Now they all point at Low unemployment states like the example for their Shining Stars of conservative policy results – but they have low wage jobs, high poverty, and low education rates.

sweeeet!
In other words if only we could be like more states with an even WIDER gap between the Haves and HaveNots and then we could be higher on Milken’s list.

Hey work is work right? no benefits and $7/hour. At least we are for sure not going to give out any $800/month welfare payments to some person with kids.

Cuz that way we can save up to hand out another 17 Billion to the energy industry, or 20 billion to Agri-corporations, or now the biggest pie of all, 700 billion to the Family of financial Experts that make oh, pry about 5 to 100 times what most of us make.

Never question Trillions in corporate welfare payments but always question a few hundred bucks a month to unemployed parents. Darn those freeloaders.

Consumer Spending motors our economy at 70-75%. To cut funding, benefits, and cash to consumers in any fashion reduces consumer spending.
When consumers have cash to spend, they get what they need, and the Wealthy still make their money because they own/run the businesses.

So what motivation could anyone have to keep touting a policy of “Hand over as much cash as possible to anyone whose income is over some large amount”…??

Well, quite often when businesses or individuals get extra cash, the claim is they’ll just Randomly hire more people! yaayy!
But in reality, they often pocket it because no business is just going to hire more employees unless they Really really need them and have plenty of sales to back it up.

In fact most places will fire people at a hint of trouble before getting there, and oppositely put their existing employees through painful over-working until they cant take it anymore and then they have to hire someone.

Is our state finally at a crossroads of political, social, and commercial accountability?
Is our Nation there now?

Fast forward 42 years: Detroit is not Scandinavia. As proof I submit the following: I have been happily married to a Dutch-Danish national for almost 25 years and haved visited Europe sometimes 2 times a year with our children, and you don’t need to tell me that Detroit is not Scandinavia. We are close followers of political over the decades and have seen both countries struggle with the problems brought on by people moving into these countries in order to get the free, cool social welfare benefits.

I think the Dutch have done a better job than the Danish because, I think, they have a longer political history of dealing with the racial differences of their colonies. (They have also had a 700-year-old middle class, but that is another story). The Dutch simply spread the minorities around the country. As best they could, they were able to persuade the hundreds of towns and villages across their small country (about the size of New Jersey, with 15 million people). They got buy-in from the local burgermeisters to take their “fair share” of minorities (the politically correct way of identifying them was called “asylum-seekers”). They were able to reduce the toxicity of a ghetto-effect. Not to say that Amsterdam does not still have its share of low-income ghettos of illegal aliens who are hostile to everything Dutch except its medical and social benefits, but the problem is reduced. The Danish, because they are a more homogenous population, and not as rich as the Dutch, are still struggling.

So what does this mean for Michigan? At the risk of sounding racist, we have a toxic ghetto-effect in Detroit. The Milken Report “ex-Detroit” (i.e, without Detroit in the data) would read rather differently don’t you think?. I take my family to skate at Campus Martius, and we go to plays at the Fox, and I run the Detroit Marathon, and do a lot of “Detroit” things and I still feel compelled to say this. To ignore the core reason why Michigan has such a bad image world-wide, is to ignore the elephant in the room.

Might I respectfully suggest a pro-active program for helping Detroit families find a better future in the top 100 cities I see in the Milken report? Have the Governor’s office send a contingent of policy-makers to The Netherlands, to harvest ideas and lessons learned. Sometimes, people just need a little financial help to pull up stakes and leave for the greener grass. The criterion for relocation expense reimbursement would have to be crafted very carefully but it could be done. It it would have to be done with respect for the people involved and with respect for the Best Performing Cities. Perhaps the most sincere social benefit of all is to help wonderful Detroit families find a new home elsewhere, where there is hope. By slow degrees, then, over the next few years, with a combination of policy and market-based activity, Detroit — and Michigan — can rise higher up the Milken list.