4 ms·

I don't think corporations should be allowed to negotiate tax breaks like this, but I think labeling this as bribery is disingenuous because it is neither illeg

• supernovae 8y ago
  You're right, it's not illegal. However, I would say its dishonest. Let's be real. Corporations exist solely to make money. Why should taxpayers fund the winners? Who gets to choose that Google deserves taxpayer dollars and for what reason? If you read the sales marketing pitch for new data centers they talk about billions in economic viability - if that were indeed true to the extent that the marketing material wants you to believe then corporations would fill that datacenter void and compete with one another to do so. Because they're asking for incentives seems to suggest that the viability isn't there or that the corporations have so much control that they not only impose their will upon employees but not the governments and municipalities they operate in because there is potential for some long tail tax opportunities that Google doesn't take a risk on but the towns do. That's what ticks me off. Nothing in life is guaranteed but here we are guaranteeing google that they will win. There was a time when a big city in NJ could do no wrong building HUGE telco buildings with no windows and huge tax incentives. It ended up building a downtown no one wanted to live or work in and the city has no money because the corporations exist tax-free and the city actually has to carry their liability even those services are being shut down, abandoned or aren't worth the promise they sold to the city to begin with. Mostly because companies realized its cheaper to quit city and move to another if there is free money on the table