Picking Winners and Losers, as usual

From a story by By TIM MARTIN Associated Press Writer...
LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- "Laid-off Michigan workers may be able to get up to two free years of community college or technical school tuition to learn a new trade under a program rolled out Wednesday. The program, called No Worker Left Behind, was detailed in Traverse City by Gov. Jennifer Granholm who said the project is a key part of the effort to turn around the state's struggling economy. Michigan had a 7.2 percent unemployment rate in June, highest in the nation primarily because of layoffs in the auto industry and other manufacturing fields. Participants must be unemployed or have received a layoff or termination notice from an employer. They should not currently be college students and should have graduated from high school at least two years ago."

Here is another example of Central Planning at its worst. Leave it to the state to decide who deserves a free college education and who doesn't.
Winner: Laid-off factory worker.
Loser: Struggling college student.

Here are a couple of hypotheticals...You work for General Motors for 20 years, make $65,000 per year, build a nice pension, buy a house, maybe a boat, a couple of snowmobiles; hey if you really saved, you might even have a cottage up north. And then you get laid off because the auto industry is in the tank. Lucky you, you just earned a free education.

Or maybe you live in a middle-class family that has worked hard for everything they have. Your folks, although working, just don't have the bucks to cover your tuition. You have always held a job and saved what you could, but you just graduated from high school, and you've never been laid off. Unlucky you, you'll have to take out a loan or use your own money to go to school.

Look. I appreciate the sentiments, but why do taxpayers have to feel obligated to help cover the tuition for someone who lost a good job? Bad things happen to people all the time, it is not up to government to fix them.

The real irony is, this governor wants to spend $10 billion of general fund money with only $8.5 coming in, which means higher taxes on us all including small businesses. If the governor really wanted to see people go back to work, she might cut government, reduce spending, lower the burden of onerous regulations and support a right to work law. Now that would pump up the economy!