Economic Development as practiced today usually means a government working hard to award this or that favored business some tax break or other entreaty to move to the city. Expansion of existing businesses is almost never on the table. Not only that, too much energy is spent luring the big fish and not enough effort is given to allowing the creation of the small businesses which usually are more innovatine and provide ultimately more jobs and economic activity to the people in the city. It is easy to give money to a business to move to your city, it is a lot harder to get new businesses up and running.
Plus, cities and states have simply gone overboard in permits, fee, rules, regulations, laws and taxes and a dozen other things in making businesses difficult to open. For instance, why should a business that is going to be a small corner hair salon have to go through the state to open up? It is operating locally, it has no ability to function and no desire to operate outside of the city. The whole process can be simplified so that there are two classes of businesses -- those that are truly local in nature and those that are statewide operations. To hold them both to the same mechanisms is counter productive.
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Much economic development is stifled by too many permits and rules and regulations. Once again, it is the controlling nature of governments to set up onerous rules and then require people to ask for exceptions. It gives the politicians something to do. But it is also time to remove politics from cities, that sort of party based politics that is more about gaining and keeping power than actually improving and dealing with the current situations. There is no Republican parks and Democratic Parks. Cities used to have a lot more power and clout, but it has been declining since the rise of the nation state. Cities are now more akin to administrative districts than actual political entities. A mayor can't affect unemployment, crime, or other social problems that arise on the state and national level because he can't control what goes on outside of his borders. xxx |
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Cities that spend tax dollars to lure businesses from other cities are only engaging in an ever escalating war of money with other cities and jurisdictions that they can't not ultimately win. It is also part of a zero sum game of economics that says there are only so many companies that can go around and thus we must get our share of them and keep them from going to other cities. It is merely smart business people who use the threat of moving to get more money out of cities. If cities refused to play the game then the businesses would not be able to engage in these practices. But instead we find people blaming businesses for merely engaging in reasonable business practices. Why is it somehow OK to use tax dollars to lure businesses but wrong for a business to go shopping around for the best deal? XXX . |
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Nearly every city service should be privatized by taking local people and companies, building them up and training them so that economic activity is created within the city. XXX . |
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