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spursncowboys is a real wad, and a real glory hunter. For the moment, his livelihood is secure, so he's comfortable PISSING AND TING ON HIS COUNTRYMEN. But he'll get his. Oh, he will get his.
As if an American can compete with the slave labor from abroad. I know, you've fallen for the free trade gospel. That's all well and good, so long as your ass can't be replaced.
spursncowboys is a real wad, and a real glory hunter. For the moment, his livelihood is secure, so he's comfortable PISSING AND TING ON HIS COUNTRYMEN. But he'll get his. Oh, he will get his.
You are the guy deciding who is allowed in your club. dumbass. How am I doing anything to my countrymen except for voting for what is best for all americans, and believing in a system which will make everybody stronger? I never vote with "what is in it for me". Also I had a huge problem with joining where I am because I hated the idea of working for the govt. I hate the idea that the only pay raises I can get have a type of senority. Be Tee Dubayu, I am losing thousands every year since doing what I do.
ROFL.
Yeah, war is what is best for all Americans. I'm so glad we have people like you are able to determine what Americans die for. Not to mention what is "socialism" and what is not. Stop sucking off the government teat you ing commie and make it on your own already.
I know both of those things, however, not because I lived in Detroit. I lived in Detroit for a month in the late 80's. I sold books door to door in Elkhart Indiana for the Southerwestern Company one summer and at summers end I found myself with 12k dollars about 9k of which was supposed to go back to the company, and I elected to keep the entire 12k for myself, and, live a little, for just a bit. I wanted to do two things exactly, live in downtown Chicago, party, and some girls,and live in downtown Detroit, party, and some girls. And I lived extremely well for the few months it lasted. I can't say I remember much detail at all from living in either place other than the feeling of living in a legendary city. I damn sure didn't take part in any elections or pay attention to any electoral and economic processes.
IOW, living there doesn't mean much. Plus I like telling that story.
Anyway, yes I knew those things, but not because I lived there.
I do know however that one of the main purposes of a city government is to encourage investment and economic growth in the city. Likewise for state.
So when you say to me, Michigan's economy is based en irely on manufacturing, and those jobs have fled, I say, that's exactly what I mean when I say your government fails.
Pretty much what most families living in America have done at some point in their family history.
Move away. Leave your family your friends and your life behind.
Its a fair thing to do, but not all of us are broke and cant make it. Moreover, this is beautiful part of the country, I dont want to move away.
The decisions I made in my life have made it most likely that I never have to move. Doesnt make watching your entire area's lifeblood dry up and die any more tolerable. Watch friends you grew up with and family members have to uproot and go some place else they never wanted to or struggle with unemployment, etc. All this only because the world market dictates it this way in the name of profit.
Amazing how those unions intendeed to improve the lives of workers are even more corrupt than the corporations themselves. At the very least they are just as bad. Because now they are a parasitic en y sucking the host dry in order to survive. They are killing their host. But they aren't the only thing killing it...
The death of Detroit is the death of Michigan, the death of Michigan is the death of manufacturing in this country (except government contracts), which is by far the most tragic because it implies loss of the middle class and the true beginning of the end of this country, IMO.
I don't think class stratification should be imposed, guaranteed, promised, mandated, or anything of the sort, middle class or otherwise.
Maybe youre right, I am a fatalist. Then again, maybe youre wrong and completely underestimate the implications.
Oh I'm not wrong. The unions are every bit as tyrannical and greedy as the corporations are. I don't give a if they are run my countrymen or not. Those politicians sucking ass are also my countrymen.
It's not the corporations' job to make sure they are middle class, it's theirs. It's also not the corporations' job to bring jobs to Detroit and Michigan, it's the governments of Detroit and Michigan, and the citizens that elect them, job to do that.
Maybe youre more fatalist than me in wanting the erosion of control a healthy and wealthy middle class provides. Take it for what it is.
Oh I am pro middle class however, I don't see why they should have guaranteed income when their employer does not(even if it is a greedy corporation).
