How much does a tech bro cost?
theguardian.com
How much does a tech bro cost?
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: How much does a tech bro cost?
#2What an annoying click bait title. But the article is good (if short). I guess I wonder why something like this is even legal. It seems corruptive of the marketplace to just hand billions of dollars to some companies and not others and it seems there's no good way to stop it as long as this is a tool that municipalities are allowed to use in competition with one another. Has it always been this way or did we have a fix in the past?
Re: How much does a tech bro cost?
#3It would be helpful to distinguish between actual cash outlays and tax credits that kick in only when the company is producing and supposed to pay taxes.
It's not unreasonable then to forego $0.5 million tax revenue for a long term, high tech manufacturing or engineering job that might generate another 5 jobs down the line. Not to mention the value of an environment that attracts other similar companies in the future without other incentives.
Even actual cash outlays for things like free infrastructure are not something the company can take with them, they remain in place for decades for other investors or urban expansion.
Re: How much does a tech bro cost?
#4What an annoying click bait title. But the article is good (if short). I guess I wonder why something like this is even legal. It seems corruptive of the marketplace to just hand billions of dollars to some companies and not others and it seems there's no good way to stop it as long as this is a tool that municipalities are allowed to use in competition with one another. Has it always been this way or did we have a f…
Likely happened in the past but at a different scale. Improvements in communications technologies and logistics have made physical location less important than it once was. It's much easier for most entities to pick up and relocate than it was when most economic activity was tied to local resources. There are of course many exceptions but for the tech industry, the main thing holding anyone in place seems to be the local talent pool. Perhaps improvements in remote work technology and universal broadband access will even diminish that as a nucleation point.
Re: How much does a tech bro cost?
#5The thing that always annoys me about these articles is that they frame these "costs" as money the government would otherwise have, if they hadn't given it to these greedy companies.
It depends on exactly how the deals are structured, but when these are structured with nonrefundable tax credits tied to jobs numbers or as lower rates, then these deals start to look far better for governments.
Journalists should stop writing these lazy articles and start digging into the details of these deals so that people know what the right questions they should be asking are, rather than staking out partisan positions.
Re: How much does a tech bro cost?
#6The "tech bro" angle is just clickbait. I am pretty sure that Foxconn, Tesla's Gigafactory, and a datacenter are not what is usually meant by "tech bro".
Second, if cities believe that these tax breaks are good investments then there is little relationship between making those investments and putting money into other programs. Cities should have access to cheap-ish capital and future tax breaks seem like fairly favorable conditions. If anything, that cities need money is an argument for investing in business (if you accept that doing so makes money).
The article doesn't much of an argument that these investments are bad. It just kind of waves in the direction of some dots and suggests you imagine some connections. If you look at the linked article about Missouri budget shortfalls you won't find "Cerner" anywhere - for all we know that was a great investment but other bad bets were made.
Re: How much does a tech bro cost?
#7It would be helpful to distinguish between actual cash outlays and tax credits that kick in only when the company is producing and supposed to pay taxes. It's not unreasonable then to forego $0.5 million tax revenue for a long term, high tech manufacturing or engineering job that might generate another 5 jobs down the line. Not to mention the value of an environment that attracts other similar companies in the future…
As far as I can tell there are no generally accepted practices for analyzing the economics of such deals. All too often you end up with both the company and the local government sitting on the same side of the negotiating table while the public has no one representing them much less sitting on the other side of the table. As a result, all kinds of dodgy economic impact statements are made with very little quality analysis performed to assess their likely accuracy. A set of standards for these projects would make it easier for the public to compare them to the deals others have made and make it less easy for the powerful to deceive the masses.
Re: How much does a tech bro cost?
#8Once again journalists willfully misleading the public by ignoring the difference between tax credits and actual cash outlay. They must know the difference, but clever tricks get more clicks than the truth ever does.
Re: How much does a tech bro cost?
#9Tax incentives rarely deliver on their promises. The city could increase employment more by taking the same amount of money and using it to employ people. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-ba...
Re: How much does a tech bro cost?
#10Once again journalists willfully misleading the public by ignoring the difference between tax credits and actual cash outlay. They must know the difference, but clever tricks get more clicks than the truth ever does.
But surely, in a 'closed system', they have to make up the difference between tax credits and actual cash outlay somewhere? Bargaining on tax seems inherently unfair, but inevitable when there is no harmonization between states. (This is one reason the European Union has laws on state aid.)