Come for the Politics, Stay for the Pathologies



Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Spending Our Way to Prosperity

And this just in from Michigan (The state just marginally behind California in the insolvency sweepstakes), a plan from a coalition of educators, labor, and social service agencies to solve Michigan’s economic woes: you guessed right! Raise taxes!!!

This coalition, ironically named “A Better Michigan Future” is an obvious group of self-serving fools who don’t want to have their cheese moved. As always, that requires some of everyone else’s money.

Yes, by all means, let’s raise taxes. That will stem the flow of businesses and individuals out of the state, and avoid further decrease of the tax base, no? That should fix everything up so the legislature doesn’t have to make any really hard decisions that will make people mad, and sad. Won’t it?

Michigan’s woes can be blamed on many factors, but too low a tax structure isn’t even in the running. By any index, as assembled by the Mackinac Center, Michigan is no piker. If someone tells you “Michigan is no worse than any other state”, you may be assured that they’ve cherry picked among the indices. And yes, numbers can be misleading. But if you look at the entire array of indexes you’ll see that Michigan is at best mediocre and at worst is, well, worst.

Raise taxes in Michigan? Honestly, were all these morons educated in public schools?