Fixing Michigan

The state of the state is no longer cause for mild concern or ordinary political handwringing. It is cause for dramatic action unpolluted by special interests and partisan politics. It is no longer important whether Democrats or Republicans get their way or stubbornly resist change. The ship is going down while the officers debate whether to paint it red or blue. It is time for the people of Michigan to demand an end to such superficial nonsense. We have fundamental structural problems that must be addressed honestly and directly. If we are unwilling to do so, we will be faced with choosing between staying and living out a diminishing lifestyle beset by turmoil and perhaps even violence, or abandoning our homes and families and leaving for greener pastures.

Let’s assess our situation honestly. Our flagship industry, the automotive business, may be already fatally wounded by aggressive competitors in not-so-foreign lands known as Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and Tennessee. Our flagship city, Detroit, is a burned out shell of its former self and is being humiliated by mayoral malfeasance. Our public education system is an expensive, unresponsive dinosaur that churns out well-paid teachers and administrators and a disturbing number of functionally illiterate students. Our business and property taxes are scaring away companies and forcing property owners to sell. Falling property values are triggering bankruptcies and devastating families that once believed they had a foundation for financial security. Our unemployment rate is the highest in the nation, forcing greater numbers of citizens to either resort to public assistance or go elsewhere for work. Labor unions choke huge sectors of our economy, including private industries such as automotive and retail, public services such as civic administration, police work, education, and quasi-public institutions such as railroads, road construction, and utilities.

It is frighteningly grim, but let’s resolve to slay the dragons that torment us. Half-hearted measures need not be summoned. This is a time for bold moves that radically alter the foundation and direction of this state. If you are not interested in joining in to help save the state, at least have the good grace to step aside and let others roll up their sleeves and get the job done.

None of the necessary measures will be easy. All of them will offend one or more political factions. However, this is not a time for the scorekeeping of insults and affronteries, or for kowtowing to the depth and reach of special interests. When a ship goes down, none of that matters, because the captain drowns with the deck hand, the debutante dies with the stevedore, the black suffocates with the white, and the young and the old perish alike. Here are the measures that must be taken:

Resuscitate our Automotive Industry

Our heritage is intimately entwined with Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. Going forward, we need to also embrace Toyota, Nissan, and the other transplants. Huge chunks of capital assets in our state are tied to this industry. Hundreds of thousands of our citizens are trained and experienced in this endeavor. It is our identity. It is has been the source of great wealth and opportunity for all of us, directly or indirectly. In order to resurrect it, the following must be done immediately:

1. Make Michigan a right-to-work state , and guarantee this with a constitutional amendment. The outdated work rules, entitlements, and confrontational attitude of the union monopoly on labor is killing this industry. The historical tide in labor relations has turned, to the point where more cars are now built by non-union workers than union workers in America. There is no stopping this momentum. We either need to climb on board this train, or wave goodbye to our heritage as car makers. Some will say the UAW has a fresh and benevolent attitude. It doesn’t matter. We don’t need them, just as Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia have decided that they don’t need them. If we can’t summon the will to do this, then we will have to move south if we want to work on an assembly line. And it will be a non-union assembly line anyway. It is obvious that Asian and European automotive companies are avoiding putting assembly plants in Michigan because of the pernicious presence of the UAW.

2. Clear the thorns and brush away from our state business environment to make it easier for car manufacturers to set up shop. Eliminate punitive taxes on businesses, relax environmental restrictions, ease zoning ordinances, and dramatically reduce the regulations that raise the cost of doing business. Sure, we can cluck and moan that those villainous car makers will do evil things without government regulation, but this opinion is not shared by the states down south that are now reaping the rewards of a healthy industry that once belonged to us. Regulations and restrictions mean nothing if there is no industry to regulate and restrict, which is the specter that confronts us now. Michigan was recently rated by Forbes as the 5^th worst state in the union to do business in. That is an appalling statistic for a state that is historically, emotionally, and humanly invested in manufacturing.

Completely Revamp our Education System

Michigan’s cost per pupil is among the highest in the nation, yet the results are disappointing and, in some cases, tragic. Barely 25% of public high school students in Detroit graduate. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that we are engaged in a stunning waste of money. We fund fancy buildings, elite athletic facilities, high-powered administrators, consultants, overly generous salaries and benefits for teachers, and high-tech computer networks. Unfortunately, none of these money-guzzlers actually cause students to become more educated. The cost of our public universities unexplainably goes up by double digits each year, while families that live on less and less sacrifice more and more, only to see their college-educated children leave the state anyway to find jobs elsewhere. Some say that we need to invest more in education to attract industry. If that’s true, why is Toyota’s latest plant is going up in Mississippi, and why did Comerica leave Michigan for Texas? Many of our university graduates are leaving for other states, due to lack of work in Michigan. More investment in college educations will accomplish nothing but higher taxes and frustrated graduates. In order to make our education system effective again, the following must be done immediately:

1. Fully transition to privatized education over the course of five or ten years. Fund the system with vouchers for each student in the state, to be spent on the school of their choice. Schools that have to compete to survive will deliver a better product. Parents who can choose where their children get educated will suddenly have some control.

2. Make Michigan a right-to-work state , and guarantee this with an amendment to the state constitution. This will refocus the teaching community on educating students rather than using union leverage to extract personal gains from the state education monopoly.

