Durham County, home to that quaint city of the same name that ballyhoos such economic successes as the Durham Bulls Stadium and the American Tobacco District, is looking for ways to broaden its powers. County Commissioners want to make it easier for them to pick business ventures that deserve economic incentives.
While it seems easy for county commissioners to pick success stories, let’s not forget that we still don’t know the full effects of economic incentives. But the practice does raise a lot of questions.
Do cities and counties actually benefit from economic incentives? Are they even necessary to entice businesses? Further, does the practice of offering incentives encourage the growth of certain business at the expense of other, non-subsidized businesses which, if left to fend for themselves in the market, would be even more successful than the government-approved business?
Unfortunately, when government chooses to play this game, we will never know what could have been. What we can be sure of is that if anyone other than consumers pick the businesses they want, that business will be unfit to react to consumer preferences. This ultimately hurts the business and the consumer. And while government continues to tout short-term apparent success stories, they gain more confidence in extending their powers into the economic arena. The cost of this move is less individual freedom and more sub-par government performance in necessary services.
