Letters to the Editor
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I point at my hand
It's still all about the autos in MI because the economic clout it still wields, but that era is certainly over.
Thankfully. Resting on the auto industries laurels is ridiculously stupid. They've proven over and over that they lack the foresight to compete. Not for nothing does the owner of Ford also own the worst football team in the NFL.
It's time to be more competitive in the state. I'm hopeful it will happen. next week I'm moving back to my small hometown, Hemlock, MI, from Japan. The small chemical engineering plant in my township has recently committed to a major expansion to manufacture high-tech solar panels. They're bringing in hundreds of jobs for well-educated engineers.
My family's farms border the plant's property, so it's a bit of a surprise that a business that should help revolutionize energy in the 21st century is tucked away in my little farming community, but it has to happen somewhere. Why not MI?
So, the tide of employment begins to shift to something more competitive globally.
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Turn off your engine, Generalized Misery
The American petrochemical mafia and it's cronies, the American auto companies, have been polluting and manipulating
both this country's political and environmental spheres for
close to 100 years.
in a country with endless population growth, America's
privatized government has seen fit to pave valuable land with
roads and parking, and to kill us with increasingly severe
pollution, as brain-deads sit in daily gridlock, idling their
SUV's while going nowhere. Hey, but who gives a rat's ass
about the working class losers dying to keep oil spigots flowing in the desert of perpetual war, as long as motorists can park their fat asses on the freeway?
In the Pacific Northwest, a local airline recently advertized that their Seattle-Portland shuttles can speedily
"soar above the I-5 slog," the I-5 being the permanently clogged freeway between the cities.
Have any of you American baboons heard of high-speed rail?
I hear tell that those effeminate europeans have high speed rail connecting their cities.
You see, illiterate Americans can't have high-speed rail,
because all of our taxes and much of our wages, paid mostly by working losers, goes to Cheney and Halliburton and the Pentagon and the petrochemical mafia, et al.
Screw you, American auto companies. I will never buy your product. Do America a favor, and die.
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I agree, but...
Let me just say that every American car since the early 70's that I've had has been a piece of junk, with my Japanese, German and even Italian cars beating the pants of them for driver satisfaction, gas mileage, quality of workmanship and dependability.
English cars, on the other hand, sucked worse that Detroit. But they figured it out and sold all their auto industries to the Germans. We should get such a clue.
The American auto industry has been dying for decades. Bury the corpse already and put us all out of our misery. PLEASE retrain the workers to... wait, there are no industries that are hiring now, except the military.
As the auto industry goes (dead), so goes the country.
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Hey RD, Detroit Did Sell One of Their Own to Germany!
RD,
Remember when Daimler bought Chrysler a few years ago? It gave them such indigestion that they spit it back out and sold it to some investment company called Cerebus. Of Course Chrysler bought American Motors decades ago, and about the only good thing they got out of that deal was Jeep.
Chrysler will go the way of American Motors. I had the misjudgement to buy two of their Caravans...each needed a transmission replacement by ~70,000 miles or so.
My Honda Odyssey has been running strong like a champ!
The only American car company to survive over the long term will be the one that builds extroidinairily efficient, yet practical and reliable cars.
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Inexhaustible: That Fatal Michigan Word
In 1984, Bruce Catton's book Michigan: A History was published. The author had died several years earlier. Catton was a Pulitzer Prize winner who had emerged from an unlikely small rural town in the lower peninsula to become the most recognized Civil War historian of his time. Yet throughout his life, his home state and its enigmatic history held a deep fascination for him.
In Michigan: A History Catton describes the timeline of the state as a series of economic waves: Huge and tremendous success followed by abject failure. Even before the economic crash of the 1980's, Catton seemed to hint that the auto industry's boom was destined to come plunging down.
A quick synopsis: The first Europeans to populate the state came for the fur trade. To a trapper's eyes, Michigan was a paradise where the supply of animals and high quality furs seemed endless. Yet end it did - the high prices commanded by fur traders led a rush of frontiersmen to the territory. Soon overtrapping and poor land management depleted the environment. Those remaining found themselves in poverty.
Within a few years the lumber industry took over the territory. The quality of wood grown in the peninsulas was superior to that found most anywhere. Michigan lumber was shipped all the way to the East coast, and from there to Europe. Most buildings constructed in the United States in the first half of the 1800's were built from Michigan lumber. There is little exaggeration in the statement that the entire state was clean cut from one end to the other. It is very hard to find an old growth tree anywhere in the state (even the trees in the 'wilderness areas' are actually second growth.) This is the land of Paul Bunyan and the tall tales of lumber men. Yet the lumber industry in Michigan crashed and the state was reduced to abject poverty again.
That changed when Copper was found in the upper peninsula. The copper boom crashed and was replaced by the iron boom. The iron ran out and farming became the big industry in the state. Settlement of the West ruined Michigan's dominance in farming. Then the auto industry took over.
With it's iron production and auto industry, Michigan was known as the "Arsenal of Democracy". It transformed itself into a war machine in both World War I and II, churning out enough arms and vehicles to supply the armies of half the world. This was the brightest time in the State's history. But to Catton observed this as being simply another of the series of waves the state had undergone.
Each economic wave, from the first trappers all the way through to the iron and farm industries had made the same assumption: that their industry was permanent. The supply endless. The economy inexhaustible. While the state has always been blessed with good luck, shortsightedness has always been its downfall and its curse. To quote Catton: "The idea that abundance was inexhaustible--that fatal Michigan word--dominated thinking about the state from its earliest days."
One of my best friends teaches at Michigan State University. He and I discovered Catton a few years back. Ever since, we've watched the economy of Michigan through this lens and found it disturbingly illuminating. When an announcement such as GM's strike becomes public we will look at each other and nod. We say one word. I've sent him emails consisting of only this word, and he's left messages on my machine which consist of this one word.
"Inexhaustible"