If only we’ll give them just one more tax break, this time they won’t piss it all away.
“Sears Holdings Corp. plans to close between 100 and 120 Sears and Kmart stores to raise cash after a weak holiday shopping season for the retailer,” APreports.
“The closings fueled speculation about whether the 125-year-old retailer can turn itself around.”
I wonder if Quinn – and the Illinois General Assembly – knew that Sears was (supposedly) banking the futures of 120 stores on Christmas shopping under catastrophic economic conditions whenhe signed more than $150 million in tax breaks to the company into law under cover of darkness two Fridays ago.
You know, I do get that there are things government can do to reward businesses that genuinely create jobs and improve the local tax base. Public infrastructure improvements, for example, that make a location more attractive: We’re gonna come here but you have to have the roads to support us.
But this constant practice of massive tax incentive packages doesn’t actually help the targeted company any more than it helps the community, because if you relocate a business you need the cops to patrol it and the schools to educate the children of employees and money to keep the streetlights on. Without all that, you’re left with someplace not even the CEO wants to live.
A.
Here’s a great post by a small-business owner explaining what business owners really need (and it’s not more tax cuts). http://blog.amystewart.com/2011/09/what-this-small-business-needs.html
We either need to renounce the concept of common good (and the public) or say we’ve just about fucking had enough of the race to the bottom. Don’t want to pay your fair share? Take your freeloading corporate ass somewhere else. We’ll make your precious HQ a community garden, and it will be a more productive use of the land.
before any more tax cuts are made, CEO pay needs to be CUT!
I read somewhere that this semi-annual “cut our taxes or we’ll take our ball somewhere else” started off as an exercise in compliance. Basically, as a corporation in the USA, you’re legally mandated to do everything you can to maximize profits, including making idle threats and bitching about your tax “burden.” It’s only recently that media started covering the threats, and politicians started hearing the threats, and then actually started complying with the demands, which used to just be made as a press release and promptly forgotten. The fact is, these really are just idle threats, because the cost of moving something like the CME or Sears HQ is astronomical, and not likely to pan out for years, which hurts quarterly returns, which fucks your stock price, which is ultimately what the whole fappery is about.
Dumb Question: has he signed any sort of bill providing a similar level of welfare to the people?
Mayor Emanuel supported these giveaways too. Emanuel seems to be even more pro-corporate than Daley and I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.
the DLC has no soul.