While Michigan’s budget promises to help small businesses and the little people, every action by the state has crushed those very people and small businesses without relent. The semi-permanent coronavirus state of emergency has been a windfall for the state of Michigan and the mega corporations that operate here. These companies benefit from the policies of the state which destroy the economic liberty of small businesses and individuals.
Despite claiming a deficit for the state in early 2020, and a need of billions in emergency assistance, last year Michigan pulled in a surplus of over 3 billion dollars. Michigan has yet to spend about 1.8 billion of its federal dollars, and has passed a 70 billion dollar budget for the next fiscal year. The state can hardly spend your money fast enough, and is now placing 500 million dollars of it away for a “rainy day.”
With money poured into the coffers of the state and big business through bailouts, it is amazing that two years into the largest theft in American history, the state cannot seem to come around to spending money to help people in the Upper Peninsula. From up here, it is easy to imagine beautiful shining cities of vast wealth downstate. Otherwise, where would all that money really be going?
The new budget promises to be the injection of capitol into the economy that is needed during this time of need, but with a massive surplus it is hard to see why intervention by the government is even necessary. It funds important things like schools, but has in the past shut down schools that elect not to follow decrees and mandates by unelected bureaucrats.
This budget gives free pre-college classes and childcare to a few hundred thousand children and adults, but this hardly seems like more than window dressing. It fixes only a few hundred bridges. This all seems like run-of-the-mill stuff for a state. Why the large price tag for this bill?
The new budget also raises the wage for direct care workers. While this seems like a popular move, fixing the wage of employment denies those workers and their companies the right to negotiate their own contracts freely. Wage fixing harms people because employers will not simply raise the wage of all the people it employs. It will fire some portion of them to keep its bottom line fixed. Less people will have jobs at that higher wage, and that won’t benefit them due to inflation.
If the government cannot tighten its belt and save money then we will all be more broke than before. This taxation without due representation is theft.
Joshua Ray Jongema 