The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is supposed to pursue job creation and wealth creation projects in Michigan. But in view of recent published reports that one million dollars provided by the MEDC actually enabled Arcadia Brewery to move from Battle Creek (a Michigan city) to Kalamazoo (a Michigan city), does the MEDC live up to its mission?
One wonders if all those bright people in Lansing have ever heard of zero sum economic development. The MEDC likes to talk "economic gardening", but they evidently like to walk a neanderthal and wasteful strategy of zero sum economic development. Zero sum economic development produces no new net jobs (which Michigan badly needs) and it epitomizes exactly the arguments made against economic development by such thinktanks as the Mackinac Insitute.
By any "market standard" or "free market principle" (to which the new Lansintg gang says it adheres), this is a dumb deal. It was enabled when the MEDC decided to pitch in $1 million of taxpayer resources to "bridge the gap". If the deal stood on its own, there would be no gap to be bridged.
Thus, you have one million in taxpayer resources being used to transfer up to sixty jobs (do they include health care for the employees?) from one Michigan community to another.
And this is called "economic development", "job creation"? SPARE ME!!
I know crony capitalism when I see it.
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