Apple Again

After reading my previous post on Apple, John Austin, of the State Board of Education and the Brookings Institution, sent me a terrific study. Its from the Personal Computing Industry Center at the UC Irvine. Its topic is job creation generated by the iPod. It is one of the best articles I have seen on […]

Quality of Place Matters

Good post on quality of place by Rick Haglund at his web site. Its micheconomy.com Worth checking out regularly. Rick always has an interesting take on what’s happening to our state’s economy. In this blog Rick writes about the wife of Johnny Damon wanting him to play in a more cosmopolitan city – like Chicago […]

Questions for 2010

In my last post I recommended that we ask 2010 candidates “what state would Michigan look like if your economic development strategies worked?” The other key question I would ask is “what does Michigan need to look like for your kids (or grand kids) to want to live here?” Nearly all will be or are […]

What State Do We Want to Be Like?

One of the key questions I think we should ask every 2010 candidate is “if your economic development strategy works, what state would Michigan look like?” We need to know what kind of future economy they envision for the state. Turns out to be a hard question to answer for candidates of both parties. The […]

the Myth of Michigan Big Government III

In preparing for a presentation to the Michigan Society of Association Executives I took a look at what has happened to state taxes and spending this decade. Boy is convention wisdom wrong! To listen to the chatter from Lansing, despite an economic collapse, state government continues unrestrained taxing and spending. Many make the case if […]

Bissell, Part II

Nancy Crawley quotes Upjohn Institute economist George Erickcek in her column on Bissell. George, who is one of the best thinkers I know on economic development policy, says in the column “I for one am not willing, without a stronger fight, to say production simply can’t be here…. To say simply we give up, we’ll […]

Bissell

Good Nancy Crawley column in the Grand Rapids Press on the fortunes on Bissell – the vacuum cleaner company in West Michigan. Crawley argues that they are a model for manufacturers succeeding in Michigan, rather than abandoning the state. I couldn’t agree more. Its a Michigan example of the Apple model I wrote about in […]