We don’t know all the details of the Shapiro administration’s “10-year economic plan” to be unveiled in the governor’s Tuesday budget address. But in the public-relations run-up to it last week, we certainly heard a lot of the same old rhetoric of past tried-and-failed exercises in government command economics.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, in a visit last week to Pittsburgh, offered the usual lament of pols seeking to drum up more support for more corporate wealthfare: Neighboring states like Ohio, New York and New Jersey all invest more than Pennsylvania.
“’I am sick and tired of losing to Ohio,’ Shapiro said during a press conference before union heads, business leaders and local politicians,” the Tribune-Review reported.
The Associated Press says the Shapiro administration will focus on funding for five key industries: agriculture, energy, life sciences, manufacturing and robotics and technology.
That is, government, not the marketplace, will command and direct resources – your tax dollars — to its favored sectors.
Perhaps we’ll get more subsidized milk that will encourage the production of more milk that will depress prices that will “require” more subsidies for milk?
Or maybe “The State” will direct more money to the “green” energy crowd, thus further endangering the already fragile electrical grid, forcing taxpayers to further subsidize what the marketplace clearly has said should not be subsidized?
And the list could go on and on.
There are a lot of buzz words in the administration’s news release billboarding what might be to come. Government wants to “prioritize” the process. It wants to build “resiliency” on a region-wide basis.
But, as we’ve long said, how about instead of increasing government’s role in matters economic, government decreases its footprint, holsters it cudgel and gets out of the way?
We have seen state economic development plan after state economic development plan over scores of years in Pennsylvania. They’ve worked so well that our interventionist leaders have to come up with a new plan to cover the interventionist lies of each past plan.
It was almost 20 years to the day, on Feb. 4, 2004, that the Allegheny Institute’s Jake Haulk and Eric Montarti wrote this, following another governor’s planned economy designs:
“Sadly, the commonwealth could grow a lot faster and produce higher quality jobs if the emphasis was placed on cutting taxes, making changes to improve the business climate, insisting on accountability for performance in public schools, adopting Right-to-Work, and so on,” the think tank scholars wrote at the time.
“Instead, we will rely on extremely dubious plans such as blanketing the state with slot machines and embarking on government-driven development programs that have failed to produce in the past.”
What, legalized gambling did not solve all our economic problems? We’re shocked, shocked we say.
Just as new professional sports complexes, a new convention center and a light-rail link to Pittsburgh’s North Shore failed to lead to the promised “renaissance.” And just as the now-under-construction new terminal at Pittsburgh International Airport never will come close to approaching its backers’ promises.
Or as Haulk and Montarti, a year earlier, suggested proponents of government command economics answer two basic questions:
First, “If state funded economic development initiatives have been effective in stimulating growth, why would they need even more funding now?
And, second, “If economic development programs are not succeeding, why should they receive a large infusion of additional money?”
Just last week, Haulk, a Ph.D. economist, reviewed the Shapiro administration’s overview of its grand new 10-year plan. He continues to be unimpressed and reiterated one of his long-held admonitions:
“When will these people begin to understand that the headlock of unions, public and private, have on Pennsylvania’s inability to attract businesses without huge subsidies?
That proof is in the pudding of, in general, population gains and economic growth in Right-to-Work states.
Past indeed has been prologue in this long-running economic development farce. Why should we continually expect it to change, as we have implored our “leaders” to change course for the past quarter-century-plus?
Because it’s wrong. And, again, the proof is in the pudding of constantly failed government-prosecuted “economic development” schemes.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
.
