MERCANTILIST MYTHS PERSIST. Midwestern states reveal a preference to keep their state university graduates at home. There's something wrong with Blogspot's search function, so this search string (Wisconsin indenture, if you wish to try it) might give you nothing, although the summary at SPARTANS IN THE SHADOW OF DEPAUL explains the argument. None of which matters to Detroit News (motto: we will deliver, on Tuesday) columnist Mike Cox, the state attorney general, who would like to unseat Jennifer Granholm.

In a few weeks, about 40,000 students will begin their college careers at a Michigan university. Unfortunately, when these students are ready to graduate, less than half will choose to stay in Michigan if recent trends hold. Families will see one another less, students educated with billions of our tax dollars will use their talents to build other states' economies, and employers will continue to leave Michigan. Our economy will never turn around if this brain drain continues.

The columnist does not support this claim. It's possible that the next paragraph suggests an improvement in Michigan's business climate, but note that it has nothing to do with the effectiveness of Wayne State or any of the other state universities.

It's hard to blame college graduates for leaving. Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. States that can provide good-paying jobs have an advantage despite the high quality of life Michigan has to offer.

To regain the upper hand, we must make immediate, bold changes to turn this economy around. The first step is to change our business tax structure (the "jobs tax"), moving it from 48th in the nation to the top 10 by cutting the Michigan Business Tax in half.

That might provoke opposition from the state's universities. Illinois outsources a lot of its higher education to Michigan and Wisconsin, and the state universities have been running on short rations for over fifteen years. Always tradeoffs.

But we also need to demonstrate to our college graduates that keeping them here is a priority for us.

Other states -- like Indiana, North Carolina, and Illinois -- are competing with us for our children. We have to fight back.

That is why we should give our college graduates a three-year income tax exemption, putting money directly into their pockets. This tax credit would be an investment in Michigan's talented graduates and our economy. The funds could help pay down college debt, go toward a home and, most of all, serve as an incentive to use their education in Michigan.

Yes, if there's a job that makes use of a graduate's talents in Michigan. With the finance and related fields and corporate headquarters and research parks around Chicago or Madison or Pittsburgh, that's unlikely, improvements in the business tax or not.

Michigan spends approximately $2 billion per year on higher education. Each time a college graduate leaves the state, the tax dollars that helped pay for that education leave as well.

According to a report by MichiganFuture.org, nearly 50 percent of recent Michigan graduates left our state within a year of graduation. If that departure rate applies to every public university in Michigan, then taxpayers are literally spending $1 billion per year to build the work forces of other states. No state can recover when it is exporting its tax dollars and college graduates.

How much money does Michigan spend on roads and social services to enable employees of the legacy car companies to get to work? Is it not also the case that every time an automobile leaves the state, the tax dollars that helped produce that car leaves as well? (Not to mention the Upper Peninsula ore, an exhaustible resource, that got shipped out in that car, and the Lower Peninsula sand that went into the glass.)

Try this: identify a Michigan resident who completed an advanced degree (law, medicine, research) and then hired out with a white-shoe firm or Mass General or the White House. Make the case that the export of that human capital is bad for Michigan.