
Why Mayors Keep Trying to Woo Business with Tax Breaks - pseudolus
https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/02/business-tax-breaks-mayors-amazon-hq2/582166/
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7e
How do discriminatory tax breaks not violate the equal protection clause of
the Constitution?

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SamuelAdams
The Constitution protects the rights of citizens to a government, not
businesses. This is why employers can terminate employees who whistle-blow:
the first amendment does not protect freedom of speech against a corporation,
only against a government.

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_Schizotypy
Probably has something to do with politicians being the best of the worst, who
don't understand research or statistics

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lotsofpulp
And voters not voting in their long term interest (including not voting at
all). A politician promising tax cuts and jobs now at the expense of the
future is going to get elected versus a a politician that wants to invest now
for the future. See state of American infrastructure for an example.

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rayiner
Do we underinvest in infrastructure? For example, NYC spends much more money
per passenger and per route mile than London to run a similar subway system,
but it’s still crumbling. Maybe our problem is not funding but some cultural
flaw that prevents us from using infrastructure money efficiently.

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likpok
I wonder how much of this can be explained by wealth. The US has more
expensive labor than the rest of the world (by a surprising margin), which
makes everything in the supply chain more expensive. Infrastructure is pretty
labor intensive in and of itself (and skilled labor at that -- of which there
are shortages), and the materials that it requires are also relatively labor
and energy intensive.

We would then expect to spend much more per passenger and route-mile than
other places just to break even. But politically this is maybe a harder sell
-- it's easy to criticize giving the MTA an extra billion when it buys so much
less (even before corruption &c).