It's not an ethical issue with me, it's a reality issue to me. It's a principle at odds with economic reality.
Beyond all that...the US automakers started making tier cars, that weren't as pleasing to the eye, that didn't appeal to the American car buyer.
Those guys are my fellow citizens too you see. They should be able to buy what they want, it's both the jobs of the corporations and their employees to make me want their product.
Amazingly enough, I drive Jeep Wranglers, made in America by Americans. Amazing how that is one vehicle that has kept it's popularity and maintained it's place...much better than the companies that have owned the rights to produce it. It's changed little in appearance since it was originally created 70 years or so ago. Perhaps that has much to do with it....
Maybe, both the unions and the car manufacturers ought to turn the dial back to about 1975 or so...the year IMO they started going to .
Slave labor? Are you talking about China? Sweatshops in Maylaysia? Fine with me if you want to China, I don't understand why in the we bailed them out in the housing crisis...no one bails my ass out of bad investments.
However...that's not only why Detroit has gone hole. It's their product, their durability, their aeshetic appeal to the American consumer etc.
Furthermore, when those very unions which serve to work against both their employer and the American consumer, walk lockstep with a political party that promotes environmental issues that actually work directly aginst the American car companies...I blame no one but them.
Americans still buy trucks. The buy SUVs. They buy Jeeps. They do not buy them because they are "American" vehicles. They do not buy them for the great gas mileage. They buy them because they are appealing to the American car buyer. Whereas just about every car they make, is not. Or not for long anyway.
You want to take the corporations down a notch? Fine with me..as long we take the unions down a notch as well. I'd probably go after the corporations in a different way then you would, I'd go after their size with an rust laws, break them up a bit, put them competing against one another, for both workers and consumers. but I don't see how your way of protectionism no matter how you do it, is going to benefit the American consumer much in terms of variety though, and like it or not those consumers are American citizens too....
Last edited by whottt; 12-28-2009 at 12:54 AM.
More:
http://www.detnews.com/article/20091...axing-policies
People flee state's taxing policies
Michael LaFaive and Michael Hicks
The U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday that Michigan's population decreased for the fourth year in a row -- this time by more than 32,000 people during the past 12 months. Worse, while two other states also saw declines in population, Michigan lost people at a higher rate as a percentage of the population.
For years, the Mackinac Center has warned state officials that residents are fleeing for friendlier economic climates. They're going to opportunity states, where taxes and regulation typically fall lighter on the backs of business and families.
Michigan could reverse this trend by lowering the cost of living, working and investing in Michigan. If you lower the price of nearly any good, more of it will be demanded in the market -- and vice versa.
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Unfortunately, Lansing's careerist politicians have served the system and their own interests, and people in part are voting with their feet against this.
Among the price hikes our political class have imposed during the past seven years are a sneaky property tax shift hike; an 11.5 percent increase in the personal income tax; a 75-cents-per-pack cigarette tax increase; a complex business tax with a further 22 percent surcharge that extracts an extra $600 million annually from enterprises choosing to remain or locate here; several new occupational licensure, regulation and fee regimes; expensive renewable energy mandates and more.
To add insult to economic injury, various members of the political class have proposed even more tax increases, including a job-killing $6.5 billion graduated income tax. Just the existence of such proposals can have the effect of driving people away if they rationally perceive a chance that such a thing might become law.
The official census isn't the only population-related information officials here should be aware of. United Van Lines, the nation's largest moving company, has tracked where its customers go since 1977. Through November of this year, United reports that 64.8 percent of their Michigan-related client traffic was outbound -- the highest of any state. Michigan has held this distinction since 2006. New Jersey is the only other state to exceed the 60 percent outbound rate, at 60.7 percent.
In 2008, we undertook a Michigan-specific migration study in the hope of isolating factors that influence migration decisions. Our model included such important factors as tax burden, the unemployment rate, climate and welfare (transfer) payments. Among the findings, for every 10 percent increase in personal taxes, every year 4,700 more people leave for friendlier tax climes. That is why Michigan now tastes the bitter fruit of an 11.5 percent income tax hike imposed in 2007.
