A couple of nights back, while watching the Olympics, I saw these two expensive-to-air commercials in rapid succession. The first is the brainchild of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the second is a campaign ad for presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. This is your Democratic Party on economics:
Making our economy work for everyone starts by making sure those at the top pay their fair share in taxes.https://t.co/uDdkrzKL9O
Making our economy work for everyone starts by making sure those at the top pay their fair share in taxes.https://t.co/uDdkrzKL9O — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 3, 2016
I can think of no better snapshot of major-party economics as practiced in 2016. We need incentives to reward companies for moving in, and penalties to punish them for moving away! Let's waive taxes for a decade on one politically acceptable category of businesses, while raising taxes permanently on a disfavored class right next door! And no matter what, it is government that will help your business grow, and create millions of new jobs.
At least Clinton's intelligence-insulting ad was paid for by her own campaign. Cuomo, on the other hand, has poured more than $200 million of taxpayer money into promoting New York like this since 2012, including north of $50 million for Start-Up NY, a program that the governor promised would "supercharge" the Empire State economy.
So how many jobs has Start-Up NY produced, in exchange for all this advertising, and an estimated $100 million in waived taxes? Uh, 408. Cuomo, meanwhile, insists that the many critics of the ad campaign's desultory return on investment are "wrong," because
the advertising is generic. "Come to New York," and "We will help your business grow if you come to New York," and "New York is not the frightful place that you thought it was," "We're not a high-tax state — we'll eliminate taxes." So that's what the advertising did. We had a very anti-business reputation, and if you asked any company, we actually did — you ask companies around the country, "Would you ever move to New York?" They'd say, "Oh no no no — New York is anti-business. It's very high tax, it's very high regulations." So we had a bad reputation that we had to correct to even be considered. And the quote-unquote Start-Up ads are really generic. Start-Up means, "Come to New York and we will help you start up your business—no taxes, but usually we'll also give you a loan, we'll give you an incentive, we'll invest in your business and take an equity participation." But if a state wants to be competitive now, it's going to take more than just no taxes. That's sort of the opening bid. But most often you're going to have to put an additional investment package on the table to be competitive with what the other states are offering.
What a godawful mess.
And as for why New York has a bad enough business/regulatory reputation that it needs to spend eight figures counteracting that impression, look no further than Cuomo's own speech at the recent Democratic National Convention:
[O]ur progressive government is working in New York. We raised the minimum wage to $15, the highest in the nation because we insist on economic justice! We enacted paid family leave because all workers deserve dignity! We are rebuilding our middle class and we're working hand in hand with organized labor because the middle class is the backbone of this society! We are protecting the environment by banning fracking because this is the only planet we have.
There is a better way, one that both 19th-century political parties have long since abandoned. And that is this: Make the rules—including tax levels—few, simple, and fair, and then please get the hell out of the way. That's how "we make the economy work for everyone," or to translate out of the Hillaryspeak, that's how an economy can produce far more opportunity than would-be central planners could ever fathom, let alone conjure up with their incessant interventionism.
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