http://www.statenews.com One of the best indicators of a thriving local economy is when businesses are prospering. Local businesses often are the first to close their doors during a recession or economic slump. en-us Gryphon 2.2.3b-tsn (woodward)/Foundry5 Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:23:27 -0400 webmaster@statenews.com http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46872 Is the editorial board of the SNews made up of complete morons, or did you all just decide to drop some acid on deadline tonight? WTF do restaurants and your “to die for” food reviews have to do with a city council resolution that (wrongly) gives preference to “local” and “regional” businesses in bidding for city projects? (Which any logical person knows will drive up costs.) Will Menna’s Joint or Espresso Royale suddenly start bidding on city projects to pave roads or plow snow? Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:43:55 -0400 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46872 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46895 Todd, Excellent response. If this is such a good idea, why doesn’t EVERY city do this? Stop shipments at the city/county borders. Impose tariffs on all “imports”. Again, nothing more than feel-good legislation that sets a dangerous tone and proves the intelligence of the council. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:18:06 -0400 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46895 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46903 The idea of “buy local” and other likeminded concepts appears solid at first glance. This should help local business afterall and that’s great! the idea start to fall apart however, when one look at what happens if Lansing adopts the same thing, and then Okemos, and then Haslett, Grand Rapids, Detroit, Chicago, etc. This is classic game theory, if EL is the only city to promote “buy local” it’s potentially a win. Unfortunately, this incentivises Lansing to follow suit which would be very harmful to a number of EL “local” business, probably far more so(as lansing is far bigger)than the benefit of EL’s provision. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:36:16 -0400 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46903 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46905 Todd, I’d go with the former. Have you seen all the dumbass completely moronic editorials this semester? Although, I suppose they could have taken acid the first day and are just continually having flashbacks. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:47:49 -0400 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46905 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46916 I always get a kick out of the State News commenters who have taken one economics class and think that makes them Milton Friedman. Maybe before trotting out some canned criticism of the policy you should read the policy itself (or even just the description printed in the paper here). Then again that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun as just spouting off. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:44:38 -0400 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46916 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46933 What exactly are you referring to Milt? Yes, this policy isn’t as bad as direct subsidies or iron clad nobid contracts, however, it does directly encourage local companies to not cut costs as low as possible to achieve the very best bid when they know they can be 7.5% over the low bid with zero negative ramifications. Zero. Why would any business not submit a slightly higher bid to ratchet up profits in that situation? They can always change it if they dont win. And that inefficiency is paid by local taxpayers. As if that isn’t bad enough, again, this encourages Lansing and other cities to follow suit and that is where EL business could easily get hurt more than helped by this policy. P.S. i’m actually a professional economist so a bit more than econ 201. Nice try though. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:20:14 -0400 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46933 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46944 As I understand it, all the 7.5% (or 5% if it’s not an EL company, but is in the region) is is a qualifying standard. That company will still have to match (and then re-bid at) the low bid. Even if they inflate their bid to “ratchet up profits” they will never realize those profits because they will still have to match the low bidder. This would also seem to encourage other firms to innovate and lower their bids to eliminate the possibility of a local match bidder. If the city just paid 7.5% more you’d be right. But that does not appear to be what is proposed here. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:12:05 -0400 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46944 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46972 That would be true, except this is the City of East Lansing, so they’re not always going to have massive amounts of bids coming in. That means that this policy has a high potential to result in higher costs. That is not the main problem however, the main problem is this incentivizes other cities such as Lansing, to adopt similar measures which will result in making business in both EL and Lansing poorer overall. Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:23:27 -0400 http://www.statenews.com/index.php/comment/view/46972