Should We Be Bitter in Michigan Just Because Jobs and Livelihood Were Lost?
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Lost Jobs -- Who Is To Blame?
If we're not bitter in Michigan about our economy, devastated by federal policies and globalization over the past 30 years, perhaps we should be.
I suspect the folks in Pennsylvania are in the same boat, as are those in Ohio, and West Virginia, and Indiana, and Wisconsin, etc., etc.
If we look back to 1975, just in Bay City, we had economic vitality provided by good industrial jobs. We sold things we made to other countries: ships, cranes, auto parts, castings, chemicals, clothing -- you name it.
Bay City was one of the centers of industrial innovation in the nation and Michigan was the Arsenal of Democracy in World War II. We helped to save the world, to keep the nation free with good old-fashioned industrial jobs. There was no better place than mid-Michigan, Bay City, Saginaw, Midland, to live, to raise a family and educate your children.
The Midwest was the same, a thriving industrial heartland, with Caterpillar, Ford, Chrysler, GM, International Harvester, U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, General Electric, Dow Chemical -- names that resonate, that just sound prosperous. And, of course, they were and many still are.
Fast forward to the present, many of those jobs are gone, through no fault of the workers, or the community, or local leadership.
Ten to 15,000 local manufacturing jobs, good, well-paying jobs that supported families, are gone from Bay County, as near as I can estimate. Saginaw, probably 20,000 to 30,000. Midland, where 5,000 Bay County residents worked in the 1950s, also has thousands fewer blue collars at work.
Federal policies and globalization did us in. If the country tried to help the rest of the world get ahead, they did it on the backs of our workers and their families in this country. Charity is fine, sharing is a wonderful trait, but self preservation should be paramount.
We can argue endlessly about free trade versus fair trade, but the results seem to be clear. Trade policies and currency manipulation by foreign "partners," tolerated by our government, Democrats and Republicans alike, has not benefited our economy.
It wasn't just what the world was doing to us, it was what we were doing to ourselves.
Blame it on globalization, technology change, what have you. But we destroyed the most capable workforce the world has ever seen out of, what else can you call it, corporate greed? Political miscalculation?
Politics changed. They called it the Reagan Revolution. Government is not the answer. Do for yourself. Half the union members were so entranced they voted for it even though it cost them, and most of their compatriots, their jobs.
So we saw in industry after industry a shrinkage of jobs. It was easier, cheaper and more politic, to send the jobs overseas than to keep them here and have to bargain with employees.
They packed up the equipment at the Bay Refinery and shipped it to Argentina, where it probably is still operating. Meanwhile, the nation now has a shortage of refining capacity.
Defoe Shipbuilding closed in 1976, never to reopen. Why was the business not sold to someone who would continue it? The fallacious answer, still parroted, was that the bridges were too narrow, that ships built here couldn't be transported. Yet the largest freighters on the lakes go through those bridges every week.
Wolverine Knitting Mills and Evenknit, two once thriving clothing manufacturing firms here, couldn't compete with Asian countries where state-subsidized clothing companies paid coolie wages.
"Everything has gone off shore," I was told, when as an amazed, and querulous editorial writer, I dared to question the local business leadership. "Off shore -- what about us, what about our jobs?" Why? What can we do to bring it back? There was no response -- still isn't.
And then, to top it all off, we have 12 million illegal aliens. Even jobs on the farms and orchards and in hotels are snatched away from desperate Americans. "These are jobs Americans won't do," is the reply to complaints. "Try us," the unemployed would say.
So here we are, 30 years later. Jobs are gone overseas or to illegals and our community, our state, is devastated. Factory parking lots are empty. Young people turn to drugs and crime because there are no jobs. Those who we educate at high cost leave for college, most never to return.
After all this, did we turn to guns and religion? No, we embraced the A-B-Cs, alcohol, bingo and casinos . . . and apathy. We had been prosperous so long we thought it would all come back by itself. It is an all too common human problem -- failure to see the incremental change in our condition. And, we really thought somebody else was doing something about our economic problems.
"Those jobs aren't coming back," said John McCain, who likely will be our next President given the Democratic proclivity for self destruction. What do we in Michigan have to look forward to under a McCain administration? More of the same? You tell me.
Our former governor, John Engler, was on C-Span the other day. He is the head of the National Association of Manufacturers. At a hearing he was telling how the Bush Administration trade policies actually are good for the country. Two manufacturers took the stand and extolled the virtues of NAFTA. When the witnesses were asked how many jobs they were adding because of trade policies they answered "four." FOUR JOBS! And that apparently was the best Mr. Engler had to offer from across the entire nation.
Now you hear another mantra: the only way to save Social Security is to cut benefits. Maybe eliminate it altogether. Pensions are passé. In a world where technology and globalism rules, there is little room for the common, working people. The good life of the 50s, 60s, even the 70s is gone, along with the jobs.
Globalization is an inevitable consequence of progress and we need to understand and to help our fellow citizens of the world. But we need to help ourselves first, and so far that hasn't been high on the agenda of our political leaders.
To be fair, some local corporations like Dow are stepping up and putting their money into community projects and job producing initiatives. This is corporate responsibility at its best. I hope it works, and that Dow's strategies are copied by other firms.
But where are General Motors, Ford and Chrysler and dozens of other Michigan corporations that prospered for much of the 20th century? Where is the UAW, that has a huge pot of money called the nickel fund for enterprise development but hasn't used it much if at all.
Are we bitter?
If we aren't, perhaps we have a right to be. But we also need to be hopeful that the spirit that made Michigan great will revive a tradition of enterprise that will regenerate the state.
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