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Parting Shots

By Wm. R. Lowry
Editor & Publisher, MiBiz
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Quotable Quotes

“Wealth: any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.”
– H. L. Mencken, American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist

“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.”
– George Bernard Shaw,

Irish playwright and co-founder of the London School of Economics “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
– Confucius, Chinese thinkerand social philosopher

“Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.”
– Theodore Roosevelt, 26th Presidentof the United States

“No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.”
– Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell, English author and journalist

“All legislative experiments in the way of making forcible distribution of the wealth produced in any country have failed.”
– Leland Stanford, founder ofStanford University

stab backing?

As a kid, I was a bit of a history nerd, drawn to the legacy tales of America’s titans of industry and innovation — Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Herbert H. Dow, Will Keith Kellogg, George M. Pullman and John D. Rockefeller, to name but a few. Like many students, I was awed by the vast personal fortunes they each accumulated and the great fame they each attained as they turned a sleepy, agrarian nation into a world-class industrial and economic power.

But far more intriguing to me were the legacies they established as each ultimately used his wealth and connections via philanthropy to establish and enhance public institutions and greatly improve the human condition.

In today’s America, rife now with endless squabbling over joblessness, poverty, entitlement spending and tax policy, the only sane solution lies in hindsight. For while amassing their personal fortunes, America’s famed entrepreneurs and captains of industry provided pathways to prosperity for tens upon tens of millions through job creation — job creation made possible by none other than invested personal wealth.

That formula — free enterprise — is as reliable a tool to solve society’s challenges today as it was back then. What negates its positive effect is the systematic whittling away by government of the risk/reward ratio necessary to motivate job creators. It starts when the very seed of job creation – wealth – becomes demonized and attacked via tax policy, over-regulation and insidious bully pulpit rhetoric.

lost & found

After suffering through its “lost decade” as the country’s leading example of the dying economic engine called heavy industry, imagine the gasps in some circles as Bloomberg BusinessWeek in late October ranked Michigan’s economic health as second-best in the nation. The home to the U.S. automobile industry was topped only by North Dakota, where an oil boom is raising incomes and boosting government coffers at the nation’s quickest rate. Michigan’s economy is recovering from the recession at the second-fastest pace in the U.S., lifted by reviving carmakers and local manufacturers, according to a new Bloomberg index that tracks the pace of state growth. California, Massachusetts and Illinois round out the top five in the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States Index, which uses data on real estate, jobs, taxes and stock prices to gauge the growth rate of states.

Lest skeptics impugn the evidence of this astounding economic turnaround, consider the source: Bloomberg’s research capabilities are renowned and globally respected. The finding also builds on an equally weighty signpost from earlier this year when Fitch Ratings upped its outlook for Michigan to “positive,” another sign that Michigan is on the right path and ripe for economic growth.

While few would label current economic conditions as healthy when compared with historical data, two recent surveys of Michigan business operators point to their new-found confidence in the state’s direction.

Seventy percent of Michigan largest employers said they expected the state’s economic outlook to improve over the next 18 months, while only 46 percent expected such gains for the national economy, according to a survey released last month by Business Leaders for Michigan.

“Michigan’s largest employers are much more optimistic about Michigan’s long-term economic prospects than they were a couple of years ago,” said BLM CEO Doug Rothwell. “About one-third of Business Leaders for Michigan companies are forecasting increased job creation and investment in Michigan over the next six months.”

And while the economy remains tough across the state, Michigan’s small and mid-sized business owners still believe things are beginning to move in the right direction, and they plan to reinvest in their businesses and hire new employees, according to the semi-annual Future Business Index study, commissioned by Accident Fund and conducted by Marketing Resource Group Inc. in October.

Make no mistake: Signs are increasingly pointing to a distinctive “found” decade ahead for Michigan.

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