Do you subscribe to Governor Pat’s newsletters? What do you think when you see all the jobs the government is creating? I think it is time for a lesson in counting jobs.
Mario owns a fruit market. He payrolls eighteen people. End of story.
Now, Governor Pat and your local city council bribe Large Multinational, Inc. to come to your town through tax breaks and cash incentives, and maybe even a Building A and Building B. LMI payrolls 52 people. In addition, it induces and indirects jobs through economic multipliers. Since LMI hires people that eat lunch, regardless of whether they were eating lunch before or not, LMI can now claim responsibility for two people on Mario’s payroll. They also get credit for one of the grease monkey’s at Carl’s auto repair down the road, and two of the nurses at the local doctor’s office. After four big corporations accept incentives, Mario, Carl, and Dr. Woo find they now only employ half as many people as they payroll while the large corporations employ three times the number to which they issue paychecks.
In the world of math, we might take this to its logical conclusion by hauling in another four companies, causing local employers to have no employees. Another four companies would result in Mario, Carl, and Dr. Woo paying the same amount, but now employing a net -50% of their payroll.
If you don’t believe me, it is because you’re smoking something and you can’t feel the energy of crony capitalism. Everybody who believes in psychokinesis, raise my hand. Everybody who believes in economic multipliers, demand your paycheck from your true employer, LMI.
OK. If that was too complicated for you, it is probably because you are an elected official. So, let’s try some easier math. An article in the News and Observer claims direct jobs aren’t even being created by corporations that receive economic development incentives from taxpayers in the State of North Carolina. Reasons taxpayer subsidized jobs don’t come to fruition include jobs that existed before the government created them, jobs that were going to be created whether or not corporations received government assistance, corporations refusing to sign performance contracts, and jobs that were supposed to be created by money awarded to the sweepstakes industry after sweepstakes were outlawed in the state.
I have a friend who has a theory that bad government decisions are a result of corruption. He thinks, for example, county commissioners and city councilmen must receive bribes and kickbacks to do something as idiotic as redistributing taxpayer largesse to large corporations.
Well, we at the JLF are supposed to be more enlightened than that. We are logical. And, seriously, my friend’s theory is Occam-razoring all the alternatives to shreds.
