HORACE MCQUEEN: Business ‘Incentives” Multiply – Question is Why?
A never-ending quest to attract jobs continues to grow and fester in Texas—and other states.
Two Japanese car makers have been offered $700 million-plus to invest $1.6 billion in a new plant in Huntsville, Alabama. The proposed plant would employ 4,000 workers. It would cost $170,000 in economic incentives for each of the new 4,000 jobs. That’s a lot of dollars to bring “economic prosperity”. Too many times, companies that demand incentives to move into an area are just as quick to close the doors and move to another location offering more dollars as ransom for moving. The economic development gurus should be looking inward to the businesses that are already functioning in the city or county and need some help in keeping their doors open. Lowering the tax bill for a local struggling business may keep them operating—and they are local folks, not newcomers!
My Aggie math just can’t come to grips with cattle prices that can change drastically from day to day. One example–this one continues to bother me–is a 500-pound calf that brings $1.50 a pound on day one. Next day, a 500-pound calf of the same sex and quality may bring only $1.40 a pound. That calculates to $50 a head loss on day two as compared to day one. A cattle producer has no idea of what buyers will be offering from one day—or one week—to the other. Maybe an “investigation” is warranted to ferret out the market fluctuations. Seems as if everyone involved in the cattle industry wants to buy low and sell high. But at ground level, the cattlemen that breeds the cows and raises the calf to market weight comes out on the short end of the stick!
As of today, the farmer’s share of every dollar spent by consumers is only 14-cents. The middlemen — the dominant packers, processors and retail companies—get the lion’s share of the other 86-cents. Farmers and ranchers pay hundreds of millions dollars each year through mandatory check off fees collected when they sell their cattle, grain, vegetables and nuts. Those dollars were to be used to expand the use of those agricultural commodities. But, sadly, the confiscated bounty enriches pockets of someone else up the ladder!
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