“If Everyone Else Jumped Off a Bridge…”

As a kid, whenever I tried to justify a stupid decision to my parents by saying “but everyone else is doing it,” the inevitable response would be: “if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”  I suspect many of you experienced the same thing.

But the “everyone else is doing it” seems to be fallback justification for NC to continue to pursue corporate welfare schemes that bribe certain politically-connected companies to relocate (or otherwise expand) in North Carolina.

Even after their dismal week with incentivized companies, the Charlotte Observer cheers for more of the same, using the peer pressure excuse as its best defense.

Think of incentives like a sale at a store– and low taxes like– low prices. Everyone says they want low prices all the time– but sales get the attention– and bring people into the store. So when it comes to incentives: Everybody else is offering them, and it looks like North Carolina will keep offering them too.

And a note on their comparison between corporate welfare and a sale at a store: this analogy only works if the store offers sale prices only to friends of the storeowner – while everyone else pays higher prices. Does any business think that would be a successful business model?