but i dont think "leave it up to the market" is a better idea. investments like this just need to be transparent, open to everyone and set up strict punishment for stealing the money with prison for executives.
if they wanted to actually create jobs they would support small companies and set up open competitive programs based on project quality. or start a state investment bank giving super low interest loans so factories can expand without cutting profitable divisions like in china.
Here's one example: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osec/osec20250923
In Georgia, the employer is reimbursed $2,500 when an apprentice starts and up to $10,000 when they finish. They can also get up to 75% of the apprentice's hourly wage covered during their initial on-the-job training.
This will never, ever happen. There will always be bonus points available, even if they're awarded to "conservative"-leaning feel-good attributes like veteran-owned sponsor businesses.
These investments are likely to always fail at their declared purpose. Better to put the money towards free childcare and maybe trying to convince parents to read to their kids.
Liberals in canada call that 'making housing affordable', https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/prime-minist...
It feels that in Canada business is impossible unless it's directly funded by the government.
There doesn’t seem to be any lesson-learning happening, since governments keep trying this despite the outcome always being the same.
/s
That would shake things up.
The two largest projects are still under construction, so it might be too early to make any conclusions.
> All told, the governor said that her major subsidy projects would create 20,595 jobs in Michigan
Even using these numbers that works out to $135k/job, which is bonkers!
> Ford, meanwhile, lowered its job creation estimate from 2,500 to 1,700, though so far it has created zero, and received no state money, as the building is still under construction. The state did, however, spend another $780 million on site preparation.
Most of the claims in the article are slightly obfuscated as to which actually involved any real net cash flow. Even the bottom line:
> Of the $2.7 billion offered, $1.8 billion has been spent—transferred either to companies or to local economic development agencies.
Doesn't make it clear what the local economic development agencies actually did with it - whether the projects were otherwise necessary, etc. Some of the spending was likely defensible even if the originally intended project fell through. Lots of it probably wasn't defensible. Michigan (and every other state) gives a lot of money to 'developers' in ways that don't look great if you bother to look into it at all.
Michigan's state budget probably totaled ~$700 billion over the past 8 years. So this accounts for up to 0.2% of the budget.
This is not the first time this type of thing happened almost looks like a laundering scam. Companies that do this should face real and very expensive consequences. But we know that will never happen.
Short answer: no.
The government just gave money to every executive in the company, and your argument is that because the company stock is also held by pension funds, they were supporting pension funds? Makes little sense.
Just giving the money straight to the pension funds would be much more efficient. This method enriches a bunch of non-contributors along the way.
The important takeaway is not only did the consumer pay more, but corporate profits rose.
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_201961-1....
No thanks