The economy, the media, and Presidential politics

It’s been said that there’s not a recession until it’s your neighbor’s job that gets cut. In the last week, most of the people that I’ve seen and heard interviewed on the radio and television live in the south and have worked in closing textile mills. Why? Is it because there are millions of these folks who are newly being impacted by globalization and free trade? No, it’s because we are in a Presidential election cycle, and these sad human interest stories somehow have a new relevance.

Free trade and the global economy are no strangers to Michigan. The auto industry, which led to an increasingly high standard of living across Michigan for decades, is struggling to reinvent itself. A strong manufacturing sector that has been critical to the sustained growth, and sometimes the very survival, of the US, has become more a part of our past than a part of our future.

The manufacturing sector grew rapidly, and endured significant challenges and changes, because it represented the latest innovation as we entered the 20^th century. Then, as now, innovation is the essential element of prosperity.

It’s interesting to watch as the media covers the Presidential primaries. Candidates sometimes, although not often, speak the truth: that we need to make some difficult decisions and changes if we are to once again prosper in the coming decades.  Confronting these ever changing realities, though, has been the bedrock of American history and tradition.

So, my suggestion is not to succumb to the opiate of easy fixes and popular promises. If someone tells you that they are going to make us more prosperous by cutting taxes, we must ask what programs will be cut to offset the lost revenue? Will the already scarce resources for affordable housing be cut? If someone tells us that they will end the war in Iraq, we must ask how, and at what cost?

I believe that our region is on the rebound, in large measure because we have been forced to ask the tough questions and make the tough choices that go along with the answers. The same may well be true at the national level.