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March 27 2007
If there is one U.$. state that is going to figure out that the prison complex is unproductive labor, as in economy-draining, it is Michigan. Although Georgia and Florida are having their problems with secondary mortgages and foreclosures, we cannot expect them to figure out anything in our lifetimes. In Michigan's case, there is a governor with no great political prospects, Jennifer Granholm. If she chose to make her mark, she could do so by rescuing Michigan and exerting her influence across the united $tates that way.
In Michigan and the country generally, the vast majority of prisoners are state prisoners, not people who go to federal prisons. The cost is nearly $2 billion a year in Michigan. With 10 million people, that is $200 for every persyn in Michigan or over $400 for every employed persyn per year. With over 31% of state employees working in prisons,(1) the governor has a great chance to cut waste in state spending.
The problem in Michigan is the gap between its potential and declining actuality, especially given its infrastructure build-up and its low employment and population. Currently, Michigan is scheduled to run a budget deficit of $940 million. Coincidentally, that could be how much Michigan would save if it released non-violent offenders in prison and closed the prisons that held them. Two thirds of prison beds go to violent offenders, but 60% of new prisoners are non-violent offenders as of 2003 in Michigan.(2)
Ironically, if Michigan released its non-violent offenders, and changed its laws generating so much wasteful handling of non-violent offenses, it would still compare unfavorably with most governments in the world as a prison-state, including the incarceration rate under Saddam Hussein. Michigan is just above the median in imprisonment within the united $tates, but the united $tates is the world's imprisonment leader, contrary to its "free country" image.
Right now, the Michigan legislature is considering cutting elementary and secondary education grants of $7085 per student by $34 to save money.(3) Even worse, Governor Granholm has proposed raising a 2% services tax and other ideas about increasing gasoline taxes to repair roads are floating around.(4) There is a great temptation to wreck the Michigan economy further to appease the yahoos foaming at the mouth to keep people in prison. It's a vicious cycle in Michigan's case, but no one has managed to stop it politically. The bankers, people in real estate, tax-cut libertarians and educators should unite to cut Michigan's prison system in half and save Michigan's economy. MIM has no sympathy for social-democrats who want to raise taxes and fund all parts of the reactionary Michigan government.
The $400 per employee does not sound too bad by rich country standards till combined with the loss of 336,000 jobs between 2000 and 2006.(5) It's the overall picture of Michigan's economy that needs fixing.
In the recent furor over sub-prime mortgage lending, Michigan is right up there with counties in Georgia and Florida. Wayne County lost 89,000 people between 2000 and 2006--the most of any county in the country.(6) Michigan is fifth in overall foreclosures on mortgage loans and Wayne County was first in 2006.(7)
Although Michigan's population grew between 2000 and 2006 it did so more slowly than in the rest of the united $tates. Overall, Michigan's problem is typical of northern states which also face rising heating oil and natural gas costs that are less relevant to other states.
The typical argument in Michigan is between the white labor aristocracy and the Black professional petty-bourgeoisie. The white labor aristocracy harps non-stop on crime in Detroit while the Black petty- bourgeoisie urges pride and upholding the local reputation. For example, it would be typical to point out that Miami and DC are also high-crime cities, but they are not in the kind of tailspin Detroit is.
Detroit home prices have existed at Third World levels for decades. It's not that the quality of housing is so bad as compared with houses in the rest of the country; yet, no decline in the housing prices spurs a demand to live in Detroit. Typical was a newspaper story of someone who is losing her house in the sub-prime mortgage market, because she does not have a job. The mortgage she could not keep up with was under $70,000 and it was for repairs and enhancements.(8) It is not uncommon to hear of houses that sell for four digit sums.
In other words, the value of the property or labor that went into the houses has been devalued because of opinions and attitudes about Detroit. The KKK politics dominating the United $tates have three solutions for all problems: 1) Deport the migrant workers to boost wages and 2) put more Black people in prison to improve housing prices and 3) invade other countries for the rest of our problems. These three premises of white people economics are based in fallacies.
Without migrant workers, including the babies they sometimes have at the expense of $5000 in emergency room visits, the social security system would be even more burdened than it is now. It is the migrants who end up paying social security taxes, sometimes as those who become legal citizens or those who gain "shamnesties" as the oppressors call them. Whites are a disproportionate share of retirees and the social security program which is the biggest expense of the government. Wayne County and Michigan as a whole should be competing hard for any "illegal alien" who can run a business.
Likewise, there is no proof of a connection between the imprisonment rate and a reduction in crime. Nor is crime the only factor in an economy or its property values.
Cutting living expenses $100 a year per persyn by cutting imprisonment in half is not going to save Michigan by itself. It is just the single biggest thing that Michigan can do for itself within the budget questions it faces now. The rising price of heating oil and natural gas can still cause a further depopulation of Michigan, a further decline of housing prices and a further loss of tax base.
