Snyder takes command

Richard D. Snyder was sworn in as governor last weekend, taking power in a state that has lost people, lost political clout, lost nearly a million jobs in the last decade. He then, in his distinctive, oddly nasal voice, gave an unusual inaugural speech.

Unusual, that is, because it was worth listening to. Though he did his appropriate best to encourage us to believe we can build a better future, he pretty much also spelled out how bad things are.

"The last part of the industrial era has been a period of decline in our state [that] has gone on for several decades," he said.

Reversing this trend "will not be simple or easy," he said. "It will require shared sacrifices from all of us ... many of us will have to take a step back in the short term to move us all forward together in the long term." That isn't quite Winston Churchill saying he could offer his people "nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

Melodrama is not Snyder's style. What he did say is that the state couldn't be reformed; it needs to be reinvented.

That is, by the way, exactly right. You may not have voted for Rick Snyder. Interestingly, most of the 1,874,834 people who did vote for him in November hadn't even heard his name yet a year ago today.

But now he's in charge, and if you are reasonable, intelligent, sane and have a brain in your head, you have to hope he succeeds beyond anybody's wildest dreams, even his own.

Otherwise, Michigan, your Michigan, stands a very good chance of becoming Haiti with ice storms. The old economy is indeed dead. The domestic automotive industry is still alive, mostly thanks to the Obama administration. But it will never again play the role it did.

Think about this: For nearly a century, the auto plants defined the economy of this state. They employed hundreds of thousands of workers who, beginning in the 1940s, were paid high wages for largely unskilled work, thanks to the efforts of the United Auto Workers.

For many years after World War II, we were so rich we could afford this, and the autoworkers' fat contracts drove up wages and benefits across the board in Michigan. We were one of the highest-income states in the nation a half-century ago. Then things started slipping, and, finally, the bottom fell out a couple years ago.

Want to know what happened to Michigan? Back in 1979, General Motors had more blue-collar employees working in the city of Flint than it does today in the entire country. In fact, more than 91 percent of all GM blue-collar jobs in Michigan that existed then are gone. Forever. The auto companies may survive, but they never again will be a mass employer of high-wage, low-skill workers.

In fact, the UAW is now so beaten up and broken, they have agreed that when the factories hire new workers, they can get away with paying them only $14 an hour, and, in most cases, people need two-year degrees to even be considered for those jobs.

> Email Jack Lessenberry