Michigan’s Decade of Tarnish Seen in Census Report

[alienlovechild 75]

CONSTANTINE, Mich. — While every other state in the nation gained population over the past decade, Michigan shrank. And yet, as word seeped across frozen towns like this one on Wednesday, almost no one seemed even mildly surprised. This was, many here said with resignation, just one last, official confirmation of Michigan’s long, grim and gloomy slide.

Jamie Judsen's family has run Constantine Auto Parts and Hardware for generations. The business is now the only hardware store in the largely empty downtown of Constantine, Mich.

“We used to enjoy a bit of a strut,” said Jerry Becker, a welder, recalling an era when Michigan’s automotive powerhouses ruled the world and salaries here felt lavish. “But that’s long gone. We all know by now that everybody thinks of Michigan as a bad place to live — a place that doesn’t seem to have much of a future.”

If any state is ready to be done with the 2000s, it is this one.

Where the nation witnessed economic misery near the start and end of the decade, Michigan felt a slow burn throughout. Cities like Detroit and Flint pondered ways to shrink their sizes to save themselves. States like Wyoming and North Dakota, flush with jobs, tried to recruit out-of-work Michigan residents to relocate. And places like this old corn and soybean growing village of 2,095 people — the self-proclaimed seed corn capital of the world — watched companies, like the soda pop top factory here this fall, close up shop.

In 2009, 2008 and 2007, United Van Lines, the moving company, had proclaimed Michigan to have its largest percentage of “outbound” moves. But experts here who had dismissed those figures as not particularly scientific had less to say about the Census Bureau numbers released this week, which showed that Michigan’s population shrank, for the first 10-year period since at least 1900. Not even Louisiana, which had weathered Hurricane Katrina, got smaller. Sure, Puerto Rico, a commonwealth, also lost population, but that seemed little solace here.

In Constantine nearly everyone has a story of departure: a client at the hair salon who lost her job and moved away; a former worker from the Rexam plant, which made plastic caps for drinks and employed 240 people, who on Wednesday was planning his move to Los Angeles to attend film school; and a long list of businesses — groceries, the feed mill, the dry cleaner, the appliance shop — that closed and left the downtown hushed.

“Look, this place is awesome and I would never leave,” said Jamie Judsen, whose family has run Constantine Auto Parts and Hardware for generations and whose face reflected, like many here, a flash of local pride (and a bit of irritation) at being needlessly pitied by those who reside beyond Michigan’s borders. “But I’ve seen them go.”

In the simplest terms, state officials say, Michigan’s .6 percent shrinkage to 9,883,640 people happened like this: A relatively low rate of people moved away, but a very low rate of people moved in from other states, or from other parts of the world.

Now some of the fallout is clear — the loss, as in so much of the industrial Midwest, of a House member and a possible drop in federal money — but there is a murkier psychic effect, which bubbled up as residents scanned The Kalamazoo Gazette’s headline here: “Michiganders Becoming Poorer and Older than Rest of U.S.”

The new population figures come amid sweeping political change here. In about a week, Rick Snyder, a Republican and a political novice who ran on his business expertise, will replace Jennifer M. Granholm, a two-term Democrat, as governor. Mr. Snyder, perhaps most of all, seemed unsurprised by the state’s diminishing numbers.

“This is part of the reason I ran for office,” Mr. Snyder said in an interview. “Fixing Michigan is not good enough. We really need to reinvent how we operate.”

Among measures to be considered: getting rid of the state’s current business tax, turning to a two-year state budget cycle and, in Mr. Snyder’s view, reshaping the state’s culture. “We need,” he said, “to stop looking in the rearview mirror.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/us/23michigan.html

[Danno 1,228]

These stories are sad because they represent families by the tens of thousands, maybe millions.

Was this the "Sucking sound" Ross Perot spoke of concerning one way trade agreements?

[alienlovechild 75]

These stories are sad because they represent families by the tens of thousands, maybe millions.

Was this the "Sucking sound" Ross Perot spoke of concerning one way trade agreements?

He meant the sucking sound was headed to Mexico when no one saw China coming. Amazing how much changed since 1992 but few can put it in that perspective.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Become non competitive and you become a loser. This can be reversed if they really want to. Where the businesses are relocating to in the states can be a guide. Just go look and see why they are relocating and then try to offer a better reason to stay or even beat them.