REAL JOBS FOR REGULAR PEOPLE

Over the past week I have posted articles on how the Van Andels are actively looking for other people's money to fund the VAI and on the folly of using taxpayer dollars to subsidize "life science" ventures like the VAI at the expense of the basic industries that are the lifeblood of our local economy.  Relevant to both of these issues is a problem University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman spoke about in yesterday's edition of the Detroit Free Press.

As you may known, the VAI anchors the western end of Michigan's "life sciences corridor" that begins at the U of M campus in Ann Arbor.  Therefore, Coleman has already seen the challenges of developing successful businesses from the work produced from the so-called corridor.  The biggest problem that Coleman cited in the Free Press was retaining in Michigan the most promising business start-ups birthed by the corridor's scientific and technological discoveries.

To survive, these start-ups need large infusions of capital, the primary source of which are venture capital firms.  Because these firms are mostly located on the coasts, the new start-ups follow the money, move out-of-state, and so are lost to Michigan.  Thus, the rationale for pouring public money into "life science" research institutions like the U of M and the VAI -- i.e., this public "investment" will produce high-tech businesses in Michigan and therefore good-paying jobs for Michiganders -- goes out the window.

And who pays for this "investment" in opportunities for East and West Coast venture capitalists to pick off?  The backbone industries of Michigan and the ordinary taxpayer.  You know, those companies that produce real jobs for regular people like us.  None of this is an argument against the promise of technological progress.  I am not a Luddite.  Nor is this an argument to shelter older industries from the realities of today's competition, whatever form it comes in.  I am not a protectionist.

This is an argument to let the risk-takers, not the taxpayers, fund the future and reap the reward or suffer the loss as may be.  This is an argument to eliminate the power of politicians to grant subsidies and tax breaks to businesses that win their favor and to instead simply reduce the overall tax burden upon all of us, which includes those companies that produce real jobs and the ordinary taxpayers who need those jobs.  After all, what good does it do us to overtax a manufacturer and drive that company out of the state to North Carolina in order to pay for research that spawns a high-tech start-up that will immediately decamp to California for venture capital?

Keep that question in mind, dear readers, the next time local and state politicians want your money to put in some researcher's or businessman's pocket in the name of the golden future that the "life sciences corridor" beckons.