Thursday provided a striking contrast of priorities and optics in the Detroit "comeback" narrative.

Mortgage and real estate mogul Dan Gilbert broke ground Thursday on what will become Michigan's tallest building.

The $909 million skyscraper is part of Gilbert's planned $2.1 billion downtown Detroit construction boom that's expected to be underwritten by nearly $618 million in tax breaks and captures made possible by Gov. Rick Snyder's signature earlier this year.

The cost of Gilbert's subsidies in lost future revenue to taxpayers noticeably mirrors the $634 million in unpaid driver responsibility fees that workforce development leaders say holds back more than 300,000 Michigan residents from getting to work every day.

And while Gilbert and dignitaries celebrated a momentous start of construction of an 800-foot skyscraper on the footprint of the former J.L. Hudson's department store, the Legislature and Snyder were collectively punting on forgiving the driver fees before lawmakers adjourned for the year.

This year revealed Snyder and lawmakers were effectively willing to fork over $600 million in tax breaks and incentives for a billionaire. But they couldn't come to an agreement to abandon the collection of a similar amount of money from a state tax on traffic infractions that virtually everyone in Lansing agrees is uncollectable.

This is the state of Michigan governance and planning these days — a disjointed approach to economic development where the policy prescriptions are focused on underwriting the capital — and capitalists — ahead of the talent.

And talent is in short supply. Virtually every business owner is seemingly searching for workers — whether it's a skilled computer programmer to run an automated assembly line or a server at a restaurant next door.

As Gilbert's Bedrock LLC embarks on construction of the Hudson's project, a new office building on the Monroe blocks, expansion of the Quicken Loans headquarters at One Campus Martius and renovation of the Book Tower & Building, a question looms over this massive investment in Detroit's future: Will Detroiters do the majority of the work building it?

If the taxpayer-subsidized Little Caesars Arena project is any barometer, the answer is, no, probably not.

Through April, Detroiters had been on the job at the arena project for just 27 percent of the hours worked — just half the city's 51 percent work requirement for taxpayer-subsidized projects.

That's reflects a reality that Detroit's workforce has been under-prepared for the volume of downtown and Midtown construction projects.

It's a reality even Gilbert himself acknowledges is a problem as his company begins a 4 1/2-year construction schedule at the Hudson's site.

"We're going to be short tradesmen — people who have skilled trades to build these beautiful buildings," Gilbert said Thursday at the groundbreaking ceremony. "What a shame. What a shame anybody could be unemployed in Detroit when we have a need for skilled trades. That's craziness."

From the revitalization of Randolph Technical and Career Center to labor unions redoubling their recruitment in Detroit, several efforts aim to get more Detroiters into the skilled trades.

But barriers to getting into these programs persist.

That's why Mayor Mike Duggan and his workforce development board co-chairs, DTE Energy Co. Vice Chairman Dave Meador and Strategic Staffing Solutions CEO Cindy Pasky, have been trying to convince Lansing to forgive the driver fees and forgo the lost revenue.

The old fines, some dating back a decade, result in suspended drivers licenses — effectively removing 76,000 Detroiters from the pool of employees to participate in the city's revitalization.

The reality is, if you live in Detroit, you can't get into the apprenticeship program to be a skyscraper-building steel worker if you don't have a car and driver's license to get to work or the union's training center way out in Wixom.

"We need this to pass this year. It's a major barrier to employment because in most cases people do need transportation," Meador said in an interview on the Crain's "Detroit Rising" podcast. "And this is just one of the barriers."

As long as the barriers to employment, education and upward economic opportunity for Detroiters and others living in poverty persist, the not-so-subtle tension that the Detroit "comeback" is benefiting only the wealthy and powerful will persist.