Tax incentives hurt free market
Gov. Matt Bevin says he is bringing jobs to Kentucky with the so-called right-to-work law, but that’s not exactly accurate. What’s actually turning the trick is corporate welfare. Note that state governments give away at least four kinds of corporate welfare nowadays: money grants, tax breaks, reduced-interest loans and special laws. In the context of those giveaways, the so-called right-to-work laws are special guarantees to employers that our state government will help them avoid collective bargaining.
Not all corporations demand such guarantees, of course. But the special laws demanded by the anti-union corporations affect all the workers in Kentucky.
At some point, we ought to ask ourselves whether these giveaways contradict our commitment to free-market competition. In all likelihood, state government giveaways to favored corporations cause corresponding losses for their competitors. Many economists believe these demands for giveaways are monopolistic. Many other industrialized countries in the world today outlaw these demands for the same reason: Government giveaways corrupt the free-market system.
Tom Louderback
Louisville
This story was originally published June 9, 2017 at 8:28 PM with the headline "Tax incentives hurt free market."