[detbuch]

Originally Posted by PaulS

It was done to keep that business unit solvent.

No. It was done to keep it in place. Otherwise it was going to be solvent in Mexico. Solvency was not an issue. Keeping it in Indiana was the issue.

W/o that incentive (or whatever you want to call it) that business unit would not have been able to survive in Ind.

It would have been able to survive there but at a less attractive tax structure.

Lending $ to an auto manuf. so they can retool and bc more efficient is basically the same as lowering someone's taxes so their cost structure is lower.

No it is not the same. And it shouldn't be done by the same agent. Businesses should be borrowing from the private sector financial agents, not from government. Making the government a loan agency puts the private agencies in danger of being "insolvent."

But even if government is the loan agent, it is not the same as lowering taxes. Taxes are more permanent and compulsory, while loans are more temporary and voluntary as well as negotiable.

And tax incentives attract businesses to states who give them, and government is the sole agent of taxation. Loans are not a useful, actually a precarious, tool to attract business. They can, and should, be transacted with the various private agents who have less power over business than government has with its ability to permanently regulate and levy taxes.

W/o the incentive the financials would have made no sense to stay in Ind and thus the jobs would have eventually gone away (according to Carrier).

Exactly why it made sense to offer Carrier incentives to stay. Both at the state and federal levels.

Manuf. jobs are leaving and soon when UBER starts w/driverless cars, those jobs are gone. Eventually Coke/Pepsi's trucks will be driverless and those jobs are gone. McDonald's order taker jobs will be gone in a few years also. Amazon's warehouse jobs will eventually be gone. And when Amazon starts delivering packages with drones, Fed Ex jobs will go away also.

Well, those jobs can't be shipped to Mexico. So they don't need any incentives to stay here.