Corporate welfare is a waste and costs jobs

[someoneyouknow]

I have been of the belief that it is not the taxpayer's responsibility to have their money used to entice multi-billion dollar companies to their state. It should be quite obvious if those companies are worth that much money, they might be doing something right, so why spend public money when it's not needed? Especially on private industry.

Now come several studies which all conclude the same thing: corporate welfare does not benefit communities or states, and in some cases costs jobs.

Speaking about state incentives to firms, the authors found “little evidence that they generate new jobs or other direct economic benefits to the states that employ them.” Specifically, “establishments that received an incentive experienced employment growth that was 3.7 percent slower than non-incentivized establishments.” The authors also divvied up their analysis by firm size and found that incentives may be more effective for smaller enterprises​

We found that for every $500,000 in MBDP subsidies paid out through 2016, there was an associated loss of some 600 jobs in the county in which the corporation’s project was located. In other words, the program cost, rather than created, net new jobs.​

which found a “robustly negative relationship between development incentives and patent activity,” the latter being a proxy for entrepreneurial activity. They did find a positive link between incentives and percentages of large businesses in a region, but they also found a negative association with percentages of small businesses. The authors said these findings are consistent with large companies being able to crowd out smaller ones in the competition for capital, which often includes state subsidies.​

The next time Amazon comes around begging for publicly funded handouts, those with the purse strings would be wise to tell them, "Fuck off, leech."

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/421991-think-corporate-welfare-isnt-a-waste-read-these-studies