You Call It 'Incentives' ... We Call It 'Extortion'

Lowe's Corp. went before Sylva's town council in a specially called meeting and suggested strongly that if the town wanted a big new Lowe's store in its midst, it needed to "sweeten the pot." Meaning, "give us a special deal," as in the waiver of fees, a sales tax sharing agreement, or Sylva's applying for grants to benefit Lowe's.

Am I alone in finding this kind of corporate bribery not just distasteful but ... immoral?

It's a little alarming in some ways that uber-Republican John Hood of the John Locke Foundation agrees: "North Carolina's escalating use of tax subsidies to 'close deals' with potential private employers was destined to provoke the state's existing businesses. While there are many different arguments, both legal and economic, against such targeted incentives, among the most persuasive is that 'targeting' incentives to some firms inevitably means targeting other firms not for benefits but for costs."

What focuses our local discomfort was hearing on Friday the owner of a very successful local entrepreneurial enterprise tell the county commissioners that they needed to be thinking of "incentives" to keep him from moving all or part of his business to Wilkes County, which is apparently prepared to offer "pot-sweeterners" to poach our home-grown businesses. Extortion, when practiced by a Watauga County "entrepreneur," is no more attractive than that practiced by Lowe's corp. on Sylva.