It was announced in the Plain Dealer today that Ohio ranks second only to Michigan in job loss "...with its 'unprecedented, Depression-level' loss of 496,900 jobs since 2000, or 10.5 percent of its work force, exceeded Ohio's decline of 213,300 jobs." Manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, which has decimated manufacturing areas like Detroit and Cleveland. It's downright scary.
Ohio, Michigan, and the country at large needs to start investing in new technology, like renewable energy – solar panels and wind turbines – and sell that all over the world. After Pearl Harbor, FDR said in a year we would build X-number of planes, and we exceeded that number. All it takes is a little vision. It's probably naive of me to ask, but how hard would it be to convert some of these empty auto plants into windmill and solar panel plants? Create a new industry, new jobs and maybe benefit our environment at the same time.
Additional note (added 1:23 pm): Here is another article at Newsweek explaining, in part, why the unemployment numbers are actually higher than they appear.
