The Lansing bus authority had 69 drivers who made $60,000 or more in 2012, including one who earned $104,411.

The Capital Area Transportation Authority had 236 bus drivers in 2012, many of which were part time. Salaries ranged from under $1,000, to 34 bus drivers who made more than $70,000, according to information obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request. The salaries include overtime.

In recent years, customer bus fares have covered only about 15 percent of the system's total operating costs.

“CATA has the lowest cost per passenger ($2.37) of any transit system in the state of Michigan. An operator’s pay is just one component of actual cost,” said Laurie Robison, the director of marketing for the Capital Area Transportation Authority. “There is no ‘annual salary’ for our bus operators as they are paid on an hourly basis. Their ‘annual pay’ is based on how many hours each operator actually works in a year.”

By comparison, the average salary of an associate professor at Ferris State was $71,900 while an assistant professor earned $64,500 in 2012, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Everything about mass transit is grossly overpriced,” said Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance. “That’s one reason there is a lot of skeptics with mass transit. It’s not about getting people around, it’s about spending government money.”

Jeff Steinport, who helped found citizen taxpayers watchdog group in Kent County, has investigated transit spending in Michigan. He said he wasn’t surprised more than 30 CATA drivers made $70,000 or more.

“Regional transit agencies are unaccountable,” Steinport said. “They do not have elected leadership yet they are able to raise taxes. ... Regional transit agencies are undemocratic and consequently, they are insulated from the consequences of making poor financial decisions. No one is held accountable when the system is wasting taxpayer money. We believe that regional transit agency boards should be elected, like every other government entity in the state that is able to raise property taxes. Further, unlike school districts, transit agencies have no mandated transparency."

CATA served 11.8 million passengers in 2011, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation. The agency's 145 buses served about 223 passengers per day, according to MDOT.

When factoring in inflation, CATA’s drivers’ labor costs have increased from $2.6 million in 2003-04 to an anticipated $4 million in 2012-13, while drivers’ benefits have jumped from $1.2 million in 2003-04 to an anticipated $2 million in 2012-13.

A lead editorial this past week in The Detroit News stated that, "Wide consensus exists that if Michigan is to become a top state for jobs and investment, it must develop a stronger talent pool." They’re not alone.

There’s a push to spend more tax money on state universities based on a theory called Talent Mercantilism. It is an ineffective approach to growing the state economy, one whose main effect is to waste taxpayer money.

Mercantilism was the 17th century idea that the only thing a nation needed to become prosperous was to increase its stock of gold and silver. Talent mercantilists just substitute college degrees for precious metals, assuming that more college graduates are evidence of more talent in the economy.

Mercantilism was wrong because there’s more to an economy than the medium of exchange. Talent mercantilists are wrong because many more factors contribute to modern economies than just having educated people around: property rights, entrepreneurial instincts, access to capital, certainty of exchange, etc.

Having smart people is just one piece of the puzzle, not the key to economic growth.

While it’s true that college graduates have higher incomes than those who are not, this does not automatically translate into higher economic growth for an entire state. That can be shown by comparing states that are successful at growing their college graduates with those that are successful at growing their economies. It turns out that the one has very little to do with the other, as I show here.

If the talent mercantilist theory is wrong then policies based on it are flawed. The talent mercantiists would like the state to increase university appropriations. More tax money in state universities leads to more grads which generates more growth, they argue.

But this is a problematic for a number of reasons.

• Just giving universities more tax money will doesn't guarantee that more students will graduate.
• Michigan’s universities are stuck in an apparently perpetual administrative bloat that’s absorbed most increase in university resources. Any additional money for universities is likely to be tied up into ever-expanding administration instead of expanding the capacities to graduate more students.
• Even if more tax money meant more graduates, it’s not clear that more graduates mean a smarter population. Current universities do a bad job measuring whether their students ever learn anything, and there’s evidence that many do not.
• It’s unclear whether Michigan would retain graduates from state universities. College graduates are nomadic — they’ll relocate to where they find an opportunity.

Indeed, if state policymakers wanted to ensure the state would get more graduates from university appropriations, it would subsidize the students instead of the institutions. A tuition grant to Michigan students that included incentives to graduate would be a much more effective way of getting more college graduates in the state.

However, policymakers should first question whether more graduates should be a state policy goal, given that this has not meant more growth for a state.

Taxpayers have little to show for the billions that past politicians have spent on state universities. Today's legislators should be skeptical about spending more.