It’s time to abandon corporate tax breaks. Just look at their history.
By Mark Funkhouser, former mayor of Kansas City, Mo. | Governing
(Editor’s note: Opinion pieces are published for discussion purposes only.)
While spending public resources to lure private companies and the jobs they bring has mushroomed in recent years, the idea is actually pretty old. In his book City Power: Urban Governance in a Global Age, published last year, law professor Richard Schragger cites a passage from the September 1890 issue of Scribner’s Magazine: “A curious outgrowth of the rivalries of American cities, is the practice that obtains so generally of offering bonuses and pecuniary inducements to manufacturers to move their plant.”
It was a bad idea then. It contributed to a municipal bond default crisis when promised returns did not materialize and cities could not pay off the debts they had incurred. And as the evidence densely piled up in Schragger’s book demonstrates, it remains a bad idea today.
Yet the practice continues to grow.
