Austin City Coucil Weighs Apple Subsidies

The Austin city council is debating whether to give millions of dollars to Apple so that they will bring more business here.  In return for the subsidies, the council claims Apple will generate thousands of jobs.  Which really means all of us locals will have to pay higher property taxes so that Apple won’t have to pay any.  The council argues it’s a cheap way to generate jobs.  The opponents say that those jobs were going to come anyway.  The real question is whether the government should have the right to offer these subsidies.  Why should they get to decided?  Is it right to give Apple a 8 million dollar property tax break and at the same time be slashing school budgets which are funded by property taxes?  It’s probably easy to fire a faceless teacher who you will never meet and in return, the chance to wine and dine the Apple exec’s.  Maybe you say that isn’t a fair way to look at it.  And maybe it isn’t.  But you still have to ask the question.  You could argue that if you cut back everyone’s property taxes, we all would have more money to spend, and that spending would spur the economy (isn’t this why conservatives always want tax breaks?)  When it really boils down to it the thing that frustrates me is the web of taxes and subsidies that make it impossible to know where everything is going… or why we need them.  And I’m not saying it’s wrong, I just want to have the ability to decide.  Put it on a ballot (of course that’s a whole other can of worms, I know the system isn’t perfect) and just have it say “Every property owner in Austin will pay an additional $100 in 2012 to Apple Computers so that they will build a call center here.”  If it gets approved then I can’t blame anyone but the man in the mirror.  I know it’s over simplistic, but it would be nice to get the chance to decide.  Instead of a group of "all-knowing" goobs who get to spend our money in what ever way they see fit.

cool, no worries, it is what it is

-G-