Many of the white counties and upper-middle class communities act as if there are limitless numbers of professionals that can pay taxes and boost the economy. College-town Ann Arbor has nearly as many jobs as Detroit proper.(9) The employment in Ann Arbor is based in a state-funded university including a hospital. Yet even yuppie Ann Arbor lost 6353 jobs between 2001 and 2006. (10) Meanwhile, yahoos want to cut hospital and college spending to hold prisoners instead. It does not occur to the labor aristocracy that Ann Arbor itself is unsustainable as a model, but building little prison-towns is even more unsustainable for the economy.
The Ann Arbor model is not sustainable for Michigan as a whole. Thanks in part to prisons but also the fact that taxes cannot support that many highly-paid professional jobs everywhere,(11) Michigan cannot copy Ann Arbor. One house in Ann Arbor on sale right now has a $325,000 price tag and an annual local property tax of $9418 for 1761 square feet--not exactly a mansion but a tax level higher than the average income level of most of the world's people including some relatively rich countries.
In 2005, the median U.$. home price was $240,900 for a house that had a median square feet of 2227.(12) Jacksonville, FL is the median point for local taxes in the united $tates, with $1037 to cover all annual "county, school, city, town and village tax bills."(13) Hence, we can see what $9418 for 1761 square feet really means in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that Ann Arbor is a far from typical place.
Quite the contrary to Michigan copying Ann Arbor,(14) lately Ann Arbor is copying Detroit, with a decline of home prices of 20% in the last four months, which is not surprising given reports of Ann Arbor's absolute employment decline. For Ann Arbors to expand in Michigan, the rest of Michigan has to be on the upward swing taxbase-wise, which means people-wise. Instead, we have the usual answers of deportation and imprisonment in white people politics.
If Michigan and other northern states had the political guts to solve their prison and energy problems, they could end the downward spiral they are in. Unfortunately, the Amerikkkan majority votes consistently for rabidly racist and chauvinist ideas about crime and migration. The governor of Michigan needs to cut through the political psychoses of white people and see that prisons boost white people's self-esteem and general psychological well-being at the expense of the economy generally. There is no fundamental truth to the idea that hiring people with badges, buying surveillance cameras and making Kim Il Sung look like an anarchist does anything to help the economy. Michigan needs people to buy its houses and participate in the economy, to get on the upward economic escalator.
Though Detroit's fine infrastructure is going to waste from economic mismanagement, the labor aristocracy's favorite politicians never learn. The ruling alignment is imperialists plus labor aristocracy and they believe their own dogmas, so Michigan's infrastructure will go to waste. The majority of the Michigan Senate is currently taking the position that it won't cut a single prison. The real hope for change is an international shock to the system, possibly a real wrecking of the economy caused by a Third World class struggle or perhaps the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of the oppressed nations taking over the united $tates. MIM calls on Granholm not just to save a piddly $135 million on prisons(15) but to cut all the non-violent offenders free from prison. According to Granholm herself, she faces a state loss of 32% in revenue over the last 30 years thanks to manufacturing's decline,(16) so what she has now should be called a revenue emergency necessitating an emergency response. Let it not be said no one told the politicians otherwise, when the Euro-Amerikans insisted on ruining Michigan.
Notes:
1. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/budget/budget_2008_small2_186327_7.pdf, p. 17.
2. http://www.capps-mi.org/material%20to%20put%20up/State%20Must%20Evaluate%20Its%20Prison%20Population%20-%2011-21-04.htm
3.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070326/NEWS06/703260
34
4. http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6259095&nav=0Rce
5.
http://www.mlive.com/news/sanews/index.ssf?/base/news-
1/1174818221169080.xml&coll=9
6.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070323/OPINION01/7
03230375/1006/METRO01
7. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=an4wlQaDRorE&refer=home
8. "Subprime loans rattle a shaky state housing
market,"
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070326/NEWS07/703260363/1001
9. In December, 2004, Ann Arbor employment was 310,350. http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/blsla/lausm04400005
Detroit proper employment figures are difficult to obtain now. Residents of Detroit hold 325,000 jobs and of course,
Ann Arbor jobs are better paying.
10. http://www.ecanned.com/MI/2007/02/ann-arbor-five-year-industry-employment.shtml
11. "The Professional and technical services industry has an LQ of 1.72. This means the percent of total employment in the Professional and technical services industry is 1.72 times the percent of the national average, This signifies that Ann Arbor specializes in Professional and technical services."
http://www.ecanned.com/MI/2006/11/employment-report-for-ann-arbor.shtml
12. https://www.key.com/pdf/tf_winter07.pdf
13. http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2003/08/04/story4.html This is somewhat misleading
because the figure is for median tax-rate, not median tax.
14. http://www.ecanned.com/MI/2006/11/housing-report-for-ann-arbor.shtml
"Ann Arbor recorded a median home value in 2005 of $227,900, accounted by the American Community Survey. This median is greater than the overall Michigan 2005 median owner-occupied dwelling value of $149,300 and greater than median owner-occupied dwelling value of $167,500 for the United States in the same year."
15. Detroit Free Press editorial 26March2007.
16. http://www.michigan.gov/documents/budget/budget_2008_small2_186327_7.pdf, p. 9.