PolicyGuy
This blog is semi-retired, but I'm adding always adding new items to the portfolio page.

Thursday, September 30, 2004


The Blue-Light Special Going Down to Georgia?
Michigan and other rust-belt states have long suffered a slow exodous of manufacturing jobs in which the pay rates exceeded the amount justified by worker productivity. In other words, jobs moved to the south, where cheaper wage rates overcame any productivity that may have been lost in a move. (High pay is not a problem if it's backed by high productivity.)

Now it looks like the same thing may happen with back-office jobs, too. Well, at last one company is plotting a move south. K-Mart, with headquarters near Detroit, may decamp to Atlanta.

Look for officials in both Georgia and Michigan--but especially Michigan--to offer various forms of corporate welfare or industrial policy (grants, special tax breaks) to gain, or retain, big K.

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'’s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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