What's Wrong with Michigan?

OK, What’s Wrong With Michigan?


I believe that Michigan is in a depression. Not a recession. A depression. We have the worst housing market since 1929......which means worse than the Depression. I don’t even feel better now that the rest of the country is suffering what we’ve suffered in Michigan for the past three years. What I want to know is....what is wrong with our State?

For starters, you can trace the decline of our state’s economy to the introduction of term limits. Term limits means that just as a senator or representative is learning their job, they have to move on. Now they have a game of musical chairs between state government seats going on. But there is no stability in our state houses of government, which is reflected by our lack of a cohesive, effective approach to the massive job losses we’ve suffered and the huge economic decline that has occurred. This has made Michigan one of the few states to actually lose population during the past few years. Term limits have also allowed incompetent people to take over spots in our government and to stay there for years and years.

If you don’t believe me, just trace our state’s economic performance after term limits started to cause politicians to have to leave their offices. Now, more than ever, we are subject to influence from special interests, who are far more important to our politicians because they know that they can only run as an incumbent for a limited time and will need more special interest money when their term limits expire.

Next is our ridiculous stance towards small businesses. The Single Business Tax was bad. People complained it out of existence because it penalized small business and made Michigan’s business climate less appealing. Well, we replaced it with the Michigan Business Tax, which is now costing most small businesses two to five times as much as the Single Business Tax. If you head down towards the Indiana border, you will see that Indiana has paid for Michigan billboards that are trying to entice Michigan businesses to come to Indiana to avoid the Michigan Business Tax!!! Nice. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this is bad, but what have we done to correct it? Nada. Zip. Nothing. Nil. What’s on the horizon? More of the same. You have to wonder if an experienced group of non-term-limited politicians would have ever concocted such a tax scheme.

I don’t know if our Canadian Governor has any tricks up her sleeve, but simply saying “we need to educate our citizenry” is a simplistic response. We will have educated people in the unemployment line or we will educate people for positions in other states. We simply need to make our business climate better so that small companies can thrive. Our Republican legislature and courts have already placed the interests of large businesses above all else. Ironically, those businesses are the ones that are cutting and running and sending jobs to Mexico, India, China, and parts unknown. Small businesses should be our hope, but we are taxing them out of existence.

I don’t know that it can get much worse around here (as gas prices hit $3.89/gal). But it seems to me that we should trash term limits and the Michigan Business Tax as soon as humanly possible. We need to create a positive economic climate for small businesses, who don’t have the same incentive to cut and run as do the giants. In the meantime, we will probably do nothing and suffer the effects of an incompetent government which can’t seem to legislate its way out of a paper bag. All the while, we have to suffer the absolute indignity of INDIANA publicly calling out our stupid tax policies on our very own billboards! Oh, the shame of it all.

Blawging in a Funk,

Blawgerman