Government shouldn't pick winners and losers. Seems like I've heard that a lot lately from Rick Snyder's administration. It's his rationale for taxing poor people and old people, for ending tax breaks, for driving a new industry out of the state.
So it was a surprise to see him saying good things about the Pure Michigan advertising campaign on Thursday (March 10, 2011) when he signed into law a bill giving it an additional $10 million for advertising Michigan.
Didn't Snyder just pick some winners and create some losers when he took tax dollars and gave it to a particular industry? Why is that OK? People outside the golf course, hotel, restaurant, and gasoline industry are never going to see any benefit from that government spending. They're seeing their tax money go to helping another industry and that's bad, bad, bad. Blah, blah, blah. Especially since under Snyder's tax proposals, most of those businesses benefiting from Pure Michigan are the type that will never pay a dime of taxes to the state to help cover the cost. The studies that show Pure Michigan giving a huge return on its spending are the same kind that show the movie industry doing the same thing, yet those are discounted.
So for some reason that Snyder won't tell us, it is OK to pick winners and losers sometimes. Whenever he says it is.
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