigan as the nation's Third Coast, a land of natural beauty and economic vitality.
Sound like a stretch?
Sure it does.
Even Power concedes that the economic conference sponsored by what he calls his think-and-do tank could be a total flop. "Everything could blow up in our face," he said.
"Or," he added, "we could actually get to a nonpartisan policy agenda that elevates the political discourse, which has been pretty impoverished."
No harm in trying.
Contact TOM WALSH at 313-223-4430 or twalsh@freepress.com.