Busily erecting new obstacles

One gets the impression that the GOP thinks the only thing important in life is a job. One can imagine Michigan GOP lawmakers saying, "Okay, fine, we're doing something about jobs. So sit down and shut up." I won't go into whether those policies will actually create jobs (enough posts about that elsewhere). This post looks beyond the jobs.

In the huge flurry of activity from the Michigan legislature's lame-duck session, Gov. Rick Snyder is trumpeting how wonderful the state is for business from the tax point of view. Come to Michigan, we need workers! He has been saying how the business climate and job opportunities will attract young, college educated workers.

In an editorial in the Sunday Free Press Brian Dickerson considers those youth. Michigan appears to be:

…a state whose elected officials are busily erecting new obstacles to contraception, same-sex marriage and voting, and new opportunities for people who open for-profit prisons, hunt wolves or pack heat in church.

Really, lawmakers, is there something your not doing to make young college graduates feel unwelcome?

Business Leaders of Michigan predict by 2024 the state will have a *million* more jobs for college graduates than youth to fill them (uh, BLM, that's ten percent of the current state population, you sure of those numbers? But back to the editorial…).

The young of the state are already leaving in droves. Simply posting job openings will not bring them back. Jobs for college grads already exist and are going unfilled. And the reason the youth are leaving is they expect to have more out of life than a job.

They expect to attend the weddings of their gay friends. They expect to have contraception readily available. They expect all votes to count. They expect to not dodge bullets in church (at least Snyder vetoed *that* one). They expect to live in a thriving society.

Yeah, we have a legislature that is using it's chance to implement the extreme right agenda. But Snyder does not have to play along. It appears to Dickerson that Snyder is signing much of this stuff simply to placate the extreme side of his party. But in doing so Snyder is scaring away the very people he says the state needs to grow.