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 […]
We Couldn’t Have Said it Better
Once in a long while you read something that you could have written word for work. That is the case for me and today’s Free Press editorial. Worth reading and take a look at the terrific charts as well. The editorial is titled: Graduate to a Smarter State. With a subtitle of Michigan’s economic future […]
Does Economic Development Work?
Interesting article by Rick Haglund in Dome Magazine. Its a brief history of the state’s economic development efforts from Milliken to Granholm. What struck me most in reading the article is how little we got for all the time and resources we spent trying to grow and diversify the state’s economy. The pattern that the […]
Apple
Interesting Business Week article on the just ended decade. Like everyone else they think it was awful. But point out that in terms of the economy maybe the brightest light was Apple. Hard to argue with that assessment. From what many believe was permanent decline at the start of the decade to iTunes, iPod, iPhone […]