JDIG

Cooper's corporate welfare tally for 2020 is jaw-dropping: $519.3 million pledged to just 48 corporations. Supposedly that would lead to 11,600 new jobs, which is only about one-nineteenth the number of jobs destroyed in a year (222,300).

Back in September, a survey of Raleigh businesses conducted by Shop Local Raleigh found that 60 percent of small businesses in Raleigh were threatened with closure. That same month…

What is going on? Isn't Cooper supposed to be a staunch opponent of corporate tax breaks? Why is he pledging millions of dollars of state money to corporations, and why so much to so few?

Could Cooper callously continue to play favorites with individual corporations at the exact same time he was putting hundreds upon hundreds of small businesses at risk of closings, bankruptcies, and ruin? Yes. Of course. At several levels worse than last year, even.

How should the State of North Carolina go about corporate taxation and corporate welfare? There are four possible policy combinations. At the John Locke Foundation, we have consistently championed…

WRAL reporter Tyler Dukes has examined job creation promises from North Carolina economic-development incentives programs and found them falling far, far short. Dukes assessed job creation from projects under the…

Gov. Roy Cooper opposes corporate tax cuts and giveaways. At least publicly. In his 2017 State of the State address, he made them sound like an occult ritual: “We…

Earlier this month Amazon announced it was looking for a second headquarters in North America. The company said it would involve 50,000 jobs and $5 billion in investment. It is…