I’m a lifelong resident of one of the most beautiful states in America: Michigan. Michigan is surrounded by the largest freshwater lakes in the world, is blessed with an abundance of vast, verdant forests, golden sandy beaches, beautiful state parks, pristine inland lakes, even some of the top golf courses in the country. It has been justly called ‘the Winter, Water Wonderland’. It is a top vacation destination with many historic sites, including Mackinac (pronounced ‘Mackinaw’) Island, recently named as the ‘#1 Best Travel Destination’ in the United States in USA Today’s 2024 Readers’ Choice Awards.

In the years after World War II, Michigan became the model for economic prosperity. With the Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) headquartered in Detroit, the auto manufacturing industry flourished, and auto workers earned top dollar, creating a prosperous middle class and a standard of living unrivaled anywhere in the U.S. Michigan drew top talent from around the country and the world, all streaming into our state to share in the true American Dream.

That was then.

Today, under the corrosive and unrelenting machinations of the progressive left, Michigan is a vastly different state, economically and culturally.

GM started hemorrhaging jobs in the 1980s. And since 1990, jobs in the auto plants, parts factories, and corporate offices have declined by 35%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That doesn’t include all the ancillary businesses that were beneficiaries of the industry, such as restaurants, hotels, gas stations, parts trucking, real estate, and more. To make it worse, Edmunds chronicles the fact that domestic auto sales by the three U.S. auto manufacturers -- GM, Ford, and Stellantis (formerly Fiat Chrysler) -- have fallen from a high of nearly 70% of domestic auto sales in 1999, to 37% as of last year. As for jobs, more than four times as many individuals are employed in the state’s hospitals than in Michigan’s auto assembly plants.

How did it happen? A large part of it was hubris on the part of the auto executives. They believed no foreign auto manufacturers would ever produce cars that would rival American quality and appeal. However, the Auto Workers Union sowed the seeds of the demise. Demanding extraordinary wages and lavish benefits, they drove the cost of auto manufacturing -- and auto prices -- to untenable levels. Several years ago, the old joke going around Michigan was: “What’s the most expensive part of a Cadillac?” Answer: “The benefits.”

Unions, backed by Michigan Democrats universally, exercised a stranglehold on Michigan’s #1 industry; but with foreign competition increasing, and the quality of America’s automobiles declining, the inevitable happened. True free market dynamics kicked in. Foreign automakers offered better cars, lower prices, better warranties -- soon the American Auto Industry located in Michigan nosedived into a free fall.

Plants closed all over the state. I remember the devastation that happened to Flint, Michigan when GM closed their manufacturing operations there. The city of Flint was built around General Motors; GM was its lifeblood. Within two years, Flint became a ghost town, its economy destroyed. That was over twenty years ago, and Flint has never recovered. (It did rise to prominence one more time, years later -- as ‘The Murder City’.)

In Lansing, the capital city of Michigan and the locus of a large GM manufacturing operation, we congratulated ourselves that we had dodged that bullet -- until GM closed everything there, as well. It happened all over the state, as the Big Three automakers moved their production operations to southern states and to Mexico, where labor unions and the Democrats couldn’t exercise unchecked power over them and where they could afford to build cars again.

Today, Michigan Democrats still haven’t learned their lesson. With the deadly trident of a Democrat governor, a Democrat Senate, and a Democrat House of Representatives, the progressive politicos are marching lockstep, down the path of economic self-destruction again. Last year, this progressive cabal repealed the State’s ‘Right to Work’ law. Now, any company that wants to do business with the State of Michigan must be a union company and their workers must pay union dues and fees, whether they want to or not (a large portion of which, as we know, lines Democrat pockets and campaign coffers). With the ‘Right to Work’ law in place, Michigan could successfully compete to attract new businesses to the state from all over the world. Not anymore.

“Despite advocacy from the Detroit Regional Chamber and peer business groups, Michigan lawmakers voted to repeal the [Right to Work] law in March 2023.” (Detroit Regional Chamber, Feb. 13, 2024)

The Big Three left a few operations here as an hommage to Michigan’s storied automotive history, but truthfully, these are just window dressings compared to a once thriving industry in the Great Lakes State that was the envy of the nation and the free world.

So now that Michigan is no longer a prosperity-creating juggernaut of automotive manufacturing and innovation, what industry is Michigan being lauded for today? It’s awesome, man! According to a recent article in the Detroit Free Press, “Michigan has now surpassed California as the top cannabis market in the U.S. by sales volume’! (June 13, 2024) Dude! At $132.41 per capita sales, us Michigan stoners have tripled California’s $44.21 per capita sales. Market sales topped $3 billion in 2023 and are forecast to reach $4 billion by 2028, so predicts BDSA, a company that (by its own description) “provides a complete view of the global cannabinoid market of today and tomorrow”. Are you down with that? Of course, the irony in all of this is that an adjacent article in the same Detroit Free Press tells us that Michigan cannabis companies are struggling to survive in the increasingly competitive recreational marijuana market. Bummer, man!

So, under the leadership of the progressives, Michigan has descended from the stratospheric heights of a $300 billion auto industry that led the world, to a $3 billion struggling cannabis industry of flowers, edibles, and gummies. ‘How the mighty have fallen.’

But, hey! “You can’t complain when you’ve got Mary Jane.”

Eric Dawe is an award-winning writer, chess enthusiast, and the author of two books based on Virgil’s Aeneid: Aeneas, Last King of Troy and the sequel, Aeneas, Landfall of Legend.

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