selectively giving away free money to big business is straight corruption. there is no other way to put it. everyone involved should lose re election and get investigated by the financial crimes unit.
but i dont think "leave it up to the market" is a better idea. investments like this just need to be transparent, open to everyone and set up strict punishment for stealing the money with prison for executives.
if they wanted to actually create jobs they would support small companies and set up open competitive programs based on project quality. or start a state investment bank giving super low interest loans so factories can expand without cutting profitable divisions like in china.
One idea I like is directly funding apprenticeship. It pays for job training and classroom instruction on a per-individual basis. The jobs are in long-term career sectors like advanced manufacturing, shipbuilding, aviation, healthcare, and technology.
In Georgia, the employer is reimbursed $2,500 when an apprentice starts and up to $10,000 when they finish. They can also get up to 75% of the apprentice's hourly wage covered during their initial on-the-job training.
> open competitive programs based on project quality
This will never, ever happen. There will always be bonus points available, even if they're awarded to "conservative"-leaning feel-good attributes like veteran-owned sponsor businesses.
These investments are likely to always fail at their declared purpose. Better to put the money towards free childcare and maybe trying to convince parents to read to their kids.
It's straight corruption, no matter of big or small business. It should have been randomized blind selection of business who have existed for more than a year, and the granted money pays for new employees' taxes. Blind selection takes out the path to corruption (not who you know to get the fund). Randomized to be fair. Government is bad at picking winners or losers anyway. Business more than a year to screen out frauds. Granted money for new employees' taxes to encourage hiring new employees. Paying the taxes only so that the money can be spread out to more people.
Correct, reporting this is doing nothing to stop it. People don't directly see the impact of it on their paychecks or budgets so they forget about it the hour after they read about it. The next politician can do it without fear of reprisal
Michigan has relatively business-unfriendly laws and regulations.
Apparently their tax system is quite favorable to businesses, but taxes are only one (small) part of the equation. The taxes matter more once a company is making a lot of money.
In short, tax incentives and random per company “investments” (bribes?) are not enough to offset certain laws and regulations Michigan has.
I am not saying those laws and regulations are bad. I am just saying that targeted tax incentives and investment for specific companies are the wrong way to solve the problem.
> Hohman examined eight major projects—"those that offered $100 million in payments and received significant media attention"—totaling $2.7 billion in promised incentives
> All told, the governor said that her major subsidy projects would create 20,595 jobs in Michigan
Even using these numbers that works out to $135k/job, which is bonkers!
Not really, if the job lasts 30 years it will absolutely offset itself with local economic activity. These people will pay taxes, buy homes, visit doctors and much more.
People will truly justify anything. My god. We can't even hold governments accountable for waste because people will bend over backwards to justify any amount of spending.
It's both. A mix of incentives (that were not paid out) and land reclamation (which did cost money):
> Ford, meanwhile, lowered its job creation estimate from 2,500 to 1,700, though so far it has created zero, and received no state money, as the building is still under construction. The state did, however, spend another $780 million on site preparation.
Most of the claims in the article are slightly obfuscated as to which actually involved any real net cash flow. Even the bottom line:
> Of the $2.7 billion offered, $1.8 billion has been spent—transferred either to companies or to local economic development agencies.
Doesn't make it clear what the local economic development agencies actually did with it - whether the projects were otherwise necessary, etc. Some of the spending was likely defensible even if the originally intended project fell through. Lots of it probably wasn't defensible. Michigan (and every other state) gives a lot of money to 'developers' in ways that don't look great if you bother to look into it at all.
Michigan's state budget probably totaled ~$700 billion over the past 8 years. So this accounts for up to 0.2% of the budget.
This is not the first time this type of thing happened almost looks like a laundering scam. Companies that do this should face real and very expensive consequences. But we know that will never happen.
The tfa says that almost all of this went to big public automakers. Enraging. I initially thought that this was going to some small biz thing that at least would slosh the money around through the owners. But nope - corp welfare!
The government just gave money to every executive in the company, and your argument is that because the company stock is also held by pension funds, they were supporting pension funds? Makes little sense.
Just giving the money straight to the pension funds would be much more efficient. This method enriches a bunch of non-contributors along the way.
The money spent on site and land clearing results in a big empty field? Yes, yes it did, that’s what those words mean. If we’re going to bribe companies to do a thing, we should at least accept when they did do it.
selectively giving away free money to big business is straight corruption. there is no other way to put it. everyone involved should lose re election and get investigated by the financial crimes unit.
but i dont think "leave it up to the market" is a better idea. investments like this just need to be transparent, open to everyone and set up strict punishment for stealing the money with prison for executives.
if they wanted to actually create jobs they would support small companies and set up open competitive programs based on project quality. or start a state investment bank giving super low interest loans so factories can expand without cutting profitable divisions like in china.
One idea I like is directly funding apprenticeship. It pays for job training and classroom instruction on a per-individual basis. The jobs are in long-term career sectors like advanced manufacturing, shipbuilding, aviation, healthcare, and technology.
Here's one example: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osec/osec20250923
In Georgia, the employer is reimbursed $2,500 when an apprentice starts and up to $10,000 when they finish. They can also get up to 75% of the apprentice's hourly wage covered during their initial on-the-job training.
