After sketching out just how difficult things are, they end up by postulating a rosy scenario, or at least a rosier scenario, somewhere just over the horizon, Yes, we will continue to lose jobs this year, and next year, but then things should get better.
For example, last fall the University of Michigan‘s highly respected economic forecast was one of the first to make it grimly clear just how bad things were. But it also predicted things would start to slowly improve in 2011. Why did the economists think the economy would get better two years from now?
So far as I could tell, they offered no real reason. Possibly they felt they couldn’t leave us with a vision of no hope.
Other forecasts have been even more saccharine about the long-term future. The sun is bound to come out, if not tomorrow, sometime soon. True, it may be a while before real estate values start surging again, but they are bound to, sooner or later.
Yesterday, Tom Walsh, the business columnist for the Free Press, sounded a different note. The truth, he said, is that “we‘re slogging through muck so thick, in a pit so deep, that this region can’t reasonably expect a return to prosperity for many years.”
That was the most honest assessment of our situation that I have read in the mainstream media. That’s not to say that it is time to despair. This doesn’t mean we should tie the suitcases to the top of our Woody station wagons and flee for Oklahoma.
What it does mean is that we have to smile bravely and say, “Okay. The dinosaurs are dying out, we’ll miss them sometimes, but it gives us one hell of an opportunity to create a future.”
Then we go out and create it. America always has been about believing in a better future, believing that you could get rich or at least enable your children and grandchildren to get rich.
We are a people fueled by hope. Let me give you two examples from the world of politics. President Jimmy Carter was a fairly sensible man who believed that we live in an age of limits, that fossil fuels were running out. When he ran for re-election in 1980, he essentially argued that we should lower our expectations.
Ronald Reagan said that was nonsense, that our best days were yet to come, and that America should be a “shining city on a hill.” He won in a landslide. Last year Barack Obama campaigned on a message that was actually similar to Reagan’s: “Yes, we can.” His opponent appealed to our basest fears.
We know how that turned out.
Today, we need leaders able to both offer us a realistic assessment of the present, and inspire us to believe in a better future. Actually, what we really need is the ability to do that for ourselves. It’s the start of a new week, so gentlemen and gentlewomen, start your engines. We’ve got a new world to win.
Nice try Jack, but I'll stick to Tom Walsh's assessment of the future prospects for Michigan. I guess the only positive thing I could say would be that the strong will survive as they always do and hopefully we may do better with a new governor and legislature - let's hope so.
Posted by: George | July 06, 2009 at 03:11 PM
I admire Gov. Granholm a lot. She encountered a mess from Engler and I KNOW she's always had our best interests at heart. Maybe it's time for a republican governor. If they can think eliminating the small business tax will solve all our problems, they're surely mistaken. I think the best thing we can do is to better educate our workforce, especially older laid off folks. I agree we need incentives as well, but our problems are complex and not easily fixed, even by republicans.
Posted by: rjacks | July 08, 2009 at 01:04 PM