I guess I am just lucky. When I grew up in California I felt I was in the center of the universe, and oddly enough, I was. As it turned out the 50 years I spent there were the years when California was number one in the nation for innovation and healthy lifestyle, and I was in the middle of it all. At 24 I had the house on the hill and enough BMWs and Porsches to wonder why everyone didn't do the same. I mean, I did it so why not everyone? Nothing special about me, no trust fund, no inheritance, only hard and continuous work from the time I was in high school forward. Even in my hippie days I held down a full time job (in accounting no less) and paid my way through school. Yes, I shared a modest apartment in the Valley, but, I was in my 20s, who didn't?As it turned out California was number one during those days - in fact the economy was so good that the state's economy was usually placed somewhere between 6th and 8th in the world, easily number one in the nation overall. I was blessed to be a part of it.
But things change.
Though I had a good career in commercial real estate, the dog eat dog life, the lack of community, care, and the overall wellness of people to each other and their place in the world (whew) wasn't what I hoped it would all be. So, a few years after having my son I began to change that life. No more house on the hill, no more fancy car, hello school. Once again I returned to a place that I had always felt was my calling in one way or another. A few years in art school later, now minus what had been a good marriage (he didn't want a woman who didn't earn money) I floundered and then finally found my way into grad school. There was no turning back now. I was the biggest pain in the ass that most of my grad school profs had seen in a while (and I understand now and respectfully thank you for putting up with me) I never stopped until I reached that point where I was a PhD (post hole digger as my Oklahoma friends called it) and at 50 was searching for a job.
I left California. I found my tenure track position and future in Michigan. It was a nexus time. Little did I know that California was about to have the ride of a lifetime up and then crash, crash, crash. I left just as the ride began and now from afar I hear the Goverator making budget cuts only Michigan can truly appreciate.
But Michigan, my new home, was now in the lead and had been almost from the time I moved here 10 years ago. Each year the cuts were more onerous. There was no fat to cut, and the cuts keep on coming. With GM going into bankruptcy it hit Ypsilanti yet again. We have been and continue to cut into the bone, amputating limbs- in education (of all things) and everywhere else now. As us academics looked around (especially those who had no ties to the Big 3) we could see the tsunami coming, and come it has.Despite long impassioned talk with friends and colleagues we had to agree that the auto industry had to come down. They had done nothing for years but make money off the backs of their consumers. They never looked at the 50,000 feet that my partner says I have the uncanny (and irritating)ability to do. The car makers did not think of what they were doing to the nation, how the world had changed, what were setting themselves up for by depending on unions when the new plants opening in America opened in right to work states (good pay, no union, no pension). A few years ago the cost to pay pensions and health care was estimated at $2,00 per car, and then last month David Littmann, senior economist for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said that unions had "strangled this state to death." In many ways he is right- even for states outside of Michigan. Notice that GM opened and is now on "stand by" in its union plant in Tennessee, while nearby non-union Nissan nearby has expanded. GM was greedy, and the workers and consumers were hoodwinked. Education was lacking. It didn't take much to see where the world was going. My trips to Germany educated me about where the affluent and more sustainable world was going. I checked out everything I could by traveling there and learning and seeing the life that could be had by moving over to sustainability.
I studied Michigan and agree, it is a manufacturing state and will stay that way for a while (especially if the education continues to be cut as it has been over the past decade), but disagree that we need to keep our manufacturing jobs - or at least the ones that were part of the first Industrial Revolution (the one that began in the nineteenth century). It is NOT going to happen - at least not how it has been in the past.
Okay, so here I go again. We can be a manufacturing state, but we must start the New Industrial Revolution based on cradle-to-cradle technology and biomimicry. Both will require returning to school for many, but it will also give jobs to the many who now need them - once they are educated to the future, not only for Michigan, but for the world. If you want an overall book to explain the needs and directions we need to aim, go to Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. Very impressive.
I grew up in one state that led the world and then moved to another state that also led the world. Michigan is number one in the highest unemployment rate in the nation (April 2009 at 12.9%, while California is at a measly 11.9%*). It is effectively 20% right now when you see all the people who have given up, and those who have no unemployment benefits because their small business can't take it any more. Yes, we need to do many things including lowering business taxes, and reducing the power of unions across the board in Michigan. We need to educate the workers (and management) but we also need to understand that when we adopt a triple bottom line economy that endorses energy efficiency, renewable energy, cradle-to- cradle industry, we won't need unions as we have in the past. With environmental and social equity woven into the economic bottom line we won't need them. The company, the workers, and the environment will be healthy. How bad is that?
*It must be noted that California's unemployment rate is also skewed. Its informal economy, mostly employing illegal workers pays no taxes and no unemployment. It has become so bad that many Mexicans are returning home.
