[whell]

In Michigan, the recession has been going on now for years. Probably since the dot-com bust, with a brief spike of activity around 2002 - 2005 or so. There was another pretty healthy stretch during the 1990's, so its fair to say that we've not really recovered much from the early '90's recession.

What really gets to me sometimes is driving through my city - Livonia, which is still ranked as a pretty favorable place to live - and seeing the for lease / for sale signs on building after building. Driving one mile on a stretch of light industrial and retail buildings, I counted 23 for lease or for sale signs. Some of the buildings were partially occupied, but many were vacant and in search of tenants.

It wasn't all that long ago that most of these buildings had tenants. That means that there were employees earning wages, paying taxes, spending their earnings supporting their families and the community. This has to change soon.

Blame cannot be placed fully on the current White House occupant for originating this stagnant economy. I don't even want to get into a political "blame game" for how we got to this point in my city and state. However, there are some things that can be done to spur economic growth, get folks working again to produce earnings and tax revenues, and support this community again.

Politicians love to talk about "Enterprise Zones". These are areas specifically targeted for re-invigoration of the business climate, and such plans are (probably for political reasons) typically reserved for urban areas where economic distress is wide-spread. The zones are created typically by state/local legislation. The centerpiece of such strategies is typically a reduction in local and state taxes designed to encourage business activity by making the zone "more competitive" than other areas.

This suggests that there is recognition that the strategy of reducing taxes spurs business activity, and the increase of activity is deemed to be good for the community. Also, Michigan wanted to try to shave off some film-making business and create "Hollywood East", so the state offered targeted incentives to film-makers and studios. The program met with some moderate success. So, here's the question:

If there is some agreement that the business climate can be made more favorable for business by reducing tax rates, then why does the current administration and many members of this board steadfastly oppose this strategy as a method of jump-starting the economy? In fact, there seems to be a recurrent mindset that such activity is essentially amoral? Why is this?


Not really trolling here, though I suspect some might take it that way. I'm just trying to understand the rationale for opposition to a strategy which, in other contexts, has been successful.