 targeted taxes and jobs rick haglan wrote a nice piece on the dome magazine s site regarding a brief history of michigan s attempt at economic development and it seems like groundhog day the mackinac center for public policy has written many times about the ineffectiveness of targeted tax cuts and i agree targeted tax cuts have not been effective in retaining the businesses that were promised just look at our current economic situation but we have to balance economic certainties with political realities businesses will go to where they feel they can get the best deal and that unfortunately is not michigan how do we as a state compete with competing states that can offer lucrative tax deals to companies attempting to maximize profits can targeted tax cuts along with cutting business taxes in general lead to greater prosperity than just tax cuts alone maybe but something has to be done since our attempts to retain jobs by targeted tax cuts haven t worked look at the big three manufacturing employs twelve percent of the nonfarm workforce half what it was thirty years ago i doubt we ll see any slowing of this rate economic diversification has been the buzz phrase the last few years around here which brings us back to the targeted tax cuts michigan has tried to appeal to all types of business hightech biomedical green jobs but the loss of manufacturing jobs has outpaced the gains we ve made in the diversification of our workforce regardless of the political push for a diverse business environment it simply hasn t happened as the big three go so goes michigan our per capita income is among the worst in the country and will continue to drop we simply don t have the industries to support large numbers of high paying jobs anymore the diversification manta has been pushed since the blanchard years and it continues to this day but we re still seen as a manufacturing state though our plants continue to leave when you have more friendly environments to the south ie nonunion as one michiganbased store would say why pay more as the mackinac center has repeatedly said regarding the targeted tax cuts the government is trying to pick winners and losers in business now the winners are green jobs such as manufacturing wind turbines and biofuels but these jobs have to be supported by government subsidies because the market for them isn t there several ethanol plants have gone bankrupt and without taxpayer subsidies it is likely they all would the legislators of michigan should be concerned with creating a business environment in which everyone can benefit their track records of picking winners hasn t been a good one and we re the ones settling the debt  