By Richard T. Cole
I must admit that I am one resident of the state (perhaps there are others?) who is getting a bit tired of hearing that we need a strategy to save Michigan. What I think we need first is a dream upon which to build a strategy for a new Michigan. We simply have to stop poor mouthing. It’s time for us to conjure a picture of greatness for Michigan. Survival doesn’t constitute greatness. Ironically, I think the first thing we need to do is to adopt an old statement, and give it the meaning it deserves. We need leadership – including business leadership – who tells us: “It’s time to run the state like a business.”
We all know what the private sector business-bureaucrats are saying. You know who I am talking about. I am talking about those “leaders of leaders” who claim sufficient expertise to design a greater Michigan that is based on further slashing and burning of our tax base. There is no business within the membership of these great “business leadership organizations” – large or small — that could afford to pay their dues if their strategy for business success, was “to cut our way to prosperity.” The state is not going to cut its way to prosperity either. We simply must start acting like a business.
Great businesses grow when the person-in-charge has a dream that is bigger, not smaller, than the current reality of his marketplace. And great businesses grow greater when the dreamer is so committed to the dream that he or she will make whatever personal sacrifices are needed to invest everything they have to take their business to the next level – upward, that is.
This state needs an investment plan, and that investment plan cannot be based on finding more and more ways to avoid the taxes necessary to make this the kind of place businesses of the future want to expand in and to which they want to locate. Investment in this state simply means taxes.
The notion that this state will regenerate into a great state by finding fewer roads to pave, fewer lakes to protect, fewer children to educate with fewer teachers to educate them, fewer state employees to which to pay fewer dollars, fewer police to protect us from the greater number of prisoners we are releasing … well, this is a stupid idea. It’s a failed metaphor based on a goofy philosophy that, for reasons that escape me, continues to be the model upon which otherwise smart people somehow think our state is going survive to the next crisis. An investment plan should be about more than survival to the next crisis.
I have nothing against a conservative philosophy for running a government, if its conservatism that is based on conserving what’s left of the greatness the state once had, and investing in making it a better state for future generations than it was when we found it. A business leader would tell his employees that the only basis of business survival is to thrive – things either spiral up or they spiral down, and they don’t spiral up without a constant level of investment and reinvestment.
We are getting close to the point in time when we should tell those business leaders who tell us that they need to cut their taxes even deeper or they’ll leave: “Wake up and smell the coffee.” We are getting perilously close to the point in time when all of us – including those business leaders — need to tell the politicians who are living in a “something for nothing” dream state, that they better get the guts to hold the business taxes where they are. And then they better get the guts to take an additional percent or two out of our paychecks (and theirs), and/or put another penny or two on the sales tax, so we can underwrite a workable investment plan for Michigan. This state is still worth the sacrifice, and the alternative is far worse, unless you simply can’t get enough ignorance and poverty and blight.
Our current strategy to cut our way to prosperity is no way to run a business, and it’s no way to run a state either.
But there is some reason for optimism. There is reason for optimism, that is, if you believe that we’ll have to be very creative to build the ladder to get out of the hole Michigan is in. True creativity is not iterative, it’s explosive. It happens in a void. And we do have void. Think “big bang” – true creativity occurs in the presence of absence. And as nature abhors a vacuum, we are getting very close in Michigan to reaching what might be called the “critical absence of mass” – the kind of blank slate upon which those who feel it’s worth the risk can envision a new dream worth investing in.
A strategy to achieve a real dream for Michigan will require significant investment — not a continuation of the small-thinking, slash and burn, politics of the business bureaucrats who are willing to do things to their state they would be unwilling to do to their families or their businesses or the neighborhoods in which they live. We need business leaders who are advocating cutting more and more of state’s business taxes to stand- up and say: “Whoa — this in no strategy for the future.” We need them to begin to advocate a reinvestment strategy based on a new dream – a dream that would be worth paying a percent or two more in state income taxes as an alternative to this kind of selfish self-destruction that will come from more gloom and doom thinking.
9 Comments
Rick:
What ever drugs you are taking you need to share with he rest of the state. Those of us based in reality have seen the steady decline as taxes have gone up. The solution is not to raise taxes but to enact a tax policy that makes sense for today.
