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http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/2/AmericanFlag.jpg Many of the displaced workers read on a sixth-grade level. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/05/AR2009100503870.html)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Gov_Granholm.jpgDana Hedgpeth - WASHINGTONPOST (http://www.washingtonpost.com) - Oct 6, 2009

Realistically, it's controling the bleeding - not stopping it. --Ed.

...Since taking office in 2003, Granholm has created 163,300 positions, her office says. She expects that a recent infusion of more than $1 billion from the Obama administration aimed at nurturing car battery and electric-vehicle projects will generate 40,000 more positions by 2020.

In the past decade, however, as the auto industry has grown smaller, Michigan has lost 870,000 jobs -- about 632,000 of them during Granholm's tenure. The number is expected to reach 1 million by late next year, the end of her term. ... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/05/AR2009100503870.html

It sounds like she's hit the nail right on the head with a few things. Michigan is not a pro-union state? How did the tenacity of the striking American Axle workers impress representatives from VW when they were investigating placing a new plant in Michigan?

The factory workers who ask "what will I do now, this is all I've ever known" are in as dire a straits as they sound like if new skills are not brought to the table quickly. Numerous recent references in multiple media outlets to an ongoing shortage of highly skilled jobs requiring significant education beyond high school shed a guiding light on what displaced workers need. Not a union to delay the inevitable loss of blue collar jobs or protectionism, a training program with college assistance to ready the unemployed for where openings are now and in the future.

The U.S. has gone through difficult transitions before, from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy and a shift in population from rural to urban (and back, in some areas). Some workers were forced to make difficult changes, others enthusiastically adopted new opportunities. It's always a traumatic event when a worker loses his or her job. If the worker ends up with a net gain through new opportunities and education to prepare them, and the country as a whole is better off because a new, high-skill job is created, is the end result not better than where we started?

On a personal level, I've experienced this. Working at a lower wage job despite having a Bachelors while returning to school again was a difficult time. In hindsight, I'm much better off though in my new career and the pain was worth it. I guess I just wonder how many displaced workers are willing to remake themselves and gain new skills and education, and how many want the same old thing they had before (which obviously isn't going to happen).