When I asked the editor of Banker & Tradesman if I could drink Scotch and smoke cigars at my desk in the newsroom, he said I could not, because smoking anything other than marijuana in Massachusetts is some kind of felony or something, and because drinking alcohol might encourage readers to join in the fun – a dangerous idea for depressed folks who invest in and finance commercial real estate.
Although I’m somewhat immune to the despotic rule of editors, this prohibition on fun really put me over the edge. I pulled out my trump card; the one that has worked since I was a little boy. “But all the other newspapers let their distinguished columnists do it,” I wailed.
Immature, you think? No, no, no, this is the kind of rationale that states such as Massachusetts use to introduce poorly conceived economic development strategies. All the other states are doing it. We should do it, too.
The Massachusetts mess is similar to other jurisdictions, with its murky, secretive, tax-and-subsidy giveaways to film producers, high-tech geeks, and many other eager, well-connected types who trot across the nation, holding up naïve states for fat economic development gifts.
Why a film producer, but not a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker? Because Hollywood is cool. Why a life sciences lab, but not a machine shop? As with almost every other village, city and state in creation, Massachusetts is at the ready to shower money and tax breaks on the high-tech folks, to feed the Boston-Cambridge colossus – but there are no special funds to subsidize a low-end manufacturer, because they’re dull and don’t promise to cure cancer by next Tuesday morning.
The Lottery
The “small government,” approach to such stuff is to tell government to get out of the business of attempting to pick winners and losers. Lower taxes, rationalize the regulatory environment, and then get out of the way, without letting businesses jerk you around with threats to move elsewhere. The response, of course, is familiar to every young mom: Everybody is doing it.
State Sen. Karen Spilka, D-Ashland, and State Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth, have dumped a giant reorganization of an economic development bill on everyone’s desk, filled with a mix of good and simply atrocious ideas. They want reports and bureaus and mandated investments and economic development plans and consolidations of some bureaucracies and creation of others.
The politicians love to talk about fine-tuning economic development, because they bear no real responsibility for the “investments” they make, using taxpayer money to play with.
Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei has slapped around Gov. Deval Patrick and the Democrats for being incoherent on economic development, but he did have some friendly things to say about the Ashland-Murray package. Of course, he added the important GOP mantra: “fair and equitable corporate tax rate, a less burdensome regulatory system for employers…” and on and on.
A more friendly business environment has much to recommend it, but even in the absence of such a foreign concept in the Commonwealth, the philosophical objections to political entrepreneurship deserve attention as well. The allocation of assets is prompted by all manner of circumstances, ranging from tax regime to quality of workforce to where the CEO happens to live. The distortions created by government intervention leads too often to irresponsible, unsuccessful mistakes for which no one accepts responsibility.
There is no escape from the reality that economic development giveaways are a process of taking money away from existing businesses to finance speculation intended to entice new business, or to sustain local creatures that have powerful friends. As The Boston Globe reported last month, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center has doled out tens of millions of dollars to successful firms already prospering in the state.
On the other hand, a study released last month by the Pioneer Institute, a conservative Massachusetts think tank, suggested that the state is better off coddling local firms than attempting to guess which out-of-state firms may actually be successful if enticed to come aboard.
Clarity doesn’t come easy in the economic development game. I think I’ll sit here at my newsroom desk and mull it all over a glass of Scotch. It’s o.k. Everyone is doing it.