National studies show that sales taxes are the most reliable for consistant revenue. Are we eliminating Income, Business and other types of taxes and converting? No we keep trying to reinvent the same wheel hoping for differnt results.
Time to pass the Michigan Fair Tax and move this state to #1 in job creation not #1 in unemployment.
I have long said that the most equitable tax would be to add sales tax to the purchase of food- 6% across the board. It simplifies things for stores, no more taxable and non taxable. It is fair because everyone eats, so everyone pays. The lowest income are not harmed as they receive food stamps. The highest income will pay more, as their food is usually more expensive (filet mignon costs more than mac and cheese!). Seems simple to me!
I don’t want businesses telling Michigan how to run this state! We’d have nothing left but a very large population of the unemployed – those who haven’t left the state yet. Instead of running their businesses profitably and with vision, our large corporations/businesses only seem to run their operations with a near-term vision and slash jobs in a kneejerk reaction because ‘they didn’t see’ the trainwreck coming.
bravo Rick
If the state fails to raise taxes to avoid catastrophic cuts in educating its young people, Michigan is committing suicide. The tax-cutting ideologues ruined the garden state of California with the Jarvis tax cuts. Don’t let them do that here. Government is the often-flawed by necessary equalizer that provides the ladder for the next generation to achieve the American dream. It is easy to hate paying taxes – I don’t like getting my teeth cleaned either. But the consequences of failing to do so are ruinous. We have let big business call the tune for too long. It’s time to take our country back from the big corporations. They should not be allowed to pit one community against another in a race to the bottom.
Finally, someone who is willing to speak the truth.
I’ve long resisted urging the state to run like a business since so many businesses today seem to be trying to run themselves into bankruptcy. But Rick talks about a business based on creativity, ingenuity and determination. Businesses that build and grow rather than cut and whine.
Congratulations, Rick, on calling for shared sacrifice and shared burden so we can grow together!
I agree some “investing” is needed. However your article is quite empty regarding what the spending priorities ought to be. Thus I can’t tell what “investments” you think are worthy of higher taxes. Thus, I don’t find it anymore compelling than the “tax cut crew” you criticize for their own vacuousness.
I could live with some higher taxes. However I have no doubt there is also some real fat left to trim. I work for a NYSE traded company. We have good salaries and benefits. However when I tried to hire an employee in Lansing I found I could not compete with the salaries and benefits of state employees.
Luckily, I found a well trained employee of another NYSE company who had been laid off. She has been a good employee at a reasonable cost.
I have no idea why you or others think state employees are deserving of better salaries/benefits than provided by the private sector.
Such a framework is abusive to the public and ultimately not economically sustainable.
Lots of good thinking and truth-telling here, Rick. We need the balance of cost-cutting and investment that marks *some* businesses.
But a society is not a business. People are about more than making a profit. Those who think only in terms of money are missing a great deal of what it means to be human. Please, let’s not having our government think only in terms of “employers” and “employees”. Don’t we have citizens anymore? Don’t citizens have rights beyond being “employed”?
There are some aspects of human life that do not, and should not make a profit for businesses, but which are essential to meaningful life, like public parks. Other things that don’t make a profit are essential to shared life, like clean water, sewers, and roads. These are all worthy of investment, and those who don’t want to pay for them – or want others to pay for them – are unrealistic.
Mr. Akers, I believe you’ll find that the Center for Michigan does indeed have a plan for priorities on spending our investment. Check the rest of the Web site. I’m a little frustrated with how general it is, but let’s face it: you cannot create a broad coalition like this without having the goals be pretty broad, too.
Good points that I hope all will seriously consider. Investment in the future, a risk, is the path that leads to success in any endeavor.
One theme throughout all comments, Michigan does not have a clearly defined purpose. We can criticize and comment forever and will continue to do so until a clearly defined purpose that all can focus upon and support (don’t have to agree)is defined and communicated.
Not a mission statement, they only hang on the wall or sit in the desk drawer and get dusty. Why do we exists as a state?
We used to be the automotive capital of the world and took great pride in that. What are we now?
A Covey anecdote might help. In his effort to get his kids to clean up the yard, mow and water the lawn he had to remind himself constantly that his purpose was to raise kids, not grass.
Are we still just cutting the grass?