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what a year do I live in that governments must bow to corpos and politely submit RFP document asking for tax money .... reduction. There was once a story on ha
by rdslw 9y ago
what a year do I live in that governments must bow to corpos and politely submit RFP document asking for tax money .... reduction.
There was once a story on hackersnews why this (demanding tax cuts) its unethical on much larger scale than race etc. It went like this (forgive my memory, english, and feel free to correct it):
There were two states, neighboring, with similar budgets and number of people. They werent rich, there werent many benefits for citizens in each state, yet people managed to get by. Then one day, a company came to them and asked, who can give me corpotax subsidy ? I'll build a factory there and employ maaaany people. State A objected, while state B agreed. That was a 10 years deal. A lot of people from State A migrated to state B in search of work. 5 years into the deal, company thrived: no taxes to be paid = most competitors in both states are killed. Company is building another factory. Again asking both states of tax subsidy. This time, due to loss of population, being on verge of collapse, state A had to offer super deal. Company built second factory there. The pendulum is swinging the other direction. The rest of the cycle is left for the reader.
Because population is relatively constant, allowing this shenanigans is effectively allowing corpos to be tax free at the expense of states^H^H^H citizens. Because states or nations are WE, and asking for such reduction is a zero sum game.
This gains of capital because of amazon HQ2 WILL HAPPEN no matter what or where. Asking for tax deduction is abuse and effectively reducing total citizenhood wellness/capital in benefit of Amazon, payed by all other states where HQ2 is not built.
The best policy for all states and cities in USA is saying: no matter who will you choose, we will NOT give you a subsidy. And if you want to talk about offshore outsourcing, let me rephrase it: all countries in the world should show the A a middle finger in unison.
- all_blue_chucks 9y agoThis has been going on forever. It is a natural consequence of free people acting in their own best interests. Giving an employer $1Bn in tax breaks knowing you will get more than $10Bn in increased tax revenue is good for the government and good for the employer. Is it fair? No. But liberalism doesn't aim to make the world fair; it aims to make it free.
- logfromblammo 9y agoThe bidders are also free to mention to Amazon that they were thinking of increasing the funding for their local anti-trust investigations, and maybe those funds wouldn't be available if they had to be spent on infrastructure improvements related to significant new construction in the area instead. Ask for a bribe; get a threat. If a city can afford to blow a few million on tax breaks to get more millions in economic development, it can afford to blow a few hundred thousand on lawyers to get something in fines or settlements.
- conanbatt 9y ago> The best policy for all states and cities in USA is saying: no matter who will you choose, we will NOT give you a subsidy. And if you want to talk about offshore outsourcing, let me rephrase it: all countries in the world should show the A a middle finger in unison. If we could only get all governments together to conspire against third parties. How could that ever wo grong.
- icebraining 9y agoThe EU tries to do that by banning Member States from giving targeted tax breaks (see the Irish-Apple affair), although with dubious results.