A blurb on Michigan

AHH! I'm sorry I havent been back since Wednesday!! I need to set up a reminder to blog when my alarm goes off on my phone in the morning -_-

Here we go: the following is what I call a comment 'war' from Facebook (I apologize to no end for the lack of...you know...grammatical structure)...

Other Guy:

The union UAW is responsible for the large middle class in this Nation. They are not to blame for the big 3 demise. It is our tax structure that puts an excise tax on domestic production, thus the exidos of jobs after free trade policy was put in place. Fair TAx cures all this.

Me:

There is no panacea just like there is no one, singular cause to any economic recession (other than, of course, general ones like 'Democrats'). One can make a defensible case on the UAW not causing the demise of the big 3, but the case I argue is centered upon the seed of chaos (Unionism as we define it today) watered by the radically pro-labor position taken by both the govt of Michigan and the city of Detroit. 

With the complexity of the MI tax/regulatory structure (which centers around corporate 'nodes' like the Big 3, Spartan Stores, Meijer, etc.), we saw a few years ago a government trying to sap its entire revenue off of that main node. During the Engler admin, the legislature (under Republicans, of course) moved to dismantle this mindset and restore the freedom of the Big 3 while equalizing and lowering the tax burden on the whole state. Just like a newborn wildebeest, the Big 3 stumbled around in its new freedom and knocked the Michigan Economy on its butt.

Granholm was in at that point...her approach was to, guess what, preserve the lifeblood of the Democratic party in the state (Unions) so she took a(nother) hard approach of propping the stumbling wildebeest up (returning to the pre-Engler modus operandi). By now, the MBT is set up and giving breaks to the Big 3 that imported corporations would die for. Sparing these unionized companies the burden of taxation exploits the tax avenues left behind by the equalization efforts of the legislature under Engler and Sikkema while leaving a gaping hole in the budget. 

The Fair Tax is something that is needed, but Former Rep. Fulton Sheen's other proposals (http://tinyurl.com/cmh6kl) take large steps toward meeting what was recommended by the Senate Emergency Fiscal blahblah in '06: radically reforming the way Michigan does government and delivers services. We spend 38% of our budget of expensively decrepit social programs and depend on a tax structure so old it's physically rotting.

Other guy:

Chris what you have described points out very clearly the need for the Michigna Fair Tax plan and the National fair tax plan to get government out of the way of free enterprise. 

I would by the way, also propose that it is illegal by a Law, for a union to fraudulantly protect any worker who does not give a fair days wage for a fair days work.

Me:

Libertarians and many conservatives have a kind of confirmation bias...seeing government as a simple network of things but recognize, when asked, that it is not so. Taxation isnt the only, though it is the most apparent, negative effector of free commerce. 

We, of course, have a multitude of other negations of business functions descending from the Michigan budgeting process: leaving in a bunch of baggage from many, many years passed. Its just silly and Sheen's second proposal addresses that. In addition to that, the Michigan constitution should be amended to provide for open debate on every single budget item passed each fiscal year. 

I do realize this may possibly put geezers' lives at risk from all the all-night debating (we love you, Patty B.) but that if it is what is necessary for good government, then this should be asked of our legislators.

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I'll update with his reponse, if there is one...

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You might be asking yourself: who's to blame for this economic tsunami? It's nobody's fault. I, personally, blame it on the mindset of our lesser forebears and the idea that "we can just put off problems til we're out of office" present from the township to the federal level...exasperated by term limits, of course.

So where do we go? I give props to Sheen's prop.'s while forming our governmental dialouge toward a more just, democratic society. After all, the root of a democracy is the individual...so why do we focus on corporations and unions and all these other manufactured groups?