Greetings and salutations dear readers and welcome to the first issue of the 2010 year of The Spectators Review.
My apologizes for the final parts of last year, I was handling some business of mine that held my time up and kept me focus on only that, but now I'm done, I'm on break, and all is well. Right now I would like to occupy your reading time with something that I have noticed since I have come home on break. As you all know, my great city, Detroit, has been through the roughest part of this, our struggling economy. What with the failing auto industry and the credit crunch that hit most of the nation but hit Detroit the hardest. People are losing their jobs left and right and it almost seems like there is no job stability in any market at all (save for the film production industry that is seeing a boom in business thanks to the tax breaks that Lansing has levied.)
It is in these trying times that I look for what is still going strong in Detroit; my findings surprised me a bit. For one, the best job opportunity that pays the best and requires a good amount of schooling (i.e. a college degree with the option of a master) was computer science/ engineering. This surprised me because, of all that Detroit is known for, it's not in this field. I started doing more researching into this and discovered that, besides California, Michigan (namely the metro-Detroit area) is the 3rd best place to be for this field. Michigan has given a big deal of tax breaks for these types of businesses and they are taking advantage of them. There is even university based support as well, the most of it coming from Wayne State University. It seems that they have an on campus office building that encourages companies to either start up or move all or part of their operations downtown in exchange for certain supplies, and other types of tax breaks from the city. It also provides hands on training for the university's students as well. Those wishing to become IT technicians or computer science engineers or computer graphics designers need to look no further than down the street.
The next surprise boom for the economy of Detroit is that of the film industry. In other words, there has been an abundance of filming going on in Detroit latly, to this end I would like to support that by naming the movies that were filmed in Detroit recently: Gran Torino, parts of The Island, Four Brothers, and various others that will be filmed in the D (including the reboot of RoboCop!!) It seems that Hollywood liked that type of tax breaks Lansing was offering and has taken a new fancy to shooting in Michigan all together, but specifically in Detroit. More credit to that was that of the old location for the MGM Grand Detroit was recently bought and is being converted to Michigan's largest studio that will focus on CGI technology and filming.
The next one is, in my opinion, the most shocking of all three, but then again not really: Baptist or non-denominational pastor. Now this isn't just any pastor, I'm talking pastor of one of those mega churches. Its seems that, while I was in the south, the local news papers kept me up to date on what was going on economy wise, I didn't pay attention to what was going on religiously in the city. Apparently there is this big movement to super sized churches and people when I say super sized I mean it. One example would be this church that's off the Southfield Freeway; this church was built or converted out of an old Super K mart. Another example is this huge church that's off of I-94 that was constructed while I was gone too, and let's not forget the church that the Winans are building off of Woodward right by the State Fair grounds, that thing is mounumentus in size. This surprises me in a way that churches like these can afford to do all this type of building and construction in this type of economy, but then I am reminded that the main things that continue to bring in money is TV entertainment and religion. People want to get away from their troubles so they drown them out by entertaining themselves or they turn to God in which they believe that a nice donation and doing all they can finically for "His" place of worship. People in that position want to be comforted by the position that God will make sure that His people are taken care of. It's not that I don't believe that God has his people, it's just interesting to see what kind of people will show up when you have financial crises all around you and people are losing their houses.
All in all it surprises me, coming back to my city after a year of being away and finding it better and worse all at once. The only thing I can look forward to is that the automotive industry is starting to look better. Ford posted a profitable year and GM lost a lot less money than it did last year, and they also started replaying back the government loan as well. As for Chrysler, change hasn't come to \quickly for them in their products but their management team is the best they've had since Lee Iacocca was in charge back in the 80's. Turns out there is still some life underneath the rubble after all
So till then, I'm out:
Like Pontiac, Saab, Hummer, and Saturn.
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