Yep most local governments will give tens of millions away for “local jobs” even if there’s only like 3 local jobs.
Could literally just hand those 3 people 4 million each, and save the environmental disaster.
Literally dealing with that in my own local community. They want to build an outdoor concrete batch plant in the middle of downtown to create like 10 jobs. I mean you’ll make the small city into a ghost town. Shut down the multi-million dollar observatory, all the small business down restaurants. Not to mention they will cause everyone wealthy enough to move out of town. This will leave the poorest residents left in the tax base but hey they’re creating jobs!
It’s not just jobs as in the physical bodies that are going in to work at the place, it’s also the taxes and the net expansion of the local economy (eg, the people working there will be spending money at local restaurants and businesses, the facility will be paying for utilities, and so forth). It’s a complicated thing to evaluate.
It’s not complicated when you factor in that tax payers are paying for the incentives. And they rarely work out for the local residents.
When Amazon was flirting with building their second headquarters for AWS, a small number of cities tried to band together and require a floor amount for reinvestment into the city. Amazon, being one of the richest companies in the world, said, “Nah…well just cancel the building.”
These companies want to socialize the cost of their buildings but privatize the profits those buildings create.
Yep most local governments will give tens of millions away for “local jobs” even if there’s only like 3 local jobs.
Could literally just hand those 3 people 4 million each, and save the environmental disaster.
Literally dealing with that in my own local community. They want to build an outdoor concrete batch plant in the middle of downtown to create like 10 jobs. I mean you’ll make the small city into a ghost town. Shut down the multi-million dollar observatory, all the small business down restaurants. Not to mention they will cause everyone wealthy enough to move out of town. This will leave the poorest residents left in the tax base but hey they’re creating jobs!
It’s not just jobs as in the physical bodies that are going in to work at the place, it’s also the taxes and the net expansion of the local economy (eg, the people working there will be spending money at local restaurants and businesses, the facility will be paying for utilities, and so forth). It’s a complicated thing to evaluate.
It’s not complicated when you factor in that tax payers are paying for the incentives. And they rarely work out for the local residents.
When Amazon was flirting with building their second headquarters for AWS, a small number of cities tried to band together and require a floor amount for reinvestment into the city. Amazon, being one of the richest companies in the world, said, “Nah…well just cancel the building.”
These companies want to socialize the cost of their buildings but privatize the profits those buildings create.
Was this concrete batch plant being built by one of the richest companies in the world?
If this was the case for literally every project, then every project would cause cities to lose money and I have no idea how cities could still exist.