Molson Hart

How can we fight cronyism in this country?https://twitter.com/alexrossmusic/status/959524456283688964 …

Not necessarily cronyism. It's competition between States and towns for, not just 50 jobs, the economic activity a 750 million data center will bring. Maybe the Ohio town sold at too low a price.

That's the problem though, they always seem to sell at 'too low a price'. Can we trust our officials to negociate those type of deals? If you want to bring in companies then lower taxes for all corporations.

Is there a better alternative though? We can vote those who sell too low and we can prosecute those who engage in corruption. I suppose we could improve the situation by better regulating the eye winking quid pro quo "donate to my campaign and I'll help you out later"

Fwiw, this type of thing doesn't only happen at the Facebook and Foxconn level. I'm sure with scale you can extract better benefits and it's stacked against the little guy. That said, my small company is being actively courted by multiple small towns.

It could be argued that this competitor between small entities or states makes government more efficient by exposing them to market forces.

To me the best solution possible is to not have any '1 on 1' negociations of this sort. Tax rules should apply broadly and evenly to 'everyone' -no official should have the power to pick and choose who gets a break etc.

Otherwise we just get this type of tax race to the bottom where invariably the deals are too good for companies. Incentives are way too assymetric (short term political benefits vs long term breaks for companies) to expect any decent negociation.