Armacing

As someone who ascribes to Austrian economic theory, I would add one refinement to your statement: We (classical liberals) are opposed to corporate taxes in general, so the thing that we hate about the Amazon deal is that everyone else has to pay corporate taxes.

Wow, I am surprised and pleased at how this all turned out! Can't wait to see what Nasvhille yards looks like in 5 years.

Minor bit of information here: I saw Tony in Dunn Brother's coffee last week talking to some unknown person of influence. So he is still out there in the trenches promoting his developments, which we already assumed he was, but it's nice to see it in person. I hope he can pull this one off!

Behold, ladies and gentlemen: the man who needs no rights or freedoms.

Right.... because satisfying someone's aesthetic sensibilities is always a good reason to take away another person's property right.

Yes, I agree with you that if the taxes have already been collected and we have a choice on how to spend the revenue, then using the funds to attract corporations could be a more "profitable" use of the money. It still might be difficult to prove that the city wouldn't get a greater return on investment by spending that money to hire more police or upgrade their fire department, or hire more clerks for the courthouse to speed the resolution of cases in their docket, or a mixture of all those things. Of course, that set of facts is a very narrow view of the situation at hand. I generally find it more worthwhile to discuss whether or not governments should be collecting taxes for the many ridiculous projects they seem so eager to involve themselves in lately, rather than discuss which project has the better "return". The reason I put return in quotes is because we would just be comparing one dumb idea to another dumb idea to see which one is less wasteful. It's a foregone conclusion that all of public/private schemes where the government is acting as a venture-capitalist-investment-banker for private companies are less profitable than similar projects in the private sector. How do we know this? Because every private investor in the market has looked at those projects/investments and determined they are not worth risking their scarce capital on, based on the projected returns on investment. But just so you don't think I'm completely naïve, I realize that is how "business" is done these days. Relocation incentives are everywhere for just about every industry... and not just here: that is a worldwide phenomenon. Socialize the risks, privatize the profits - right? What benefit would there be in Nashville following my way of thinking? Maybe not much in terms of rapid economic expansion in the near-term. But I could argue that taking the moral high-ground usually pays off in the long run.

"factoring in opportunity costs is a lark" Interesting response, but opportunity costs are the most important piece of this puzzle. That is the thing that separates the in-your-face flashy effect of building mega-structures with public funds from the slow, gradual accumulation of wealth by private by individuals. The main point of all this is that the government-directed allocation of capital represents true waste (destruction of wealth) because the government-directed investment is less profitable than the private-sector investment. That's opportunity cost, and it's very real. This all has to do with the fact that governments and their employees have less market information than the public at large. The idea being that the market automatically aggregates the collective market knowledge of everyone in the market into the price of assets, and every person acts on that pricing to allocate their scarce capital in the most profitable way they know how. In our particular case, we could accurately state that every company interested in doing business is constantly surveying their options and choosing whether or not to invest in/do business in Nashville. If we assume there is a case where the city/state incentivized a business to move here when they otherwise would not have done so, then we can say that is a case where the government decided to invest public funds in a project that everyone else in the private sector (banks, investors, etc...) rejected as unprofitable.... Or at least not as profitable as the other options they had for investing their money.

The question is not whether the incentives ultimately "pay off" a net positive in the form of more tax revenue. That may or may not happen in any given example based on the fate of the company and market conditions as a whole. Someone else said it but it bears repeating: in these cases the government is acting as a venture capital investment bank, and the principle is being extracted from the public via taxes. Or more precisely: there are (presumably) costs incurred by the city/state to service the company that are not covered by the taxes paid by that company. When we look at it from the perspective of an investment (that's the correct way to look at it because even it's proponents claim it is an investment), here is the correct criteria to use when determining whether or not to give the incentive: Investment Basis: The $ value of services given to (or taxes not taken from) the company. Return A: Additional taxes gained from all taxable activities associated with the company's move. Could be sales tax collected from surrounding businesses, property taxes of surrounding businesses, franchise/excise taxes of surrounding businesses, and all other taxes incurred by individuals who move to/work in the area because of the corporate relocation. We need to total these all up. Return B: Here is where it gets tricky boys... you need to take that same investment basis and assume it was not given to the company. Now you may be thinking: "That's easy, none of the dollars in Return A will be there, so the return is zero". Wrong! That money will still be invested by the public in whatever they typically invest their money in. A new car? Home improvement? Private school? A swimming pool? Starting a business? Eating out at restaurants more? The impact on any one person will be small, but you, oh great and powerful investment banker, must still add up the cumulative effect of all their economic activities, determine the tax implications of those activities, and total them up. Analysis: Now we simply compare Return A to Return B and it will be obvious which is the better investment. It should be noted that it is precisely this kind of analysis that needed to be done (but was not done) by Soviet central planners, and that failure to analyze resulted in massive mal-investment.

