Incentives to lure businesses, movie productions, and so on are at best a zero sum game. If a tire manufacturer is going to build a new tire factory, competition within a state or between states to induce it to locate there doesn’t add to the output of tires. We’re expected to think that it’s a great “win” for “the state” (or county, or whatever the political unit) if the government manages to get it to locate within the borders, but that’s the old political trick of dazzling people with the seen, while obscuring the unseen. If the tire company locates somewhere in NC, that will strongly benefit a very few North Carolinians, but do nothing for the vast majority of them, who could have purchased the tires no matter where they were made. But because tax revenues are diverted to benefit the company, the rest of the people are worse off. If you could add up all the plusses and put them against all the minuses (including such costs as moving, as in the case where a company moved 12 miles to get Durham County money), I think we’d find that this is mostly a negative sum game.