Governments have a habit of issuing debt and giving tax breaks to businesses. ‘We’re luring jobs and growing the economy,’ they claim. All-too-often, governments make bad deals that amount to massive giveaways that largely or entirely obliterate whatever positive economic effects they claim. (Stadiums, sports arenas, and conventon centers are especially bad investments.) Jacob Grier at Reason.com reports that this distressing practice has now shifted to microbreweries.
“Virginia is for beer lovers,” Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) proclaimed at a recent press conference. He was obviously not referring to a lawsuit challenging the state’s use of an antiquated “habitual drunkard” law to jail indigent citizens without due process, but rather to $3 million in corporate welfare from the state’s Commonwealth Opportunity Fund that he approved to lure Bend, Oregon based Deschutes Brewing to Roanoke for the construction of their first East Coast brewery.
Read more at https://reason.com/archives/2016/04/07/crony-capitalists-of-craft-beer
