GM bankrupt, Auto Industry in shambles. Who cares about Michigan?

Last month’s unemployment stats put Michigan at 12.6%.  GM just filed for bankruptcy, Chrysler is close to being voted off the island and Ford is staggering under the weight of all the hopes we’ve pinned to it.  Here in Michigan, or as we locals like to call it, ‘the mitten,’ the upcoming federal deadlines have many of us on edge and wondering what bankruptcy might actually mean to our fare mitten.  We’re taking bets on which of the big three will topple next and imagining even higher unemployment than12.6%.  I’m no economist, but unemployment numbers any higher than this can only add up to HOLY SHIT! 

Despite the economy, Michigan is an incredibly beautiful place.  It’s a state full of interesting culture (don’t believe me? Come and visit), natural resources, and red blooded ‘mericans just like you, who want nothing better than to have a decent job and a secure future.  So the biggest question on my mind is not so much ‘what’s next’ (I don’t know that I actually want to know the answer to that one), it’s why does the rest of the country not seem to care about our fate?

When our car guys got their chops busted for flying to Washington D.C. on private jets to ask congress for taxpayer money I could understand the country’s outrage.  They deserved it.  And comments I’ve heard in the news like, “but they haven’t made a decent car in years,” and “let them fail,” haven’t horribly offended me either, at least not the ideas behind these sentiments.  But the fact that these sentiments don’t seem to take into consideration the number of real ‘mericans whose livelihoods will be lost if you ‘let them fail’ just seems utterly callous to me. 

Like it or lump it, the fate of the whole damn state is inextricably bound to the auto industry.  But getting all worke- up over the auto industry is about as useful for a Michigander as being pissed off about lake-effect snow.  Do all Michigan residents support the auto industry and their CEOs?  No.  Do they support the UAW?  No.  Believe it or not, we don’t all drive American cars either.

Most of us have never even had one of those sweet manufacturing jobs that are quickly becoming extinct.  Of course you couldn’t throw a rock here without hitting somebody who did have a sweet manufacturing job and is now ‘retired.’  “Go ahead, throw a rock at them,” you say?  The problem with stoning the auto industry to death is that you also kill everybody else here.  The money spent by the people employed by the auto industry fuel everything – retail, construction trades, even the small businesses that employed me nearly all of my working life.  Everything.  

Just like the rest of the country many of us see our auto industry as a lazy, over-privileged dinosaur that many cling to and shrilly defend out of stubbornness and habit.  But what you don’t know is that we’re not shrill because we’re spoiled, we’re shrill because we’re scared.  Never having lived anywhere but Southeast Michigan, I can’t imagine an economy that is NOT overwhelmingly dependent on the auto industry.  It is hard for me to even believe that such places exists. 

Even with the GM, Ford and Chysler stumbling along for the past forty or fifty years, Michigan’s unemployment numbers have consistently been greater than the national average for years.  Now subtract the big three (lifeblood) from our economy, subtract the suppliers, the business services like advertising, marketing and third party vendors, subtract anything that might be dependent on the big three in any way.  What do you get?  Maybe some bars and soup kitchens, cash advance places and Rent-A-Centers.  Other than that, a lot of junk and a hollow echo – A rust bowl. 

In the absence of the automakers I can only picture a post-apocalyptic landscape that already makes up large parts of cities like Detroit, Flint, and Pontiac that will spread like a virus across the rest of the state (No offense to the good people of these cities).  It will overtake the suburbs, strip malls and small towns.  Roving bands of S&M-looking villains who feed off of ‘the spice’ will be the only survivors.  As cool as Mad Max was, ”Beyond Silverdome“ is not a future I’d like my state to realize anytime soon. 

 You’re probably thinking that I’m being overly dramatic.  Maybe.  But to us the failure of the U.S. auto industry amounts to a tear in the fabric of our universe.  As I sit here and imagine a gritty post-apocalyptic scenario (albeit attractively stylized), our governor waxes on with promises of jobs springing from the well of green technologies, the motion picture industry and a bright future for entrepreneurs.  I can’t blame her.  Someone has to be optimistic.  As a wise dude once said in the face of catastrophe, “you have been kicked in the ass with a golden horseshoe.”  Perhaps we do have a huge chance to remake ourselves right now.  Let’s hope and pray to every available deity that we can make good things happen out of this bad situation.

So for those Americans outside of the auto industry’s reach, we don’t blame you for not running out and buying an American car to save us.  But if you aren’t buying our cars, at least feel our pain.  

* This post submitted by the one called, ‘Lemon Juice.’