OK, now I understand better, and I agree with you. I love the "small house" movement and, personally, I would live in one. For a second I thought people in this thread were saying that home owners shouldn't be allowed to buy the biggest house they want, but if it is a complaint about the lack of small housing stock, then yes, you are right. I watch a lot of those small house/small living videos on YouTube and most of the time they are doing battle with cities and counties who don't want to allow that. Personally, I think zoning laws are too restrictive in that they do not allow alternate lifestyles. Some places have minimum lot sizes and minimum structure sizes. In some places you can only get agricultural land re-zoned to commercial if you are a rich developer. Not to mention all the codes that prevent people from designing and building their own home - it really is amazing that it's illegal for a man to build a roof over his own head (for all practical purposes, I realize some people are skilled carpenters that could actually meet the code requirements). I contend this is also part of the homeless problem.

Here is the best way to get PSC and all the others (Citgo, steel place, etc.) out of the east bank: Raise up the value of their land so that selling their land is more profitable than running their business. Think about it: if PSC realizes they can make way more money by selling their property for millions versus their low-margin scrap operation, they will go out and voluntarily seek buyers / investors. Take a look at what Kennecott/Rio Tinto did with the west valley region of Salt Lake. It was a mining company that owned large tracts of land and I think they did some kind of partnership with investors or the city to develop a massive new neighborhood. Now you may be wondering: How do we raise the value of that land? Easy: The city needs to confiscate all the projects/government subsidized housing around there in east Nashville, then divide it into lots, build houses on it, and literally deed the houses to the former project tenants. Not a monthly rent subsidy - - full title and ownership. They also need to confiscate the rainbow-colored houses in the TSU area and Jo Johnston corridor and deed them to the tenants. This is called building wealth around the core: home owners are richer than rent-subsidized tenants.

Can you provide an example of an "unreasonably large single family home"? I don't need a picture, just an address so I can go look at it on Google Street View. I'm curious to see what one looks like.... thanks in advance!

Weird, the link works for me, even in your quote. But yes, That's exactly the one I was talking about... never realized it was senior living exclusively.

Apologies if this has been posted, but I just came across this proposal (link below). I would prefer some more height, but I guess it's high quality in-fill. http://bullstreetsc.com/about/

It's a couple months old but I found this article very interesting. Anyone out there brave enough to offer some theories about what caused this? http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/20170323/led-by-kanawha-wv-population-continues-to-fall

Between this tower and Signature tower in Nashville, I think it's safe to say developers have been more cautious during the recent building boom than they were during the height of the 2007-2008 building boom. It will be interesting to see how building proposals are affected (or not) by the next slow-down.

Do you think this tower was a victim of the 2008 financial crisis?

Do those places sell food? Because that could definitely be a good place to sell food to a "captive audience" who has 30 minutes to wait around. Now what kind of food would appeal to the average Tesla driver?

I'm asking because I don't know: Does a Tesla have to be charged at a special charging station? Can it not be charged at any of the generic electric car charging points I see located in parking lots around here?

10 years after this comment and the two cities are still not close to being connected. You might have to wait 100 years for that to happen...

It's good to see that the port continues to set new records and remain on the cutting edge of global trade: Port of Savannah breaks container volume record!

There are some really good night-time shots in this gallery, great work on the lighting. Also, I noticed a theme in your photos: Girls, Cars, and Skylines. Keep living the dream!

I recently drove through Birmingham and I was pleased to see that the I-22 interchange was complete and open for usage. It has been a couple years since I drove through, I know it's been open a while. It's great to see the interstate system continue to expand and connect cities.

Wow! Was this taken with a drone? EDIT: Oh, yes, it was a drone picture. Pretty amazing quality.

I assume you're currently out of touch with contemporary Nordic architecture?