There are a lot of things states do in the name of “economic development that don’t make much sense. But out of all the bad deals out there, there’s three popular kinds of subsidized project that are especially bad for the communities that make them: Stadiums, data centers and distribution centers.
In The Hill, CEA President John C. Mozena called on states to rethink subsidizing “these three dumb things.”
Why these three? The common arguments in favor of incentives are that they create economic activity in an area, that they create jobs and that they change companies’ decisions about where to locate. But stadiums don’t create economic activity, data centers don’t create jobs and distribution centers have to go where the customers are.