One idea I like is directly funding apprenticeship. It pays for job training and classroom instruction on a per-individual basis. The jobs are in long-term career sectors like advanced manufacturing, shipbuilding, aviation, healthcare, and technology.

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.

> open competitive programs based on project quality

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.

It's straight corruption, no matter of big or small business. It should have been randomized blind selection of business who have existed for more than a year, and the granted money pays for new employees' taxes. Blind selection takes out the path to corruption (not who you know to get the fund). Randomized to be fair. Government is bad at picking winners or losers anyway. Business more than a year to screen out frauds. Granted money for new employees' taxes to encourage hiring new employees. Paying the taxes only so that the money can be spread out to more people.

> everyone involved should lose re election and get investigated by the financial crimes unit

The flawed assumption here is assuming elections are an exception to every other democratic process riddled with corruption and are operated fair and square, in general.

> selectively giving away free money to big business is straight corruption

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.

Or —- hear me out —- create laws and tax policies compatible with growth, and apply them equally to everyone.

They're always handed out as political favors or lotteries at best. How is a lottery sustainable or scalable? These solutions do not work. It's at best virtue signaling and at worst corruption (as OP says).

>There doesn’t seem to be any lesson-learning happening...

Which would indicate that creating jobs was not the actual reason for the grants. Given how trivially easy it would be fix the problem (simply make the grant contingent on the creation of jobs, otherwise it converts to a loan), the real purpose is probably a matter of generating headlines and raking in campaign contributions (with occasional full-on kickbacks probably happening as well). All of which it apparently does well enough that politicians continue to do it.

Correct, reporting this is doing nothing to stop it. People don't directly see the impact of it on their paychecks or budgets so they forget about it the hour after they read about it. The next politician can do it without fear of reprisal

it’s almost as if they are just lying about the purpose and doing it for some other purpose that it is perfectly effective for

With a link to the report: https://www.mackinac.org/archives/2026/s2026-08.pdf

The two largest projects are still under construction, so it might be too early to make any conclusions.

Not really, if the job lasts 30 years it will absolutely offset itself with local economic activity. These people will pay taxes, buy homes, visit doctors and much more.

It's both. A mix of incentives (that were not paid out) and land reclamation (which did cost money):

> 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.

The tfa says that almost all of this went to big public automakers. Enraging. I initially thought that this was going to some small biz thing that at least would slosh the money around through the owners. But nope - corp welfare!

The first Trump term tariffs on washing machines was studied, it resulted in jobs that cost ~820k each in higher prices to the consumer.

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....

China’s provincial investment in industry is very different. They use loans and take equity in the businesses so they have a direct interest in the companies succeeding.

Grants and tax incentives for non-novel or R&D heavy industry is a terrible investment. Especially since it’s just a competition between states that escalates every year with how lucrative they can make the offering and how little they demand in return.

It is not completely like that...In China, "government experts" is absolutely a negative term. On the Chinese internet we often called then "砖家", which is a homophonic pun about their low level.

Policy stability may be an advantage, but it does not mean the long-term planning is really long-term planning: Real estate; birth rate; gender antagonism; wealth gap; extremely involuted education, where even primary school students have to get home at least after 6pm, and then spend another three hours doing test papers, combined with purely formal university education and very low employment rates after graduation; a working environment where even a five-day, eight-hour workweek is really rare in private companies, where unions are only a placeholder, and individuals are very powerless against companies...

We saw what happened in Japan and South Korea, and we walked into the same path in an even more extreme way.

On the Chinese internet, Japan and South Korea are often called the "super test servers", while China is the "official server": the same problems are further intensified.

You do see this working in many places. Singapore is probably the best example with an explicit scholar programme and competitive pay in much of the upper rungs of the government. This comes with its own problem culturally but does result in very well thought through programs and infra that actually helps people.

Even in the top echelon of the Indian government (Indian Administrative Services), a similar culture exists and has interestingly been strengthend as the power has fragmented across political parties. I personally know several of my top B School/Engineering college mates who joined and any of them would do very well in top management in private industry. You can see the result in the rapidity with which India is pulling people out of poverty and modernizing. Certainly alower than China, but pretty amazing seei living outside for a decade now - many urban services are already far superior in quality to what you get in Europe, US or even Singapore. The challenge in India is the bulk of the bureaucracy below them isn't held to the same standard.In India it's still a prestige thing only in the top echelon - the lower echlons are more motivated by job security, pensions and avenues for corruption.

The difference in Singapore is the government pays well enough to attract and retain higher quality talent deeper.

People don't appreciate how many palms you have to grease to (legally) get a big empty field.

That's just her new face.

California has the 10th largest economy in the world. There's a reason people like you would never actually live in a conservative state like Mississippi.