Back to Steinman for
Governor.
Steinman for Governor:
Part 004, The Entrepreneur Initiative:
By William E. Steinman:
September 11, 2006:
I said previously and I say again, we should stop sucking up to big businesses to get them to come to Michigan and provide a few crumbs. We have some more evidence on that. A few days ago a census report was posted in the Detroit Free Press and reported on the local TV new show. It has Michigan listed as the most dramatically affected by America's economic situation. Income is down everywhere, but the largest drop is in Michigan. We have a whopping 12% decrease in median household income. Why is that?
It is because we are almost completely dependent on the auto industry. We have always been a one industry state and that industry is now static. It's not only that, Michigan's auto industry is failing to compete. We must face the truth. If you took the name tags off of all cars, vans, and trucks you would not be able to tell one brand from the other. Look at any highway. You will see acres and acres of bumper to bumper same old same old. Both Ford and GM have lost their brand-bonded loyal customer base. The brands are no longer unique.
So the auto industry will no longer save us. The big issue is jobs, so everyone says, but the day of the grossly overpaid punch-press operator has passed. When I worked at Ford's pressed steel facility years ago, these guys were called semiskilled workers. That's bologna. Something anyone can learn to do in a few minutes is not a skill, it's common labor. A computer can do that faster and more accurately than a human can. And a computer won't screw up the work flow by carelessly getting his fingers cut off in the press. Neither will a computer come to work hung over or take off 3 sick days in the summer to go fishing and 5 sick days in the fall to go hunting.
Okay, what can we do to keep our people working and our economy running full blast? No one has any real plans to offer. All we hear is talk about bringing jobs to Michigan. Everyone talks about jobs, but I have yet to see any comprehensive plans for creating jobs. The fact is, it should not be about jobs, it should be about direction. Lack of jobs is an effect, not a cause. Everything has a cause. To fix a problem it is necessary to find the cause.
We need not get silly about that. The idea is not to get to the first cause, which happened before the big bang. The idea is to discover the primary cause of a current problem where action can produce a long term positive result. In Michigan, that primary cause is the failure of education to produce creative citizens. That is a problem I will take up in one of the following essays, but that is very long term. That means we also need an interim plan. My interim plan is what I call the Entrepreneurial Initiative.
There is a total misconception in government about where jobs come from. New jobs don't come from old established declining businesses. New jobs come from new businesses. If you want to create jobs in any state, you must make the state friendly to entrepreneurs. We must quit belly crawling for established bureaucracy-burdened short-sighted firms and open it up to real entrepreneurs. We must stop shutting out the small guy and help him instead.
With this background I can now get to my theme. It is simple. To create new jobs I propose the Entrepreneurial Initiative. This initiative would be a statewide plan which could be implemented in Michigan and, for that matter, any state that wants it. The essence of it is to encourage, rather than discourage, entrepreneurs. Right now, our state and local governments too often actively discourage the entrepreneurial spirit. We have forgotten that the entrepreneurial spirit is exactly the spirit that built America.
The main idea would be to set up a state board to implement a coherent plan for helping entrepreneurs get started. The board would have the power to help people who have ideas and plans for new businesses and or products. The board would also be empowered to aid local communities in streamlining the process of establishing a business. This includes getting petty clerks out of the way and installing an ombudsman for aiding the entrepreneurs. If a new state law is needed to force communities to comply, so be it.
This board would be a separate state agency with an overseer committee made up of members of both houses. The banking and loan business would also be involved in this. The main thing we want from them is to offer fixed low interest state guaranteed loans for entrepreneurs who want to start a new business. The state board could negotiate with the lenders just as the feds did under the GI bill where hundreds of Americans were able to buy new homes and build communities because of the outstanding rates. Although the feds did guarantee the loans it was not a give away. There was no significant loss to the treasury.
For the most part, the beneficiaries of the GI bill bought homes, built strong communities, and became active participants within them. Everybody won, the home builders, the ex GIs and their families, the communities, the economy, and the lenders. We achieved economic growth partly as a result of that. It was the ultimate win-win. This Entrepreneur Initiative could be another such plan for achieving economic growth.
As I said this setup should also clear the path for people with good ideas to get past the permit nonsense and get going. For this there could be a statewide uniform system of permits. The communities could still issue the local permits, but they would be standardized statewide. The point is, the business person should only have to make his case once, to a state board. If approved, he should be able to go to a single department to get everything he needs to get started. Streamline is the key word.
Of course a person cannot get all of this help with smoke and
mirrors. He must have a plan. He must have a case for his new
product or business. The plan must be supported with hard facts.
This must be presented on a cost basis, with valid market information,
not estimates, but facts. It must be a real business plan. It
must be presented and approved before he can get the support of
the board. The plan will vary depending on the business proposed
but there must be some standard elements. What the state board
can supply for this is the outline of requirements. The potential
entrepreneur should be able to get that outline quickly and easily,
perhaps as an internet download.
Another part of this would also be the requirement that the entrepreneur who got state help would have to guarantee to maintain a business presence where he got the help. That is in Michigan. Normally this would not be the problem it is with the big thug corporations. There would usually be one or a few people involved who is already a part of the local community. The business would have a local base and the local entrepreneur would be in charge of his business. He would own it instead of having bankers and investors telling him how to run his show and where to set it up. It would be all up to him or her.
Here is the point. Michigan will become independent of the boom-bust economic cycles of the big business community when we have thousands of entrepreneurial start up small businesses with unique products and unique ideas. If we cannot develop home-grow business, How can we hope to induce outsiders to invest in Michigan. Why should Toyota, or anyone else, place facilities in Michigan? They will become interested when, and only when, we demonstrate that we can nurture businesses, when we can initiate and sustain a home-grown business community.
Then they will know Michigan is a good place to set up and
operate. When we create the positive environment we will find
the people to take advantage of it. We should have entrepreneurs
coming out of the woodwork. Instead, we find we have very few
who want to brave the hostile environment of Michigan with its
hodgepodge of rules, regulations, and laws. These are rules designed
to favor big business and shut out competition from startup people.
They were setup when the big three has enormous power to get favorable
conditions for themselves. We should not still be doing that,
but we are and it discourages real people with real ideas.
Back to Steinman for Governor.
|
|
|
|