{"id":3620,"date":"2021-04-30T07:19:36","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T11:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3620"},"modified":"2021-04-30T07:19:36","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T11:19:36","slug":"great-lakes-states-and-the-2020-census","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=3620","title":{"rendered":"Great Lakes States and the 2020 Census"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/JPA289.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"560\" height=\"409\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/JPA289.jpg\" alt=\"Great Lakes States and the 2020 Census\" class=\"wp-image-3621\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/JPA289.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/JPA289-300x219.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If there was one good thing that came out of the Great Recession, it&#8217;s that it finally made Michigan and the industrial midwest come to terms with reality: The massive employment from living wage manufacturing was not coming back. No state, no country, no town was going to be magically turned around by some new assembly plant. That was the old model.&nbsp;It was fun while it lasted, but that era is definitely over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a consequence, Michigan lost population. Actually in this past decade we started to gain population again, just not as fast as some other states in the south and west. But now we have the opportunity to build on some of our strengths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The cartoon is an exaggeration (as most cartoons are). But clearly our biggest&nbsp;advantage&nbsp;is our unique abundance of fresh water \u2014 lakes (great and otherwise), springs, rain, lots and lots of snow \u2014 we&#8217;ve got it all. And&nbsp;as climate change goes on, it&#8217;s just going to&nbsp;make us more attractive.&nbsp;Taking&nbsp;the lead&nbsp;in guaranteeing&nbsp;safe drinking water would be an obvious additional way to (as the business folks say) leverage our advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our manufacturing legacy also provides us with another distinct edge. We know how to make stuff. A little more emphasis on supporting trades and applied technology, and \u2014 boom! \u2014 we&#8217;re a magnet&nbsp;attracting living wage jobs and creative industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If&nbsp;we want our representatives back, we&#8217;re gonna need&nbsp;new residents: Immigrants. Yet another advantage&nbsp;\u2014 we&#8217;ve grown like&nbsp;this before! (Both&nbsp;with people from&nbsp;other countries and by the Great Migration.) Immigrants bring&nbsp;new ideas, new energy, and new opportunity, especially to depleted cities and rural communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, we have the best beer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If there was one good thing that came out of the Great Recession, it&#8217;s that it finally made Michigan and the industrial midwest come to terms with reality: The massive employment from living wage manufacturing was not coming back. No state, no country, no town was going to be magically turned around by some new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganpress-org","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3622,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620\/revisions\/3622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}