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Back to Quack Off
Quack Off
by
Free
Market Duck
Idaho taxpayers
subsidize new Micron plant in China
(Mar 23,
2007)
Boise, ID – Whoa girl
friends, gather ‘round, listen up and shut up. Corporate welfare is alive
and well in Boise, Idaho. What happened?
Remember way back
in 2005, in the foggiest recesses of your little memory chips, when Gov Dirk
Thornprick (now promoted to National Zookeeper) and the Idaho Legislature’s
GOP Culture of Corruption gave Micron a multi-million dollar corporate tax
break, ostensibly to build a billion dollar computer facility in Boise,
Idaho? And since then, nobody has ever heard of, seen, or smelled Micron’s
Billion Dollar Mystery Plant? But your residential property taxes went way
up to cover Micron’s property taxes that went way down?
Well, guess what,
Margie? The Micron Mystery Plant just popped up in the Xi’an High Tech Zone
in Shaanxi Province in China. Surprise!
Micron’s new $250
million facility – it’s cheaper in China – is set to employ 2,000 new
employees while placing a hiring freeze at their North American operations…
hey, that’s here in Boise, right? This is Micron’s 2nd
manufacturing facility in Asia. In 2006, Micron supplied 14% of China’s
DRAM chips and Micron is the 3rd-largest supplier with
federally-indicted cohorts Samsung and Hynix leading the pack.
Remember Samsung, Hynix and Micron in
their simultaneous monopoly price-fixing and dumping activities, if that’s
possible in economics? (See Is Micron a DRAM victim or a DRAM
crook?
More...
)
Contrary to popular
left Liberal belief, a special tax break for Micron is not free market
capitalism. Micron’s tax break is an example of corporate welfare,
special interest legislation, from the government of Idaho to one of its
corporate buddies. Corporate welfare is no different than left Liberal
welfare, i.e., food stamps, housing subsidies, extravagant public education
expenditures, National Health Care, detox centers, and ad infinitum for
America’s huge welfare state. The real problem is not taxation but
rather spending.
The real answer is
for the state to stop spending in its perpetually elusive daydream of
creating a “fair” welfare state, usually based upon presumed “needs” of the
welfare recipients. A needs-based welfare state can never exist, and,
in fact, the idea of needs-based welfare is an oxymoron, or contradiction,
at its basic premise since it illogically tries to establish reciprocal
rip-off rights. Whose “rights to receive” trump your “rights to
receive” and who gets to decide? “Rights” can only mean “rights to
give” or “rights to voluntarily exchange.” Freedom to
trade produces a free market.
“Needs-based” welfare turns the state into Santa Claus, dispensing YOUR tax
money to special interest groups.
And
that's exactly what the Kempthorne Regime did when it granted a lower
property tax limit for Micron in 2005 on the premise that Micron would
expand its local facilities in Idaho. But since Idaho's welfare state
expenditures are considered fixed or rising, you, the residential taxpayer, are currently subsidizing the
corporate welfare of Micron. The solution, however, is not to raise taxes
on Micron to perpetuate the welfare state mentality, but rather to lower
state expenditures and, thus, the taxes on everybody.
In a true free
market in which the only function of government is to protect individual
rights and ensure an objective playing field with an objective judicial
system, the welfare state – including corporate welfare for Micron – goes
away. A perfect example that Idaho should strive for – if it really wants
to become rich and attract more business -- is the free market capitalism of
Dubai, whose population is about the same as Idaho and is one of the most
diverse, multi-culturally, and wealthiest in the world. They do not lack
for school systems, transportation, or medical facilities and, yet, have
virtually NO TAXATION. It is a free port. This small nation has a
government with almost nothing to do, no power plays, almost no crime. They
have only one small job to perform: referee the objective free market. And
it works.
One last point:
all the recent hullabaloo about Boise needing an expensive Community College
system in the Treasure Valley in order to provide employees for Idaho
businesses has just been blown to smitherines by Micron’s new facility in
China. If you think Micron built its latest facility in China – and its
other Asian facility in Singapore – because Micron couldn’t find enough
local employees who graduated from Jr. College in Boise, Idaho, you are
living in a Welfare State Fairytale. Labor is just one small expense for
global businesses, the globe is getting flatter and flatter, and college
grads will gladly travel from colleges all over the world to wherever
companies locate. The provincial notion that businesses will flock to
Boise, Idaho, if we simply build a Jr. College system is like the notion
that people must physically enter a Boise bank downtown to deposit their
paychecks or obtain cash in Boise for their trip to Europe. ATMs are global
and so is the Internet.
Micron is trying to
give you a hint, Idaho. Take your pick. Stop the taxing and spending and
re-create Idaho as a free trade zone. If you do, Idaho will become the
Dubai free port of America and Idaho will have so much free market wealth
you won’t believe it. Or, Idahoans can continue to subsidize companies like
Micron with their residential property taxes while Micron moves to China and
Idaho becomes an even bigger bankrupt Welfare State based upon outdated Socialist
Fairytales. Your choice. – FM Duck
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