Business Subsidies Won't Drive Growth

In endorsing a proposal to give businesses more subsidies, The Detroit News says that failing to pass this package “stunts not just job creation, but the state’s population growth as well.” But that assumes the proposal will help the state economy and fails to consider the full costs of this subsidy program.

The empirical and historical evidence of similar programs suggest that these proposed subsidies will not have a meaningful impact on job creation and certainly won’t increase the state's population. Economists have assessed dozens of similar programs in Michigan and other states and the results are pretty negative.

Opponents of this recent selective subsidy program are being accused of being “ideological.” But the real ideologues are those who support delivering hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to politically favored business owners based on flimsy evidence.

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