Learn jobs lessons in Mich., Mr. President

President Obama said Thursday he will hold a "jobs summit" next month.

Am not sure whether to laugh, cry or invite him here to Michigan, where a "lost decade" of economic self-flagellation and a willful blindness to the rigors of competition have conspired to give us the highest unemployment in the nation (15.3 percent, officially) for what feels like forever. And a whole lot more.

Come here, Mr. President, for we can teach the nation the perils of government policies unhinged from the rational business decision-making of hiring, investing and expansion. Here, it isn't pretty. It isn't responsible. It isn't defensible. But it can be avoided if ideology in the quest for political power isn't used to trump economic reality at almost every turn.

We can show the rest of the country how political drift and misplaced priorities disillusion business leaders, dishearten the population and slowly impoverish communities. We can vouch for the costs of outsourcing key management decisions to organized labor, in both the public and private sectors, and how they slowly strangle any innovation or new idea that endangers the dues flow.

Hold your "jobs summit" here in Michigan, Mr. President, because we could use the advice. We could give a little, too, to those in Washington who think businesses and consumers can't push back. They can -- by doing what they're doing, by buying little, investing little and hiring even less. Kinda why you're calling the post-election summit in the first place.

Our CEOs could attest, with some justifiable ire, to the serial aggravations of watching state tax dollars pledged in the service of wooing new business that may, or may not, create the jobs they promise. Too often, they don't, but their patrons dutifully keep at it.

They could testify to how difficult it is to craft credible long-range hiring and investment plans when tax and regulatory policies continually change because they are wielded as weapons of tactical politics. Kinda like we're seeing in Washington these days.

They could offer example after example of the damage done to a perceived business climate when the top elected official publicly demonizes a company or its industry. They might offer, for starters, the bankruptcy of Delphi Corp. in 2005, the bolting of Comerica Inc. to Texas after that, or the decamping of Volkswagen of American Inc. after that.

You could counter with your own examples -- Big Insurance and Big Pharma, Detroit Auto and Big Banking. Only Wall Street titans, namely those who fund the current party machine like Goldmine, I mean Goldman Sachs, seem to escape. Barely.

Our economic development pros, if they were honest, could hold a workshop on the slippery slope of government bureaucrats trying to identify the next new (green, of course) industries and then chasing them. All the while, they ignore the hundreds of companies who employ tens of thousands of Michiganders, sponsor summer softball teams and would leave the Big Mitten for good if their loyalties and fixed assets didn't make that all but impossible.

Our legislators in Lansing could hold a workshop for members of Congress whose actions seem to suggest that social and economic engineering in the form of health care reform and cap-and-trade energy legislation, massive government debt loads and the skyrocketing price of gold have no bearing on the tanking value of the U.S. dollar, cautious business investment or skittish consumers.

Yes, the little ol' state legislators could tell the important people from Washington that bad policy, petty politicking and decisions disconnected from the real world of innovating, delivering a product, satisfying customers and making payroll actually do affect the behaviors of job creators and investors.

And our governor could riff on the theme that looks, stirring oratory and degrees from the right schools don't guarantee results. Nor do they instill confidence or change that Michigan's slide through its "lost decade" may be a harbinger for the country if the lessons of our mistakes aren't learned.

Jobs aren't coming back, Mr. President, because job creators don't have a clue what the country's economic landscape, their personnel costs or their energy costs will be next year or three years from now. That's not a political statement. It's good ol' Midwestern common sense.

dchowes@detnews.com">dchowes@detnews.com (313) 222-2106 Daniel Howes' column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Catch him Fridays with Paul W. Smith on WJR-AM (760).