You have to consider the bigger picture though. There are restaurants, grocery stores, auto mechanics, and countless other employers who will be serving the people working at these plants. Those secondary businesses employee people who do pay income taxes, who live in the area and pay sales and [[directly or indirectly) property tax where they reside.Quote:
Originally Posted by O3H
With that many employees, it is safe to say that many of the secondary jobs would not exist if the plant expansion doesn’t happen. I am not denying the fact that in most cases the job total and total benefits stayed don’t live to fruition. And of course FCA and the Economic Development types are going to exaggerate some and paint the best picture possible. But there are a lot of positive benefits that do happen, they are just difficult to properly quantify.
But it works the other way too, where those with a pure free-market perspective often omit [[intentionally or not) many of the residual benefits such a development creates. There is a delicate balance with these projects, and oftentimes no one fully knows how it will shake out. But just because the glass half full people may not always be painting the true picture, it doesn’t mean the glass half empty people are being fully honest as well.
