Thats LEGAL in Michigan?!?!??!

I used to work with single mother victims who carefully plotted out losing their bonus/incentive pay in order to keep their entitlement benefits. They were more than capable, in fact, these ladies should have jobs in accounting firms. $50-$75 per week in extra pay for performing well on the job < several hundred per month in food assistance, rent assistance, utility assistance, free lunch, medical/dental/vision coverage… also in Michigan, there are programs to purchase a car, repair your car, and get free car insurance. And while earning that extra would entitle them to receive child support payments, well, if your baby daddys don’t pay anyway, it’s a duh equation. I think this employer purposely kept the pay structure with these bonuses in place just to keep a solid turnover of warm bodies employed.

It’s not as though I feel this was the right thing to do, in their cases, they would have been foolish to take such a loss. I felt like a sucker during my employment there, putting in that extra effort for the extra pay, and I’ll pay again when tax time rolls round. Such is life when you marry the gainfully employed father of your children.

I know there is little direct production and assembly in this area. Much of this area is still highly dependent on parts and components manufacturing, and automotive industry support business, however. The eastern side of Michigan is not economically diverse enough to take another hit. The metro Detroit area generally determines the election result in this state due to the population size. It is ironic that an area so dependent on a single industry would vote in a way that would make their own situation even worse. Or maybe it’s not ironic at all, maybe it’s just proof that socialism in the form of entitlements means that the given majority in an area can freely vote on idealism and not reality because they don’t have to worry about feeding themselves.

BTW, metro Detroit has had record population growth in recent times, opposite of a national trend. Seems that when people don’t have to busy themselves with jobs and work, they have plenty of time to procreate.

I don’t think many there really care about the environment.

I heard a rumor that in one plant they were tarping off sections of the building to cut down on heating costs. When it comes to this, I think we’re all screwed.