Michigan Future introduces new bloggers
The entire Michigan Future staff is going to start sharing this blog with me. The plan is to have a new blog Tuesday through Friday. Joining me in blogging will be our policy associates: Patrick Cooney, Sarah Szurpicki and Kim Trent.
We will be writing about our new state policy agenda project: Raising Michiganders Living Standards. The four of us are staff to the Michigan Future Board in developing the first ever Michigan Future policy agenda.
The agenda is designed to recommend what state actions matters most in improving living standards for all Michiganders. Something we have been struggling with since the turn of the century.
Michigan’s per capita income has fallen from two percent below the national average in 2000 to eleven percent below in 2015. That despite a booming domestic auto industry. This recovery is the first time ever that Michigan has been a low-prosperity state while the domestic auto industry has been doing well.
A rising tide no longer is raising all––or even most–-boats. The Michigan Association of United Ways has found that 40 percent of Michigan household are unable to afford the basic necessities: housing, child care, food, health care, and transportation.
This blog will lay out our ideas on (1) what the goal of state economic policy should be; (2) the new realities that state policy cannot change and that we need to align with rather than resist; (3) which levers available to state policy makers are the most powerful in improving economic outcomes for all Michiganders; and (4) with each lever what are the specific actions we recommend.
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I appreciate your opinion and your quest to seek answers, solutions and hopefully SEE them implemented in Real-Time.
As for the deficiency in income though, Wouldnt you consider that with the increased technology available AND the available manpower seeking long term employment…the employers have the advantage to set their wages at lower rates because the people seeking work will accept it, if there is a possibility of remaining employed ?
I see even Registered Nurses today accepting professional positions at significantly lower starting wages than were offered prior to the “recession”.
These are some of the questions we are going to try to provide answers to in our Raising Michiganders Living Standards policy agenda. No question that for lower-skill occupations there is more supply of labor than demand, which holds wages down. On the other hand, the data seems to indicate that college grads taking lower-skill jobs is far less than conventional wisdom tells and is not more prevalent than in previous eras.