Its easier and hopefully more believable to hear this from a life long resident of Michigan.  My state was once a proud (if not too "innocent") place where attractive natural resources and a solid industrial base combined to allow us a comfortable standard of living.  Obviously this is history.  

Through labor union greed, myopic industrial management and citizen apathy we find ourselves at the literal "bottom of the pile".  Michigan leads the nation in the dowward and dark spiral to ever lower depths of working class poverty, welfare reconstitution and a humiliatingly desperate standard of living.

The  rapid exodus of talented skilled workers, young graduates, professionals, retired and tens of thousands of the new jobless is almost audible and the vacuum they leave is deafening in its silence.

I can remember hearing  tales from friends who were UAW workers in the 70', 80's amd 90's of employee abuse of trust.  Long periods or entire shifts spent sleeping in the tool cribs, manning brooms and falling asleep on them, double-teaming an assembly line position; one man gossiping and reading while they took turns doing a single man's job.  These stories were usually related in a humorous, "wink-wink" way.  I suppose this was a manner of lessening the impact of outright theft and corruption against auto manufacturers.  Far from being anecdotal these stories became the norm for bar room talk and weekend fishing trips to Northern Michigan.  Not all of us who heard these tales were laughing.

Now, no one is laughing.

For decades the labor unions and auto industry negotiators were locked in a sick, symbiotic near- sexual embrace.  Like lovers they sought only to pleasure themselves; the reality and impact of the affair not even a consideration.  The education unions and school districts were in a similar romance of mutual monetary/erotic demands and self-destruction.

The "housing crisis" started in Michigan years before it became the mantra of national politicos and pundits.  The inventory of unsold homes in Michigan is a horrendous counter balance to any thought of a "recovery".  Foreclosures and the nifty "short sales" of lost homes are the only activities left to the real estate "professionals".

The northern half of Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula are traditional outdoor recreation areas.  Those areas are blessed by tremendous natural beauty and near-limitless forest and fish and game habitat.  Today those areas are home to unemployed recreation industry people, working poor, economic and social dropouts and those whose retirement dreams have turned to a day-to-day struggle to survive.  Entire communities of third-hand mobile homes, most sub-FEMA in quality now litter the once beautiful northern landcape.

The so-called "service industry" in most of Michigan now consists of poverty level caretakers of idled plants and closed businesses.  The Health Industries seem to be surviving, fueled probably to a large entent by the rapidling declining state of health of Michigan's citizens and off-the chart health problems due to obesity and drug and alcohol abuse.  Poor people eat poor food.  Look to Mexico for proof of the connection between poverty diet and diabetes.

Veterans seem to faring poorly also.  Although the VA built and staffed a broad system of outpatient clinics in many towns and cities these clinics have become overwhelmed by ever increasing numbers of veterans who have lost primary health insurance coverage along with their jobs, and now depend on the VA for all their needs.  These veteran recipients of government health care are eligible simply because of their status as veterans.  Gone is the priority system established by the VA to treat first veterans based on service-connected disabilities.  By shear volume alone now all veterans regardless of their level of sacrifice are forced to compete in a for the limited care provided by the VA and local levels.  Many service-connected disabled veterans are standing in long lines while those ahead of them are being treated for common cold, arthritis, age-related mental illness  and dysphoria-induced neuroses.

Further insulting the veterans who have sacrificed the most is the crimnal dissolution of the once productive state Veteran's Trust Fund.   Our Governor managed to shift that fund and its administration to the state Department of Education, almost without notice.  Formerly it was managed by personnel from the Department of Military Affairs,  people who new the needs of all veterans and especially those of disabled veterans.  Now the Fund is a poorly-operated bastard child of untrained, unenthusiastic bureaucrats  from the DOE.  The result is a new disbursement formula, surpise, surprise.  Children of totally-disabled veterans who used to receive a full tuition reimbursement from the Fund for higher education at state institutions now get the shuffle and the shaft.  Now most contributions to the education of these students falls in the 30 -40% category of actual tuition costs.
Gone Baby Gone.

All in all Michigan is a great place to be FROM.  God help those who cannot leave.