In North Carolina and across the US, we’re used to governments trying to promote economic growth through incentives that attempt to pick winners but often fail. Incentives programs give millions of taxpayer dollars to corporations to lure them to the state, but they’ve proved expensive and largely ineffective.
So it’s refreshing to read this week in Forbes of a different approach that may actually work. In his article “Politicians Foster A Craft-Beer Renaissance By Not Acting Like Politicians,” Patrick Gleason talks about the rapid growth of breweries across North Carolina.
North Carolina now has 70 breweries, a 33 percent increase from a year ago. Two of the most well-established names in the craft beer business, Colorado-based New Belgium and California-based Sierra Nevada, are in the process of constructing large facilities in Asheville, NC that will employ over 200 people and serve as their east coast headquarters.
So what does Gleason think politicians can usefully do to encourage this growth to continue? Incentives?
Actually, he writes about the Growler Bill (H.B. 829), which would lift restrictions on distribution of craft beers. And he writes about tax changes that are also likely to help brewers. Neither of these measures gives breweries anything. Instead,
…the recently-passed Carolina beer bills demonstrate that politicians would do better to first consider how they can get government out of the way of employers so that they can expand their businesses, grow the economy, and create jobs.
The General Assembly would do well to apply these same principles to other areas, freeing up businesses in every industry to expand, create jobs, in crease choices for consumers, and spur economic growth.
