Thanks to long-ago CJ-er Jeff Taylor, here’s an unintentionally hilarious editorial out of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the latest economic-incentive miscue. It seems that the State of Georgia spent $60 million purchasing and finishing an industrial site to house a new DaimlerChrysler plant that was going to build vans. Now the company has pulled out, leaving taxpayers with an “investment” in an open field that politicians hope will pan out, sometime. But the Atlanta newspaper says that the expenditure “appeared reasonable” at the time and “may still prove a good investment.”
Yes, particularly if the rumors are true: that North Carolina and Georgia will soon announce daily nonstop flights from the Global TransPark to the new Georgia industrial site. It’ll be billed as “heritage tourism” ? introducing flyers to the heritage of industrial policy gone wrong.