Marko Rollo
F L I N T O I D
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Adam, you're exactly right. The influx of money for job creating is shooting craps, and the people who get the money have to create hilarious explanations for how it got spent.
The problem is, like shooting craps, you occasionally win. Any good VC (venture capital) guy will tell you that for every 3 investments, only 1 turns a profit.
So the obvious question is, why not let the VC guys use private money to fund startups? The answer is that only by awarding VC can the state require the jobs stay here.
So then the argument is, well wouldn't it be better if we just made MI more desirable for business? An honest question, but we can disagree as to what would make MI more desirable. The pat republican answer is "cut taxes" but for any start-up, taxes are only a small piece of the puzzle. They want to be near other start-ups for cross-pollenization (sp?), high-tech workers, universities with graduate programs in the sciences, and quality of social life. That's why AA is popular, and why a lot of the action is happening there. Not so much in Flint, Saginaw, etc.
Then the question remains, how can the state take my money to support private companies (corporate welfare)? You know we do it all the time. I'm not saying it is right, it is just the reality of the political system we have. Changing parties won't stop it. Now you're into a discussion about voting for real conservatives or Libertarians like Ron Paul, but that's an argument for another day...
The point of arguing with myself is only to say that while the article sounds stupid on its face, their are complicated economic issues around it. Too many of us just read the headlines and come up with knee-jerk responses. If governing were easy, we'd all live in Utopia. |
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