3. Give privatized schools full latitude to set their own standards, establish their own curricula, and dismiss students that disrupt the learning environment. This will ensure education that is relevant, focused, and effective.

4. Eliminate all state subsidies for colleges and universities , including subsidies paid to students. These post-secondary institutions will have to adapt to delivering value to students in order to survive, rather than suckling off taxpayers and delivering statist propaganda. Students will have to decide whether a college education is truly worth their investment, rather than coasting for four years in a state-funded orgy of parties and classes with no practical application taught by graduate students who cover for professors who are away on sabbaticals studying arcane nonsense.

Facilitate Detroit to Become a Viable City Again

Detroit’s population has shrunk from two million to nine hundred thousand. A majority of those who fled were productive citizens. The majority of those remaining are on public assistance of some kind. Worse still, those remaining have cloaked themselves in victimhood, blaming their circumstances on everyone but themselves. The leaders of the city are corrupt, ineffective, and focused on their own aggrandizement. Taxes are oppressive, yet there is never enough money to feed the governing monster. Civic unions have paralyzed decision-making and have created a culture of entitlement and inactivity. The infrastructure of the city is crumbling. Crime is rampant. Sheriffs have to ride on buses to protect the drivers. Postal workers refuse to deliver mail in dangerous zones. Drug and alcohol use is pervasive. A whole generation is nearly unemployable. In order to make Detroit viable again, here is what must be done immediately:

1. Make Michigan a right-to-work state , and guarantee this with an amendment to the state constitution. It is repugnant that civil servants can continually use the monopoly power of unions, combined with the monopoly power of civic governments, to hold citizens hostage for profligate pay, plush benefits, and unproductive work rules, while delivering service that is usually ineffective.

1. Privatize every service that is reasonable to privatize . This includes such venerable institutions as the Detroit Zoo, the water department, maintenance of city infrastructure, garbage collecting, and snow removal.

1. Declare the city in receivership . Appoint a board of trusted business and community leaders, reporting to the governor, to oversee the operation of the city until the situation stabilizes. Hire a reputable national auditing firm to take responsibility for ensuring proper execution of the city’s finances, including the proper award of city contracts. The cycle of corruption and cronyism must be stopped cold.

1. Deputize the Michigan National Guard to restore order and security in the city. The guard should be empowered to eradicate the thugs, drug dealers, gangs, vandals, and derelicts that currently terrorize the city. The Guard should also be assigned to protect external executors from retaliation. The Guard should stay on active duty until such time as people and property in the city are reasonably safe from harm.

1. Engage the Army Corp of Engineers to raze every abandoned structure and home. This will free up real estate for development, improve the image of the city, and destroy the havens for dope dealers.

1. End all state subsidies and revenue sharing to Detroit . It is nonsensical to continue to funnel external money into an entity that is so fundamentally non-functional. The external support is just an enabler for the dysfunctional situation to continue unabated. The city must stand on its own, or should not stand at all. It is time for the citizens of Detroit to face up to the responsibility of their own existence, or leave for friendlier venues elsewhere.

Radically Alter Tax Structure at the State and Local Levels

Our tax system currently is a disincentive to do business, own property, and earn income in Michigan. We are living in a fiscal dreamland, apparently unaware that we are no longer one of the wealthiest states in the union, and that we are mired in a one-state recession teetering on depression. Citizens are making do with less and less each year, and yet the government operatives of the state believe they are entitled to even more revenue than before. As long as the bureaucrats are protected and well-fed, there is no cause for alarm in Lansing, but the rest of us need to be alarmed! In order to restore fiscal sanity to the state of Michigan, here is what must be done immediately:

1. Dramatically reduce the scope of state government . Anything less than a 50% reduction in the state budget will not get us there. Our state bureaucracy multiplied during a more prosperous era. That era is gone. The bureaucracy must go with it. If any unemployment should be tolerated in the state, it should be the unemployment of bureaucrats.

2. Follow the simple rules of economics when developing tax policy. What you tax, you get less of. What you subsidize, you get more of. For example, if we tax business, we will get less business. If we tax sales, we will get fewer sales. If we tax hotels, we will get fewer visitors. Commerce is our life-blood, so let’s stop strangling it. We should tax things that we want less of. Less gas consumption would be good. Let’s tax that. Less drinking, smoking, and gambling would be good. Let’s tax those things.

3. Privatize state functions and assets wherever reasonable. The private sector is inherently more efficient and oriented toward effective client service.

4. Move beyond the mentality that fueled the Cuban and Soviet economic model, whereby income was evenly distributed by the government, and people stood in lines to get their fair shares of the output. The problem with that model is that nobody is producing output at the other ends of the lines that everyone is standing in. We have to shed the belief that it is sufficient to give money to people via the government for wealth to come to us all. Here is how the food chain works in the real world. People need goods and services. Therefore, they need income. Real income can only come from jobs, because “income” from the government does not require anything to be produced. Real jobs can only come from businesses, because government “jobs” don’t actually produce anything. Real businesses will only do business in a state that is friendly to them. That is our choice now. Or, we can stand in lines with our government “income” and vainly hope that somebody somewhere is producing something for us.

It is time to take back the State of Michigan and to restore it to its proper status as a place where citizens can work hard, enjoy a healthy standard of living, and keep what they earn. The battle for the future of Michigan is raging. Become a soldier. Challenge your leaders and stand up to the special interests. Join a local taxpayers’ association, because as with all things, money talks.