Let's do some math from a source [0] Sounds like 1300 jobs paying 46K, double the local average, over the course of 6 years. From a "paying taxes to buy highe

Let's do some math from a source [0] Sounds like 1300 jobs paying 46K, double the local average, over the course of 6 years. From a "paying taxes to buy higher salaries" point of view this is 1300 * (0.5 * 46K) * 6 ~= $180M. Sounds like a positive NPV transaction. But... How much of the increase does the city and state actually capture in Taxes? Let's call it 15% between city, state, local and sales. (This is very fuzzy math) Then you get 180M * 0.15 ~= 27M. In the end it sounds like the city and state of Dubuque did a wealth transfer from taxpayers to a subset of local employees, many of whom are now jobless and will need to go back to $23K jobs or move. These types of arrangements frequently end poorly. If the local market won't bear a certain wage rate, it's hard for one-off tax rebates to fix things. You need to go deeper - change the entire tax regime, improve the education system, etc. Cringely [1] opines on this too. [0] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-19/iowa-spent-50-million-to-lure-ibm-then-the-firings-started http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-19/iowa-spent... [1] http://www.cringely.com/2012/04/18/somethings-rotten-in-dubuque/ http://www.cringely.com/2012/04/18/somethings-rotten-in-dubu...