Still a liberal? Paradise beckons...

Bluesman · 09-18-2006, 13:56 PM

After all the evidence down through the decades...WHY does anybody still believe that a liberal is intelligent? The results and price of liberal ideology in government grows with each passing year, so WHY do idealists keep wishing the world were like they want it to be, instead of being as evidence shows that way it REALLY is?

Quote:

The Sick Man of the Midwest
Michigan -- a liberal failure.

By Rich Lowry

Liberals dissatisfied with the Bush economy have, through the wonders of federalism, an alternative. They can move to Michigan. The state represents a rough approximation of ideal liberal economic policy. It is heavily unionized, taxed, and regulated in a failed attempt to close its eyes to the dynamic forces of the market and globalization all around it.

This stew has helped make Michigan the economic sick man of the Midwest. It is suffering from a one-state recession all its own, mostly because it has failed to foster the most profound economic force in the universe — opportunity. The state has been losing out to more business-friendly environs both overseas and in other states for decades, but has refused to adapt accordingly.

That’s why anyone moving to Michigan to enjoy the stifling taxes and burdensome unionization will be lonely. According to the free-market Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s analysis of United Van Lines data, Michigan is now the No. 1 state in the continental United States for outbound traffic. An estimated 65 percent of the moving company’s Michigan interstate traffic is families moving out of the state, headed to more economically open and vital destinations. As an official in Wyoming put it, “Michigan has been very good for us.”

This has given Michigan the rarest of breeds this election year, a vulnerable Democrat in the person of incumbent Gov. Jennifer Granholm. As Republicans often point out, Michigan was the only state in the country not hit by Hurricane Katrina to lose jobs between September 2004 and September 2005. The state unemployment rate just ticked up again to 7.1 percent, substantially above the nation’s rate of 4.7 percent. The rate of growth of its per capita gross state product is 49th in the nation; lowly Mississippi is 44th.

Michael LaFaive of the Mackinac Center calls Michigan “the France of North America.” Economically competitive states might have a personal income tax, or corporate income tax, or sales tax — Michigan has all three. It has long been the only state with a European-style, value-added tax — the Single Business Tax. A company can be in bankruptcy and still have a tax liability, making Michigan a bad state even to lose money in. In a 2002 filing for relief from the tax, General Motors explained that it would operate at a loss, but one of its projects would still create a $7 million-a-year tax liability.

Michigan recently repealed the Single Business Tax effective at the end of 2007, but has punted the decision about how to replace it. A relative moderate, Gov. Granholm has resisted general tax increases, but levied new fees, sin taxes and other “revenue enhancers.” The state still insists on trying to target tax incentives and other special breaks to favored businesses, in a doomed replay of 1970s-era industrial policy.

Meanwhile, unions make the state an inhospitable place to do business. A company can be bankrupt in Michigan and still face threats of a strike, as Northwest Airlines and the auto-parts maker Delphi have learned. Michigan’s unionization rate of 21.8 percent is much higher than the national average of 13.5 percent. This accounts for it having the second-highest unit-labor cost in the nation, according to the Mackinac Center. States with right-to-work laws, and consequently less unionization, experience more growth and create more jobs, at the expense of troglodytes like Michigan.

It used to be that unions could force unnaturally high wages and benefits on U.S. manufacturers, and the costs would be passed along to consumers. Those were the days prior to globalization when the U.S. auto industry had a lock on the domestic market and experienced little international competition. It was inevitable that Michigan would find the new competition disruptive, but not that it would react to it so poorly.

The way to thrive in a globalized environment is to create a low-tax economy without the rigidities that come with heavy unionization and regulation. For those who disagree, Michigan beckons.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.
© 2006 by King Features Syndicate

gunnut · 09-18-2006, 21:04 PM

So basically Michigan is like California without the nice weather. I guess I won't move there any time soon.

Bluesman · 09-18-2006, 21:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gunnut

So basically Michigan is like California without the nice weather. I guess I won't move there any time soon.

Very few others do, either.

**astralis** · 09-19-2006, 12:30 PM

Quote:

So basically Michigan is like California without the nice weather. I guess I won't move there any time soon.

funny, then, why is california's economy not THAT bad?

i'm telling you, it's the sun!

dalem · 09-19-2006, 13:00 PM

To be fair, a lot of the exodus from Michigan is directly traceable to people leaving Detroit.

I do find it interesting though. I left Michigan 5 years ago but not for any of the reasons applicable to the article.

-dale

gunnut · 09-19-2006, 13:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astralis

funny, then, why is california's economy not THAT bad?

i'm telling you, it's the sun!

Definitely the sun. Who would want to be taxed and regulated to death AND be in miserable weather?

SnowLeopard · 09-20-2006, 02:29 AM

Conservative, liberal, conservative, liberal, ...............

