Ciao!

Things are becoming increasingly dire here in Michigan. I have become increasingly irritated about the loss of well-paying jobs to outsourcing countries.

Particularly with regard to outsourced legal services to India, for example. I'm tempted to unleash a string of profanities about this, but will respect the cleanliness of your blog here.

Seems to me that the model of comparative advantage breaks down when both labor-intensive jobs AND knowledge-intensive jobs are deployed overseas. So much for Ricardian theory, in my opinion. And so much for our economy and American prosperity, if we continue to allow our largest corporations to move everything to the cheapest markets. Although, if you're indian or chinese and educated, party on.

Bah.

Yes, Michigan is going to be hurting for quite some time. I've been expecting GM to go bankrupt for awhile now, especially as the date for contract negotiations with the UAW approaches in 2007. And even more so after Delphi went belly-up last month, the CEO of Delphi said he expected GM to enter bankruptcy pretty soon as well.

Hopefully, folks in MI can see the writing on the wall and diversify the economy away from cars--otherwise it's going to be painful not only for the former employees but also for the government as all that tax revenue dries up just when people need more benefits, like unemploymnet and welfare.

Unfortunately, something needs to be done to attract higher paying jobs to the area. We're not doing anything about it, and instead we have both sides trying to use the further problems as leverage against each other, while more and more quality people leave the state, and fewer and fewer people have an incentive to come here. If I didn't have a decent job right now, I would be so far away from this state right now.