In several key ways, Michigan has fallen further behind in the race for global competitiveness.
That’s the summary conclusion from the 2010 Michigan Scorecard, a joint publication of The Center for Michigan and Data Driven Detroit.
The forward-looking question: what would the more than half-dozen candidates for governor and the hundreds candidates for legislature do to right the ship.
Released today on the Center’s web side, the Michigan Scorecard rates 30 key benchmarks of Michigan’s economy, quality of life, and education and government systems. It’s an update to the Center’s first such scorecard released in 2008.
Each Scorecard benchmark in the report earns either a “good,” “average,” or “poor” rating based on comparisons to other states. In one click, readers can download a spreadsheet showing where Michigan ranks nationally for each measure in the Scorecard.
This year’s scorecard downgrades four key measures: K-12 investment, high school completion, research and development, and environmental quality.
Michigan has a long reputation of strong education investment, but other states are quickly investing more. In terms of school completion, Michigan dropped five spots to 21st nationally in the percentage of adults with a high school diploma – even though Michigan’s ratio improved slightly to 88.1 percent.
In addition to those downgrades, “poor” rankings from the original Michigan Scorecard continue this year on a troubling array of measures, including:
This year’s scorecard gives Michigan higher ratings on two measures: efficiency in government pay and burden of incarceration.
Michigan’s state and local government workers are the 13th highest paid in the nation, according to 2008 Census Data, (the most recent national data available). That’s down from 6th highest paid two years earlier Michigan has made considerable improvements in the prison system by dropping its prisoner count from more than 50,000 to 45,000 in the past several years.
Overall, the Scorecard gives “good” ratings to Michigan on: economic transformation, home ownership, philanthropy, government efficiency, and voter participation.
The Scorecard gives “average” ratings on: K-12 investment, high school completion, young talent, business tax burden, research & development, exports, venture capital, public safety, public health, efficiency in government pay, and burden of incarceration.
3 Comments
In the Scorecard, the “Business Tax Burden” should be relabeled “Business Tax Competitiveness”. That is the problem. Michigan is a non-compete state with regard to business taxes. Compare with Ohio manufacturing business: almost zero corporate tax; zero business personal property tax, zero sales and use taxes on business purchases. Ohio non-manufacturing still has sales taxes on business purchases. Most other countries of the world do not have these taxes at the state level.
The tax abatement and Renaissance zones also illustrate the problem. These tax abatements create a non-level playing field with other business, which do not qualify for the abatements. Another problem is that the businesses with abatements “get used” to not paying the taxes. This means that the products and services are priced without these taxes embedded in order to compete and stay in business. Consequently, these tax abatements can never expire. If the abatements expire, the businesses must go out of business or leave the state.
If business taxes are not a Michigan problem, the legislature should eliminate all tax abatements and see where that goes.
Another problem is that business taxes are a Catch-22. The state government requires the business taxes to balance the budget. Michigan has no option on business taxes that by eliminating the business taxes, the recession would be ended.
Agriculture production and sales, I note, are not among the measures. Given it is the second largets revenue producer for the state and that Michigan is the second most diverse producer of Ag products, Its absence is conspicuous.
Al Connor
This is a great measuring tool, easy to understand, and should be shared with the media so that it can be viewed by more citizens of Michigan.