Audrey Spalding, director of education policy, and Jarrett Skorup, research associate, explain in a Detroit News commentary today why proposed legislation that would create what backers are calling a “pay it forward” program for college tuition would end up costing students and taxpayers potentially billions of dollars and drive up college costs.
With a projected $971 million surplus for next fiscal year, Michigan’s Legislature is considering cutting the state’s income tax rate from 4.25 to 3.9 percent.
The cut would be phased in over time and would be contingent upon the budget remaining in surplus. When fully phased in, this would result in a $170 annual tax cut for the typical Michigan family.
According to MIRS News, the backers of the ballot proposal that would increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, "said the change would raise wages for about 940,000 people in Michigan, or 24 percent of workers."
That number is reached by looking at the number of workers currently making less than $10.10 per hour, adding in hundreds of thousands of other employees, assuming they will also get a raise and pretending that mandating a 36 percent increase in labor costs would have no effect on employment.
Proponents of the Michigan film subsidy program, which like all corporate welfare programs takes money from taxpayers and gives it to large companies in the name of "job creation," often say the incentives are temporary and needed to diversify the state economy.
The city of Detroit published its plan of adjustment detailing how it intends to solve the city’s financial and other problems. It contains important references to privatization of certain services, though it doesn’t go far enough.
A bolder vision might spare city retirees and creditors from as deep of cuts.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Mackinac Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, and Mackinac Center board member Rodney Lockwood both spoke at a roundtable discussion Thursday about the future of Detroit, according to The Detroit News. The event was hosted by the Reason Foundation.
(Editor’s note: The following are prepared remarks by Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, presented at the Reason Foundation’s “Revitalizing Detroit After Bankruptcy” roundtable discussion held at the Crowne Plaza Pontchartrain in Detroit on Feb. 20, 2014.)
Audrey Spalding, director of education policy, explains in this Op-Ed at MLive today that despite a negative portrayal in the media, school choice has benefitted tens of thousands of students across Michigan access better schools.
Senior Economist David Littmann writes in the latest edition of DBusiness Magazine that it is “Full Steam Ahead for State’s Economy.” In the article, Littmann discusses why certain factors — including increased auto sales, lower state taxes and Michigan’s right-to-work law — make for an optimistic outlook in 2014 for the state’s economy.
WOOD Radio in Grand Rapids and WWJ AM950 in Detroit are both reporting on the Center’s new VoteSpotter app, which allows users to give instant feedback on how their legislators vote on key bills. Executive Vice President Michael Reitz also discussed the app, which is powered by MichiganVotes.org, on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760 in Detroit. Leader Publications, which prints the Niles Daily Star and Dowagiac Daily News, also reported on the app.
The recent defeat of a unionization effort by the UAW at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee was not only a major setback for the union, but also for those pushing "card check" legislation.
Card check legislation, officially known as the "Employee Free Choice Act," was introduced in Congress in 2009 and would "authorize the National Labor Relations Board to certify a union . . . when a majority of employees voluntarily sign authorizations designating that union to represent them."
Audrey Spalding, director of education policy, was a guest on “Let Iit Rip” on Fox2 Detroit, discussing college affordability and the statewide Educational Achievement Authority.
House Bill 4808, End mandatory life for very serious offenses by minors: Passed 35 to 3 in the Senate
To revise Michigan's mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for certain very serious crimes committed by minors. The bill is linked to Senate Bill 319, which would make life without parole no longer automatic in these cases, but prosecutors could request it. Otherwise, the minimum sentence would be 25 to 40 years, and the maximum at least 60 years. This and SB 319 respond to the U.S. Supreme Court's Miller v Alabama decision. The bills would not apply the new standard retroactively to the approximately 350 current prisoners in this category, but include a provision authorizing parole hearings for them if a future ruling requires this.
Bridge magazine has a good article about the importance of encouraging students to have fulfilling careers in an area that best fits them rather than assuming more schooling means a greater education and always pushing them toward universities.
The piece is written by Glenda Price, president of the Detroit Public Schools Foundation and former president of Marygrove College. She wrote:
A new commercial is attempting to make Michigan residents fear electricity deregulation.
It claims that Texas "decided to experiment with deregulating their electricity," and subsequently, prices "shot through the roof" and "blackouts threatened communities." It then tells that a proposed bill in this state that would "deregulate Michigan's electricity."
Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio appeared on PBS News Hour and WTVC TV-9 in Chattanooga, Tenn., to discuss the attempt by the UAW to unionize a Volkswagen plant in that city.
Mark Perry, a member of the Center’s Board of Scholars and an economics professor at the University of Michigan-Flint, has an interesting blog post today at Carpe Diem that lists the GDP of each state with a comparable foreign country.
Michigan, with a 2012 state GDP of $400 billion, ranks 13th in the nation and is comparable with South Africa, whose 2012 GDP was $383 billion.
Though state spending on public education has increased in recent years, and though the governor recently proposed a further increase, the money isn't enough for some school officials.
Some district leaders, including South Lyon Superintendent William Pearson, Livonia Superintendent Randy Liepa and Howell Associate Superintendent of Business Rick Terres, have complained publicly that state funding is declining.
The Daily Caller is reporting on a story Michigan Capitol Confidential broke about a Michigan union that bullied members who exercised their worker freedom rights. The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 324 published the names of 19 former members who resigned under Michigan’s right-to-work law in its statewide winter 2013 newsletter, labeling the workers as “freeloaders.”
President Obama came to Michigan recently to sign the $1 trillion farm bill and in a press release touting the bill, Sen. Debbie Stabenow called agriculture the state's "second-largest industry after manufacturing."
That is false.
A quick look at the data shows there is no possible way to justify calling agriculture Michigan's second-largest industry. Yet the claim has been repeated for years. This is especially distressing because Sen. Stabenow, D-Lansing, is the chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee and should know the size and scale of the industry.
There are two things to keep in mind regarding the $1 trillion farm bill that President Obama recently signed into law at Michigan State University.
First, agriculture is a small component of both the U.S. and Michigan economies. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. economy produced $16.2 trillion worth of output in 2012. Farming comprised $167 billion of this total, or about 1 percent. Only 1.5 percent of workers are employed in agriculture and related industries.
Michigan’s corporate welfare programs, which should be eliminated, at the very least need more transparency, according to an Op-Ed in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press co-authored by Assistant Director of Fiscal Policy James Hohman and Eric Mosher, a program associate at the Public Interest Research Group. The commentary originally was written as a Mackinac Center Viewpoint.
It’s an election year, which means many Michigan politicians want to be seen letting taxpayers keep more of their own money.
As they proceed, however, they should take a long view of measures that aren’t just politically popular, but will have positive effects on future employment and economic growth in this state.
Minimum wage laws are regarded by economists of all stripes as among the least efficient tools for boosting the welfare of those at the lower end of the earnings spectrum, inevitably harming many of those they are intended to help.
This leads some to conclude that politicians who champion increasing the minimum wage must be demagogues working for partisan advantage. In reality, most politicians simply don't understand economics. In fact, there is research to support this more generous view.
By Jack McHugh
Good policy is good politics. After accomplishing so much in 2011 and 2012 to move Michigan forward, progress nearly sputtered to a halt in 2013.
Here's how to get back on track:
-- Pass a broad based marginal rate income tax cut. This is an incentive changing reform that will lead to more jobs, higher incomes and a growing, more competitive state economy. In contrast, boutique tax cuts like vehicle "sales tax on the difference," and political tax changes like increasing homestead property tax exemptions have none of those virtuous effects.
