News
ENLARGE
They say travel broadens the mind, and it's true. I recently visited a place much worse off than California. In fact, Michigan may well be our first failed state.
We know figures: more than 14 percent unemployment, much of it persistent, not cyclical; a deficit that ballooned from $1.4 to $2.4 billion in the past nine months, largely because the state refuses to control spending. Revenues that grew by only .3 percent last year. A budget that is more than one-third Federal subsidies. Seven billion dollars of Spendulus funds received, of which only about 17 percent went to anything other than transfer payments and government growth. An exodus of people so large that the only question is, will the state lose one congressional district, or two? Educated people, by the way. People Michigan desperately needs.
We hear stories: plants shuttered, people thrown out of work with no prospects, relief programs stretched to the breaking point and beyond. The city of Flint, once a thriving light manufacturing and commercial hub with a stable, middle-class population, is now considering shutting down entire sections of town it can no longer afford to service. That's right: A whole city may evaporate into thin air. And it may not be the last.
We see pictures: block after city block of Detroit, once a world-class manufacturing powerhouse, reduced to burned-out wreckage. Factories that formerly produced cars, trucks, engines and everything associated with one of this country's primary industries reduced to gutted ruins, their torn-out interiors home only to rats and wind-driven rain.
There are less noticeable economic indicators: suburbs sport huge housing developments with paved streets and all the services — but only three homes. And no ongoing construction. Nothing. Without activity, these ghost developments have a slightly Twilight-Zonish feel to them. Outside major cities, gravel roads are reappearing; there's no money to maintain pavement on some rural highways.
The city of Lansing, Michigan's capital, cannot enforce a law requiring property owners to keep their sidewalks free of snow, since there isn't enough revenue to pay a person to process tickets for violating the ordinance.
In the malls two days before Christmas, there was less bustle than one might have expected; perhaps it was the shuttered shops, or maybe the wider-than-usual aisles in the stores that were still open. Most shoppers seemed preoccupied — and not in a festive way. Perhaps they were just beaten by circumstance. They looked down a lot. It was somber.
Michigan is a warning to us all about the consequences of actions and attitudes that are all too common in America today. I'm not referring specifically to politics or to economics, although they play a part; instead I'm referring to the thinking that lies behind and beneath both, and which has wrought the enormous destruction we now see in the Great Lake State. Basically, this thinking holds that reality can be disregarded if inconvenient, or if we all believe strongly enough. This is what will have to change if the rest of us are to escape Michigan's fate.
The most widespread aspect of this thinking is our attitude of entitlement. It leads to — among other things — demands for a $30 an hour wage to produce a product an employer can sell for the equivalent of $20 an hour at the most. Needless to say, this can only end in tears when the employer is forced to close his doors. Michigan has seen plenty of this; as a consequence, it has finally begun to realize that Aesop's Goose is more than a fairy tale.
Entitlement also drives political decisions to provide more and more government services to more and more people, financed either by taxing an easily demonized minority (the rich, for example) or by robbing our grandchildren. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the first to worry about the implications of this, but by no means the last.
Closely related is the belief that the good times must roll forever, and that the slightest inconvenience or pain is unthinkable. This attitude explains why government giveaways never disappear. It also underpins the economic bubbles of the past decade. Its blind optimism absolves people of the need to be prudent, to plan for the future and to take responsibility for their own lives — not popular topics in our current epoch.
Michigan is an object lesson in what continuing down our current path will bring: gradual, then accelerating impoverishment, loss of competitive ability and finally, collapse as reality crashes in. Because reality — despite our hopes, our wishes, our dreams — is the final arbiter.
Whether we like what it has to say, or not.
Summit County resident Morgan Liddick pens a Tuesday column. E-mail him at mcliddick@hotmail.com. Also, comment on this column at www.summitdaily.com.
We know figures: more than 14 percent unemployment, much of it persistent, not cyclical; a deficit that ballooned from $1.4 to $2.4 billion in the past nine months, largely because the state refuses to control spending. Revenues that grew by only .3 percent last year. A budget that is more than one-third Federal subsidies. Seven billion dollars of Spendulus funds received, of which only about 17 percent went to anything other than transfer payments and government growth. An exodus of people so large that the only question is, will the state lose one congressional district, or two? Educated people, by the way. People Michigan desperately needs.
We hear stories: plants shuttered, people thrown out of work with no prospects, relief programs stretched to the breaking point and beyond. The city of Flint, once a thriving light manufacturing and commercial hub with a stable, middle-class population, is now considering shutting down entire sections of town it can no longer afford to service. That's right: A whole city may evaporate into thin air. And it may not be the last.
We see pictures: block after city block of Detroit, once a world-class manufacturing powerhouse, reduced to burned-out wreckage. Factories that formerly produced cars, trucks, engines and everything associated with one of this country's primary industries reduced to gutted ruins, their torn-out interiors home only to rats and wind-driven rain.
There are less noticeable economic indicators: suburbs sport huge housing developments with paved streets and all the services — but only three homes. And no ongoing construction. Nothing. Without activity, these ghost developments have a slightly Twilight-Zonish feel to them. Outside major cities, gravel roads are reappearing; there's no money to maintain pavement on some rural highways.
The city of Lansing, Michigan's capital, cannot enforce a law requiring property owners to keep their sidewalks free of snow, since there isn't enough revenue to pay a person to process tickets for violating the ordinance.
In the malls two days before Christmas, there was less bustle than one might have expected; perhaps it was the shuttered shops, or maybe the wider-than-usual aisles in the stores that were still open. Most shoppers seemed preoccupied — and not in a festive way. Perhaps they were just beaten by circumstance. They looked down a lot. It was somber.
Michigan is a warning to us all about the consequences of actions and attitudes that are all too common in America today. I'm not referring specifically to politics or to economics, although they play a part; instead I'm referring to the thinking that lies behind and beneath both, and which has wrought the enormous destruction we now see in the Great Lake State. Basically, this thinking holds that reality can be disregarded if inconvenient, or if we all believe strongly enough. This is what will have to change if the rest of us are to escape Michigan's fate.
The most widespread aspect of this thinking is our attitude of entitlement. It leads to — among other things — demands for a $30 an hour wage to produce a product an employer can sell for the equivalent of $20 an hour at the most. Needless to say, this can only end in tears when the employer is forced to close his doors. Michigan has seen plenty of this; as a consequence, it has finally begun to realize that Aesop's Goose is more than a fairy tale.
Entitlement also drives political decisions to provide more and more government services to more and more people, financed either by taxing an easily demonized minority (the rich, for example) or by robbing our grandchildren. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was one of the first to worry about the implications of this, but by no means the last.
Closely related is the belief that the good times must roll forever, and that the slightest inconvenience or pain is unthinkable. This attitude explains why government giveaways never disappear. It also underpins the economic bubbles of the past decade. Its blind optimism absolves people of the need to be prudent, to plan for the future and to take responsibility for their own lives — not popular topics in our current epoch.
Michigan is an object lesson in what continuing down our current path will bring: gradual, then accelerating impoverishment, loss of competitive ability and finally, collapse as reality crashes in. Because reality — despite our hopes, our wishes, our dreams — is the final arbiter.
Whether we like what it has to say, or not.
Summit County resident Morgan Liddick pens a Tuesday column. E-mail him at mcliddick@hotmail.com. Also, comment on this column at www.summitdaily.com.
