Who said anything about eliminating Corporate Taxes? Just make them competitive to other states that are getting the manufacturing jobs.

Also there is a big difference between services peple want and services people need. People want alot of things and the question becomes should they do for themselves or feed off the government.

Your comment about the lack of power of the govenor to changes things is incorrect. She does have the ability to make Michigan an attractive place to do business. She has the ability to lower taxes for corporations so they want to come to this state.

There is another side to the whining question and that is the ability for people to take constructive criticism. I am just an example of many small businesses that in total employs millions of individuals. The fact that our tax policy in Michigan is driving existing companies out of the State and keeping new manufacturing from coming in is directly hurting millions of workers. The small businesses that do not have the resouces to move are losing there customer base and many are closing their doors.

Don’t you think that encouraging business in the state and thus getting millions to keep their jobs and create new ones is better than people moving out of state and reducing the tax base or people staying in the state and becoming unemployed and taking benifits out of the tax revenues?

The govenor not only has the power but the obligation to see to it that as many people who can work have the opportunity to do so.

To say that this is unrealistic and simplistic is horribly dismissive and arrogant. This is her job!!!. Look around to the other states that are making changes and reaping the benefits of new business in their states. If she cannot affect change in a POSITIVE way then what is she doing there!!!

I could go on… how many people whining about their shoes pinching are grateful to have feet? How many people whose eyesight isn’t what it used to be are grateful to have a memory, and a mind that works?

When I think I have a problem, like tension about being late for an appointment, I try to reframe it. Like, “Maybe this will be the worst thing that happens to me today, and wouldn’t that make it a perfectly lovely day–no multiple deaths among family and friends, no plagues, a car that works, etc.”

Americans’ expectations about how things should always be are so hyper-unrealistic compared with the expectations of other people around the world–people who are happier!

Remember the Serenity Prayer: As you say, Dan, we need to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Venting just lets off steam, wastefully. If that steam were harnessed to change things, how many good things it could drive, like steam engine.

While my heart goes out to someone who’s invested even his home in his hope that the economy will turn around, and my hope is that it will, it seems unrealistically naive and simplistic to suppose that one woman in the governor’s mansion of one state has the power to change the worldwide economy or the national economy. We need to remember that Michigan is just one part of a very large system, all of it in decline. All of us need to do what we can, and not look over our shoulders to cast stones at others, imagining that they could do more (as they may imagine that we could do more).

Great advice, Dan: accept the things we cannot change.

One of our old colleagues at UD High used to have a simple sign in his classroom - “No whining allowed”. Carl was always trying to get his students to accept the challenges that life threw their way. I can not begin to count the number of times I have thought about that sign, especially when I find myself whining about all of the little stuff of life that challenges me.

Thanks for your great work!