Explaining Michigan’s lost decade
Don Grimes and I have written in each of our annual progress reports on the Michigan economy that Michigan’s economic collapse the past decade could best be explained as a single industry recession, rather than a single state recession. That our so-called lost decade is a continuation of long-term trends, rather than a departure. For […]
Detroit growing
Last May I wrote that the city of Detroit should focus on growing, not shrinking. As contradictory as it sounds the city needs to do some of both. But the priority needs to be growth. As I wrote: Detroit’s problem is not that there is no demand for central city living. The last two decades […]
Key quality of place characterisitcs
Finally had a chance to read the Knight Foundation’s 2010 Soul of the Community report. Conducted by Gallup it identifies the attributes that most drive community attachment. What is of particular interest is the finding that the more attached an area’s residents are the better the region’s economic growth. Metro Detroit is one of the […]
Low tax America
Bruce Bartlett is one of the original supply siders. He worked in both the Reagan and first Bush Administrations as well as for Congressmen Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. He was involved in the drafting of the Kemp/Roth tax cut that in many ways started the tax cuts are the answer to whatever ails the […]
A roadmap for supporting higher education
We have long argued that the state needs to reverse recent trends of under-investing in colleges, universities and community colleges. Michigan spent decades building a world-class systems of higher education. The system is arguably the most import asset the state has to develop the concentration of talent Michigan needs to be successful in the knowledge-based […]
Taking talent seriously in Lansing
“Either we get younger and better educated or we get poorer” is the slide we close all our presentations with. It captures our core belief that talent is the asset that matters most to Michigan’s future prosperity. And that because recent college graduates are the most mobile group in the country that where they decide […]
Pessimistic non college educated whites
Ron Brownstein has a really insightful article on Yahoo! News entitled Why the white working class is alienated, pessimistic. Brownstein reports on a new survey by Pew Charitable Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project. What the research found is that non college educated whites are, by far, the least optimistic group about America’s economic future. The most optimistic […]
The Michigan Future approach to higher education
For the last month or so most of my posts have been about higher education. For us it is a top economic development priority. This is a long standing belief of ours. In a world where the defining characteristic of prosperous places increasingly is human capital we believe that the the single most important thing […]
Business following talent
Fascinating New York Times article on UBS entitled Regretting Move, Bank May Return to Manhattan. Its about UBS considering moving back to Manhattan because they can’t attract talent to their huge suburban Connecticut trading operations. As the Times writes: …UBS is having buyer’s remorse. It turns out that a suburban location has become a liability […]
Quality of place in the news
All of a sudden a lot of media reports on the importance of creating quality of place – particularly vibrant central cities – in growing the Michigan economy. Hopefully this media attention is a harbinger of policy maker attention. Because it sure isn’t on Lansing’s priority list at the moment. (If it ever has been!) […]