I've often wondered how true that is. I think the problem is people tend to think of a business as a monolithic "entity". That this entity has one mind and is like any other citizen.
But the reality is that a large company is composed of a lot of people who may or may not want to use the savings to increase their local economy. If they are given breaks, what incentive do they have to actually do what we need?
Especially now. Those large companies are hurting. If they receive these breaks, wouldn't the smarter move be to keep the savings and ride out the slump (or make their take look higher for shareholder, etc...)?
You can see this with small local businesses. If they were given breaks they would save that money and not spend it. The reason they would do this is because people aren't buying their product right now. Why hire more workers when products and services aren't moving?
The reality, it seems, is that people who call for the breaks want it for themselves. Why should they care whether the economy is doing well when they are making a lot of money for themselves?
It has been and continues to be the trend that as one amasses more wealth there is a desire to become more isolated. More money comes in and we move ourselves to areas where we don't have to deal with those problems and at the same time forget that the problem still exists.
The correct thing to do is to create new markets for things like this Streetcar idea. This is more in-tuned with true capitalism than simply giving business money and hoping the problem solves itself. As MarkDaMan stated above, there is a potent for a large market.
By giving companies breaks it assumes the market is perfect and that they just need some money to kick things back into gear. This is hardly the case right now.
re: An Economic Success: Importing Jobs to America
Chris McMullen:
I've often wondered how true that is. I think the problem is people tend to think of a business as a monolithic "entity". That this entity has one mind and is like any other citizen.
But the reality is that a large company is composed of a lot of people who may or may not want to use the savings to increase their local economy. If they are given breaks, what incentive do they have to actually do what we need?
Especially now. Those large companies are hurting. If they receive these breaks, wouldn't the smarter move be to keep the savings and ride out the slump (or make their take look higher for shareholder, etc...)?
You can see this with small local businesses. If they were given breaks they would save that money and not spend it. The reason they would do this is because people aren't buying their product right now. Why hire more workers when products and services aren't moving?
The reality, it seems, is that people who call for the breaks want it for themselves. Why should they care whether the economy is doing well when they are making a lot of money for themselves?
It has been and continues to be the trend that as one amasses more wealth there is a desire to become more isolated. More money comes in and we move ourselves to areas where we don't have to deal with those problems and at the same time forget that the problem still exists.
The correct thing to do is to create new markets for things like this Streetcar idea. This is more in-tuned with true capitalism than simply giving business money and hoping the problem solves itself. As MarkDaMan stated above, there is a potent for a large market.
By giving companies breaks it assumes the market is perfect and that they just need some money to kick things back into gear. This is hardly the case right now.