> open competitive programs based on project quality
This will never, ever happen. There will always be bonus points available, even if they're awarded to "conservative"-leaning feel-good attributes like veteran-owned sponsor businesses.
These investments are likely to always fail at their declared purpose. Better to put the money towards free childcare and maybe trying to convince parents to read to their kids.
It's straight corruption, no matter of big or small business. It should have been randomized blind selection of business who have existed for more than a year, and the granted money pays for new employees' taxes. Blind selection takes out the path to corruption (not who you know to get the fund). Randomized to be fair. Government is bad at picking winners or losers anyway. Business more than a year to screen out frauds. Granted money for new employees' taxes to encourage hiring new employees. Paying the taxes only so that the money can be spread out to more people.
> selectively giving away free money to big business is straight corruption
Liberals in canada call that 'making housing affordable', https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/prime-minist...
It feels that in Canada business is impossible unless it's directly funded by the government.
> A new report suggests the state of Michigan is the latest to learn that lesson the hard way.
There doesn’t seem to be any lesson-learning happening, since governments keep trying this despite the outcome always being the same.
Correct, reporting this is doing nothing to stop it. People don't directly see the impact of it on their paychecks or budgets so they forget about it the hour after they read about it. The next politician can do it without fear of reprisal
pointing out a stop sign does nothing to stop cars either, but it's a pretty important step if you want any cars to stop.
it’s almost as if they are just lying about the purpose and doing it for some other purpose that it is perfectly effective for
Self-enrichment on the part of government employees?! I am SHOCKED BEYOND ALL BELIEF.
/s
We need more judges and prosecutors that are hungry to catch corruption and are willing to go after white collar crime.
We need people of the "can't afford a house, making 50K a year in a rural state" class in politics.
That would shake things up.
Originally on reason.com: https://reason.com/2026/06/26/michigan-spent-1-8-billion-and...
With a link to the report: https://www.mackinac.org/archives/2026/s2026-08.pdf
The two largest projects are still under construction, so it might be too early to make any conclusions.
Michigan has relatively business-unfriendly laws and regulations.
Apparently their tax system is quite favorable to businesses, but taxes are only one (small) part of the equation. The taxes matter more once a company is making a lot of money.
In short, tax incentives and random per company “investments” (bribes?) are not enough to offset certain laws and regulations Michigan has.
I am not saying those laws and regulations are bad. I am just saying that targeted tax incentives and investment for specific companies are the wrong way to solve the problem.
> Hohman examined eight major projects—"those that offered $100 million in payments and received significant media attention"—totaling $2.7 billion in promised incentives
> All told, the governor said that her major subsidy projects would create 20,595 jobs in Michigan
Even using these numbers that works out to $135k/job, which is bonkers!
Not really, if the job lasts 30 years it will absolutely offset itself with local economic activity. These people will pay taxes, buy homes, visit doctors and much more.
People will truly justify anything. My god. We can't even hold governments accountable for waste because people will bend over backwards to justify any amount of spending.
This is $currentyear. Jobs are 10 years tops
This looks like Michigan transferred actual cash. Not tax abatements on new projects.
It's both. A mix of incentives (that were not paid out) and land reclamation (which did cost money):
> Ford, meanwhile, lowered its job creation estimate from 2,500 to 1,700, though so far it has created zero, and received no state money, as the building is still under construction. The state did, however, spend another $780 million on site preparation.
Most of the claims in the article are slightly obfuscated as to which actually involved any real net cash flow. Even the bottom line:
> Of the $2.7 billion offered, $1.8 billion has been spent—transferred either to companies or to local economic development agencies.
Doesn't make it clear what the local economic development agencies actually did with it - whether the projects were otherwise necessary, etc. Some of the spending was likely defensible even if the originally intended project fell through. Lots of it probably wasn't defensible. Michigan (and every other state) gives a lot of money to 'developers' in ways that don't look great if you bother to look into it at all.
Michigan's state budget probably totaled ~$700 billion over the past 8 years. So this accounts for up to 0.2% of the budget.
did they, like, not lose a million jobs tho?
That works out to 2.5 million per job.
This is not the first time this type of thing happened almost looks like a laundering scam. Companies that do this should face real and very expensive consequences. But we know that will never happen.
The tfa says that almost all of this went to big public automakers. Enraging. I initially thought that this was going to some small biz thing that at least would slosh the money around through the owners. But nope - corp welfare!
Doesn’t this basically mean the money was sloshed around to 401k and pension funds?
That statement trivializes the whole situation.
Short answer: no.
The government just gave money to every executive in the company, and your argument is that because the company stock is also held by pension funds, they were supporting pension funds? Makes little sense.
Just giving the money straight to the pension funds would be much more efficient. This method enriches a bunch of non-contributors along the way.
The first Trump term tariffs on washing machines was studied, it resulted in jobs that cost ~820k each in higher prices to the consumer.
The important takeaway is not only did the consumer pay more, but corporate profits rose.
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_201961-1....
The money spent on site and land clearing results in a big empty field? Yes, yes it did, that’s what those words mean. If we’re going to bribe companies to do a thing, we should at least accept when they did do it.
What the hell is that image of Whitner.
That's just her new face.
“Click to continue reading”
No thanks