"For most of the 20th century, we didn't just enjoy economic success in Michigan, we defined it. Our innovators and entrepreneurs created the world's most productive companies, and our unions made sure that productivity led to broad middle class prosperity"
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Michigan isn’t being remembered here; it’s being recruited. Granholm frames the 20th century as a home-field era when the state didn’t merely benefit from American prosperity but authored its blueprint. The word choice is doing quiet political work: “defined it” turns regional pride into a claim of authority, a way of saying Michigan has standing to lecture the country on how growth should look.
The sentence is built like a coalition in miniature. “Innovators and entrepreneurs” nod to business mythology, the familiar motor-city saga of risk, scale, and industrial genius. Then comes the pivot: “our unions made sure.” That “made sure” is a moral and causal assertion, not a footnote. Productivity didn’t naturally trickle into the middle class; it was bargained, enforced, and institutionalized. Granholm is restoring labor to the story as an active agent, not a cost center, and she’s doing it without sounding anti-business. The message: the golden age wasn’t just factories and patents; it was power on both sides of the negotiating table.
Context matters: this is a post-deindustrialization pitch, aimed at an audience living with the aftershocks of offshoring, automation, and union decline. Nostalgia is the bait, but the intent is policy-forward: if Michigan once fused innovation with broad prosperity, it can do it again. The subtext is an argument against the contemporary habit of celebrating “productivity” while treating wage growth as optional.
The sentence is built like a coalition in miniature. “Innovators and entrepreneurs” nod to business mythology, the familiar motor-city saga of risk, scale, and industrial genius. Then comes the pivot: “our unions made sure.” That “made sure” is a moral and causal assertion, not a footnote. Productivity didn’t naturally trickle into the middle class; it was bargained, enforced, and institutionalized. Granholm is restoring labor to the story as an active agent, not a cost center, and she’s doing it without sounding anti-business. The message: the golden age wasn’t just factories and patents; it was power on both sides of the negotiating table.
Context matters: this is a post-deindustrialization pitch, aimed at an audience living with the aftershocks of offshoring, automation, and union decline. Nostalgia is the bait, but the intent is policy-forward: if Michigan once fused innovation with broad prosperity, it can do it again. The subtext is an argument against the contemporary habit of celebrating “productivity” while treating wage growth as optional.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
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