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FITSForum: South Carolina’s ‘Sweetheart Deals’ are Starting to Sour
Crony capitalists find themselves on the defensive as corporate welfare failures mount in the Palmetto State…
4 comments
Govt has no business handing out taxpayer money to any business, big or small….period.
The Panthers Fiasco to the Scout Motors SOUR Deal, Has Cost the SC Tax Payer Far TOO Much!! I am a Small Business Owner!! WHERE is MY Money!! All the state does is TAX Me into the Poor House!!
These deals supposedly have “clawback” provisions that allow the state to rescind tax breaks or even demand refunds of direct funding if the company does not produce the job metrics that it promised….I’d love to see an investigative journalist report on whether or not any of these boondoggles were formally assessed for their compliance with the terms of the deal, and if they did not, if the State actually exercised its rights to recover taxpayer resources.
BRAVO Diane Hardy, another gem of common sense and conservative (as in free-market) analysis.
While your article hits mostly at the macro- level, these boondoggles also result in local avalanches of micro-disasters, as the manure flows downhill from Columbia to the vulnerable rural counties of our state.
When a big-name corporate project is wooed to an unsuspecting community in the name of jobs! jobs! jobs! there is often insufficient consideration of the risks. The tax incentives given to newcomers are a slap in the face to existing businesses, large and small, who have been paying exorbitant tax rates for years, while feeding families and sponsoring local charities and schools that hold the community together.
Leaders say, “Without these incentives somebody else will get the jobs.” Fine! At least local employers won’t be losing their best employees to the newcomers for a few extra cents per hour. And it is no secret that these new operations often over-hire by as much as 25% so they can cull through their new employees and quickly release the ones who are filtered out.
Many of these new businesses are inherently risky so they seek public funding in all the forms Diane mentioned to protect their investors. Too often, they don’t survive, leaving the community holding the bag.
I learned in Econ 101 many years ago that every time government interferes in the private market it results in disaster. Every time. It’s as true today as ever.
South Carolina’s leaders should want to attract honest investment to improve standards of living. The way to do that is to cut the corruption and inefficiency, stop the frivolous and risky spending, and LOWER TAX RATES FOR EVERYBODY.
It’s so simple.