What is one these days and what is the other? I consider myself a liberal but in many eyes, I'm a conservative, but not to the extreme of many who call themselves conservatives or at least, don't call themselves liberals.

For example, consider our recent discussions regarding crime, punishment, and the 8th amendment. I am pretty firmly based with the Constitution. Don't violate the Constitution, that's a no-no .................. and yet, given that I wouldn't torture a serial killer to death, to some, that might make me a liberal, a softie .................... but if you support the Constitution, are you not conservative?

Or perhaps it is not how one sees laws but how they react. Is a softie a liberal? Well, if so, then what basis is a conservative judged by, if the defn. is "of the old ways", then which old ways, when?

Or perhaps that is not the defn. at all.

Is it how money is spent? Do liberals just give out all the money, then? Well, considering how money has been spent in the last few years, I'm under the impression that those in power don't see themselves as liberal ........ and yet money has been spent as if there is no end to it.

Basically, what is liberal and what is conservative is probably held in the speaker of the word.
------------------------------------------------------
("Uplink, underground, uplink, underground, if you don't shut up, I'm going to uplink your a** and then you'll be underground!"--Ben Richards (Arnold), (wtte), "The Running Man")

gunnut · 09-20-2006, 14:13 PM

We have some political candidates in California who describes themselves as "liberal on social matters, but fiscally conservative." They are the ones who are softies but stingy at the same time. Basically a tactic to please more people, more of the times.

A strict observance of the Consitution makes one a libertarian, I believe. The founders wanted limited federal government, broad state power, and an armed citizenry to guantee freedom for the people.

A conservative also means one who is more likely to follow tradition.

A liberal means one who wants to deviate from tradition. To re-intepret customs, if you will. Those are the ones who claim the "Constitution is a living, breathing document."

In America, we lump all liberals, socialists, leftists, softies, and appeasers together.

Conservatives are the capitalists, right wing, religious (Christian only, all other religious zealots are OK), gun toting, heartless, profit seeking, warmongers.

dalem · 09-20-2006, 16:59 PM

In the past, American liberals were more heavily associated with "classic" liberal ideals, like spreading freedom, self-rule, open societies, etc.

Nowadays it's the American "conservatives" that are actually carrying those banners. The libertarians I know trend more toward isolationism.

-dale

Bluesman · 09-24-2006, 22:30 PM

I wish George would shut up. He's about to spill the beans to the Dems about what they are doing wrong.

Oh, wait, I forgot: they don't read his columns. We're safe.

Quote:

Liberalism as Condescension
By George Will

EVERGREEN PARK, Ill. -- This suburb, contiguous with Chicago's western edge, is 88 percent white. A large majority of the customers of the Wal-Mart that sits here, less than a block outside Chicago, are from the city and more than 90 percent of the store's customers are African-American.

One of whom, a woman pushing a shopping cart with a stoical 3-year-old along for the ride, has a chip on her shoulder about the size of this 141,000 square- foot Wal-Mart. She applied for a job when the store opened in January and was turned down because, she said, the person doing the hiring "had an attitude.'' So why is the woman shopping here anyway? She looks at the questioner as though he is dimwitted and directs his attention to the low prices of the DVDs on the rack next to her.

Sensibly, she compartmentalizes her moods and her money. Besides, she should not brood. She had lots of company in not being hired: More than 25,000 people applied for the 325 openings.

Which vexes liberals like John Kerry. (He and his helpmeet last shopped at Wal-Mart when?) In 2004 he tested what has become one of the Democrats' 2006 themes: Wal-Mart is, he said, "disgraceful'' and symbolic of "what's wrong with America.'' By now, Democrats have succeeded, to their embarrassment (if they are susceptible to that), in making the basic numbers familiar:

The median household income of Wal-Mart shoppers is under $40,000. Wal-Mart, the most prodigious job-creator in the history of the private sector in this galaxy, has almost as many employees (1.3 million) as the U.S. military has uniformed personnel. A McKinsey company study concluded that Wal-Mart accounted for 13 percent of the nation's productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s, which probably made Wal-Mart about as important as the Federal Reserve in holding down inflation. By lowering consumer prices, Wal-Mart costs about 50 retail jobs among competitors for every 100 jobs Wal-Mart creates. Wal-Mart and its effects save shoppers more than $200 billion a year, dwarfing such government programs as food stamps ($28.6 billion) and the earned-income tax credit ($34.6 billion).

People who buy their groceries from Wal-Mart -- it has one-fifth of the nation's grocery business -- save at least 17 percent. But because unions are strong in many grocery stores trying to compete with Wal-Mart, unions are yanking on the Democratic Party's leash, demanding laws to force Wal-Mart to pay wages and benefits higher than those that already are high enough to attract 77 times more applicants than there were jobs at this store.

