NC weighs the pros and cons of incentives, again
Published March 13, 2014
Editorial by Rocky Mount Telegram, March 12, 2014.
Incentives are back in the news. Do they work? Are they worth it? How much is too much?
There are few easy answers, as illustrated by two debates concerning separate incentives packages on opposite sides of the state.
Charlotte learned this week that Chiquita plans to merge with a company in Ireland and move Chiquita’s world headquarters from Charlotte to Dublin. This, less than two years after the state, Charlotte and Mecklenburg County came up with a $22 million incentives package to bring Chiquita to North Carolina in the first place.
Officials in Wilmington, meanwhile, are anxiously awaiting the results of a study that examines the role incentives play in keeping the film industry in North Carolina.
A preliminary report suggests that local and state governments recoup $1.50 for every dollar they offer in incentives to the movie-making industry. But Republican lawmakers in the N.C. General Assembly have made no secret of their skepticism. And several other states already have curtailed incentives for Hollywood.
All of which brings the subject of incentives back into the conversation about economic development in North Carolina.
In the Chiquita case, at least, the government entities involved sensibly put together a “clawback” provision that would recoup incentives money from Chiquita if the company fails to meet the conditions it agreed to when it made its decision to come to North Carolina. Determining whether that’s the case is the kind of issue that often lands in a courtroom. But at least Charlotte, Mecklenburg County and the state have something to fight for.
And that might be the best lesson to take from the incentives game. It takes big bucks to make a bid for a player the size of Chiquita. Better make sure there’s a built-in disincentive just in case the player decides to leave the game later.
http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/opinion/our-views/nc-weighs-pros-cons-incentives-again-2418185
March 14, 2014 at 9:42 am
Norm Kelly says:
There's an alternative to incentives.
But first, any and all incentives packages need to be phased in, with the majority of the benefit coming in the later years. Let's take a page from the Demoncrat playbook. When it comes to federal budgets (heck, budgets at any level proposed by a demon!), they stack the tax increases in the current budget and the spending cuts in 'future' budgets. This way they get to claim they did something good without having done anything at all. (if only their socialist plans worked the same way: doing nothing at all!) If the incentives plans offered to any company simply paid them when they actually, provably met some goal, and only a small portion of the payment, then no one would have to go to court to recoup anything. This is, of course, for anyone who believes incentives should happen at all.
The alternative to incentives for a chosen few is to make tax plans at every level of government fair enough for EVERYONE so that incentives become unnecessary. Somewhere along the line EVERY incentive given to some chosen organization/group is made up for by all the other groups/individuals/organizations. Is it fair to steal money from one group in order to give it to some other group? Only in the mixed up mind of libs. When the 'other group' getting the benefit is truly needy, the argument can be made. But when the 'other group' getting the benefit is an incredibly profitable company, the answer is obviously NO!
If success weren't penalized by government; if wealth weren't penalized by government; if sales taxes made sense; if property taxes made sense, then perhaps all of the incentives could go away and every citizen and business in our great state could benefit from an actually level playing field. You know, that thing that Demon politicians constantly cry about. The only difference between my idea and the lib idea is that my plan truly creates a level playing field. The lib idea is simply their version of socialism. The lib idea is to punish success, punish the wealthy, reward the chosen ones, create victims to be saved by the libs, and generally buy off voters to keep libs in power. The lib plan uses 'other people's money' to reward the friends of the libs. In the end, the lib plan actually costs everyone even more. Financially, the lib plan sounds good in the beginning, but in the end even those who are the chosen ones end up with less freedom, less choice, less mobility, fewer options. In effect, the chosen ones become slaves to the politicians. The phrase that is not to be uttered by any conservative. Sometimes truth hurts. Too bad. It may be true that slavery is a terrible part of our history. But whether it was slavery on the plantation or it's slavery to the central planners, it's still slavery. Any way you look at slavery, it's a bad thing. Personally, I believe slavery to the central planners is worse, but that's just my opinion as I've never experienced slavery on a plantation but I'm beginning to get an idea of what slavery to the central planners is like. I don't like this version of slavery any more than Barber likes thinking about plantation slavery. I object to both. Barber and central planner/Demon/lib politicians despise plantation slavery but welcome political slavery with open arms and work to insure it's implementation. Libs, like Barber, Reid, Pelosi, K, do their darndest to insure their version of slavery is disguised enough to be difficult to see so that it's accepted by gullible voters.