We also discovered that for every 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, an additional 900 people make a run for the border every year. That may not sound like much, but consider the compounding effect of this state's unemployment rate rising from 3.2 percent in 2000 to 15.1 percent in October of this year (it's now at 14.7 percent).
The fact that Michigan's welfare system -- its transfer payments -- drew people to Michigan is hardly a reassuring counterbalance to those depressing figures. Specifically, every 10 percent increase in transfer payments resulted in a net in-migration of almost 850 persons annually. This is not how to make a state more prosperous.
Proponents of higher taxes and a larger welfare state may cry foul at our analysis, complaining that Michigan's woes are simply a function of auto industry troubles. But when the automobile industry was enjoying near-record sales from 2003 through 2006, Michigan's relative decline was already under way. The automobile industry's woes certainly haven't helped, but the governor and the Legislature have greatly worsened the state's troubles with a raft of bad policies. Meanwhile, states that made wiser policy choices have been eating our economic lunch.
Here's the bottom line: Wrongheaded policy is what's killing Michigan; our economic and demographic lifeblood continues to drain south and west in pursuit of better opportunities. Unless we cut the cost of remaining in Michigan, this trend will continue.
Michael LaFaive is director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational ins ute in Midland. Michael Hicks is a center adjunct scholar and is director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University. E-mail comments to [email protected].
The Brain Drain is never ever ever good. It's the worst of all things. The problem, first and foremost.
I live in Detroit. The city is dead because of heavy racial tensions that existed since before the Civil War, the automotive industry creating a strange huge gap between unionized blue-collar and non-unionized white collar workers. And that same automotive industry killing all our mass transportation.
Other cities had problems, stimulus packages and the like. Only Detroit didn't get a subway, or a decent buss system. Only Detroit was deluding itself into thinking that they were racially progressive, when in fact they were as bad as the Jim Crow south.
Oh, and let us not forget the revenge politics that has been going on since Coleman Young, continuing through Kwame Kilpatrick, and only now, may be ending with Dave Bing.
Corruption has gone unchecked and unregulated in Detroit for decades, causing the school system to go beyond broke.
Detroit may be a blue city, buy Michigan is a very very very VERY Red state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Engler
http://www.infomi.com/statesenate.html
Nobody is doubting that Detroit is blue, or that they are not the most populous city in MI, which tends to dictate presidential and gubinatorial positions, but the senate is majority republican and not that long ago had an uber-conservative governor.
If Detroit and other major cities that comprise the economic backbone of the state are blue and the unions are the most powerful political factions in the state, then the state is blue. And has been for however long that has been the case.
Look here's the deal...major differences between the Republicans and the Democrats? The Democrats think government is the solution. So when you have a city that thinks government is the solution, you wind up with a city dependent on the government to be the solution.
Government, any government is seldom the solution to anything. That is the premise this country was founded upon.
Generally, Republicans realize government is not the solution, and Democrats don't.
The Republicans are right...Governments, all governments, are corrupt to some degree The longer people are allowed to stay in place, the more powerful they become, the more corrupt they get.
The only thing you can kind of sort of count on the Republicans and Democrats to do that is basically incorrupt, is expose the corruption of the other(sometimes), for their own gain, that and that alone is reason enough to mix it up every 50 years or so.
If I'd lived in Detroit for the last 50 years and it had been red all that time and was in the condition and direction it has been going for the last 20-30 years, Castro would be looking good about now.
Well I survived my trip to Detroit. It wasn't quite as cold as in years past from what I can remember. However was cold enough to remind me why I left. The Jerry Springer family drama is still very strong as usual. I think I may cut back on my visits to every 3 or 4 years instead of every year or two.
uh, did you read the stuff before that in the same section, einstein?
uprooted=move if that's to hard to comprehend.
and if it is
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/uproot
Last edited by Viva Las Espuelas; 12-31-2009 at 09:30 AM. Reason: breaking it down for mr hole
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