8 ideas to improve Michigan’s economy surface at U-M conf

More and more ideas on how to reinvent Michigan’s economy are coming from the University of Michigan.Excerpt:How can Michigan grow its economy?A Kalamazoo economist counted the ways — eight of them — Friday at the University of Michigan’s 37th Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics.Timothy J. Bartik, senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, outlined four strategies for cutting marginal business costs and four strategies for improving workers’ skills at the event, which features national and state economic forecasts as well as other economic presentations.Bartik said it’s more important to cut marginal business taxes — the cost of adding a new plant or a new job — rather than business taxes overall.”The problem with cutting taxes across the board is the revenue hit is so much more than incentives, and so you have to cut public spending, which causes the economy to shrink,” Bartik said. “Also, businesses value things like roads, schools, libraries and universities.”Read the rest of the story here.