Wisconsin offered a $3 billion dollar subsidy to Foxconn and were promised a $10 billion factory and 13,000 jobs in exchange. Instead, the locals got three empty buildings, a few hundred jobs, and a mountain of debt. Sorry, Wisconsin. As Ronny Chieng from the Daily Show put it, “You got catfished.”
Read MoreSarasota County, Florida, is planning to use hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize housing. But this money isn’t going toward low-income housing — it’s going toward road construction for gated communities.
Read MoreMissouri’s governor is stuck on a mid-20th-century economic model, wherein connecting cities via interstates provides big economic returns. But such a mindset is going to do a lot more harm than good in today’s world.
Read MoreStrong communities don't need (costly) external validation.
Read MoreWhen (if ever) should taxpayers subsidize a new pro sports stadium?
Read MoreThe Kansas City Royals are considering building a new stadium downtown. But who should pay for it: the princes (team owners) or the paupers (taxpayers)?
Read MoreHow a ruling from the Arizona Supreme Court will change how local governments do economic development.
Read MoreIf you want to lay up treasures for yourself in Roseville, Michigan, you’ll soon have a new option. But it comes at a high cost to the wallet (and soul) of the community.
Read MoreUsing tax incentives to subsidize retail is a lose-lose game that St. Louis's suburbs, desperate for short-term revenue, have been playing for too long. University City is mortgaging its future and selling out its small businesses with a $70 million subsidy for big-box development.
Read MoreTexas has a history of aggressively using tax incentives to lure big business: a misguided economic development approach that produces little if any public benefit. Dallas’s bid for Amazon’s second headquarters falls right in line with this unfortunate pattern.
Read MoreAkron, Ohio’s subsidies for redevelopment of the failed Rolling Acres mall are a textbook case of the sunk cost fallacy: the tendency to examine new opportunities not on their own merit, but in the context of past investments.
Read MoreIn most cases, it’s people like you and me who get the short end of the stick.
Read MoreThere seems to be no end to Wisconsin leaders' willingness to let Foxconn trample on the state.
Read MoreGovernment housing subsidies can't provide a permanent lasting solution to affordable housing challenges, but naturally occuring mixed income neighborhoods could.
Read MoreA St. Louis street proves that when individuals are left alone to work hard, experiment and dream, real change can occur — no tax subsidies needed.
Read MoreEssential air service is a bottomless pit of subsidies that drain critical resources from struggling communities.
Read MoreWhen we strongly incentivize anti-social behavior by big corporations, we get more of it.
Read MoreOur cities are so financially fragile and desperate for growth that they will do anything to land America's most eligible corporate bachelor.
Read MoreOn the surface, mortgages appear to be a mostly free market enterprise, but the system masks a huge amount of government intervention.
Read MoreThe wealth one sees in the countryside resides there, but it is not created there. These residences are not the producers of wealth but the consumers of it.
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