The big-hearted progressives on Chicago's City Council, evidently unconcerned that the city gets zero sales tax revenues from a half a billion dollars that Chicago residents spend in the 42 suburban Wal-Marts, have passed a bill that, by dictating wages and benefits, would keep Wal-Marts from locating in the city. Richard Daley, a bread-and-butter Democrat, used his first veto in 17 years as mayor to swat it away.

Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots, and announce -- yes, announce -- that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by ... liberals.

Before they went on their bender of indignation about Wal-Mart (customers per week: 127 million), liberals had drummed McDonald's (customers per week: 175 million) out of civilized society because it is making us fat, or something. So, what next? Which preferences of ordinary Americans will liberals, in their role as national scolds, next disapprove? Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet?

No. The current issue of The American Prospect, an impeccably progressive magazine, carries a full-page advertisement denouncing something responsible for "lies, deception, immorality, corruption, and widespread labor, human rights and environmental abuses'' and of having brought "great hardship and despair to people and communities throughout the world.''

What is this focus of evil in the modern world? North Korea? The Bush administration? Fox News Channel? No, it is Coca-Cola (number of servings to Americans of the company's products each week: 2.5 billion).

When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled "What's the Matter With Liberals' Nominees?'' No, the book they turned into a best-seller is titled "What's the Matter With Kansas?'' Notice a pattern here?

georgewill@washpost.com
(c) 2006, Washington Post Writers Group

09-18-2006, 21:04 PM	#2 (permalink)
gunnut *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 01-27-06 Location: DPRK, Democratik People's Republik of Kalifornia Posts: 9,882 Country:	So basically Michigan is like California without the nice weather. I guess I won't move there any time soon. __________________ "Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

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09-19-2006, 13:00 PM	#5 (permalink)
dalem Lord High Hullabalooster *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 11-23-04 Location: Columbia Heights, MN Posts: 8,555 Country:	To be fair, a lot of the exodus from Michigan is directly traceable to people leaving Detroit. I do find it interesting though. I left Michigan 5 years ago but not for any of the reasons applicable to the article. -dale

09-20-2006, 02:29 AM	#7 (permalink)
SnowLeopard *Military Professional* Join Date: 07-18-06 Location: Texas Posts: 750	Conservative, liberal, conservative, liberal, ............... What is one these days and what is the other? I consider myself a liberal but in many eyes, I'm a conservative, but not to the extreme of many who call themselves conservatives or at least, don't call themselves liberals. For example, consider our recent discussions regarding crime, punishment, and the 8th amendment. I am pretty firmly based with the Constitution. Don't violate the Constitution, that's a no-no .................. and yet, given that I wouldn't torture a serial killer to death, to some, that might make me a liberal, a softie .................... but if you support the Constitution, are you not conservative? Or perhaps it is not how one sees laws but how they react. Is a softie a liberal? Well, if so, then what basis is a conservative judged by, if the defn. is "of the old ways", then which old ways, when? Or perhaps that is not the defn. at all. Is it how money is spent? Do liberals just give out all the money, then? Well, considering how money has been spent in the last few years, I'm under the impression that those in power don't see themselves as liberal ........ and yet money has been spent as if there is no end to it. Basically, what is liberal and what is conservative is probably held in the speaker of the word. ------------------------------------------------------ ("Uplink, underground, uplink, underground, if you don't shut up, I'm going to uplink your a** and then you'll be underground!"--Ben Richards (Arnold), (wtte), "The Running Man")

09-20-2006, 14:13 PM	#8 (permalink)
gunnut *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 01-27-06 Location: DPRK, Democratik People's Republik of Kalifornia Posts: 9,882 Country:	We have some political candidates in California who describes themselves as "liberal on social matters, but fiscally conservative." They are the ones who are softies but stingy at the same time. Basically a tactic to please more people, more of the times. A strict observance of the Consitution makes one a libertarian, I believe. The founders wanted limited federal government, broad state power, and an armed citizenry to guantee freedom for the people. A conservative also means one who is more likely to follow tradition. A liberal means one who wants to deviate from tradition. To re-intepret customs, if you will. Those are the ones who claim the "Constitution is a living, breathing document." In America, we lump all liberals, socialists, leftists, softies, and appeasers together. Conservatives are the capitalists, right wing, religious (Christian only, all other religious zealots are OK), gun toting, heartless, profit seeking, warmongers.

09-20-2006, 16:59 PM	#9 (permalink)
dalem Lord High Hullabalooster *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 11-23-04 Location: Columbia Heights, MN Posts: 8,555 Country:	In the past, American liberals were more heavily associated with "classic" liberal ideals, like spreading freedom, self-rule, open societies, etc. Nowadays it's the American "conservatives" that are actually carrying those banners. The libertarians I know trend more toward isolationism. -dale

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