Even something as simple as not charging $500 per year to create/maintain an LLC would be nice. As a resident of the Commonwealth, it's a mixed bag. On the on

Even something as simple as not charging $500 per year to create/maintain an LLC would be nice. As a resident of the Commonwealth, it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, the government is awesome and progressive. On the other hand, they want to be controlling and arbitrary. For example, there's huge biotech subsidies in the state - and it's a growth industry, but at the same time, it's somewhat arbitrary and means that those companies can pay up for things like office space since they're getting the subsidy and so they tend to become more of the economy. Likewise (since the article brings up transit), the Commonwealth decided that since a court ordered them to enhance public transit due to environmental concerns over that the big dig (a highway project) was causing, that it should be the MBTA (public transit authority) that should shoulder the cost rather than the big dig who created the need for the cost. That's simply bad economics to shift costs away from those that incur the costs. Likewise, the Commonwealth likes the double standard of free interstates (paid for by gas taxes) for everyone except those that live west of Boston (who must pay both a gas tax and tolls). I'd prefer that the legislature tried to be a little less controlling of things on a high level and rather target the roots that they'd like to affect rather than simply deciding something like Industry A is good. Maybe something like, "companies with strong growth can get a discount tax incentive." Why companies with strong growth? Employing a lot of people isn't useful. Progressively employing more is useful. Being large isn't useful, growing larger is. So a company that exhibits strong growth is likely to employ more people in the future - especially if it has more capital to invest in itself. Likewise, if they've shown that they can do good things with capital, those companies will create more profits and more taxes in the future. Heck, even make it something like this: companies that show strong growth can defer (some of) their taxes for 5 years. That's like an interest free loan that gets them to locate in MA and have their growth in MA since that growth comes at a steep discount in cost with little long-term cost to the state. I'm not complaining. Taxes are reasonable and services are high compared to other states (http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/460.html http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/460.html). It's a good place to live, despite the weather (although that's even nice today).