Data Center Is Getting a $77M Tax Break to Create One Job

therobots927

It really is a sick joke to pretend that datacenters “bring jobs” to local communities. Data centers require specialized experience so 99% of the workforce will be brought in from out of state, or from an urban area within the state. When you’re saying this in poverty-stricken areas like West Virginia, it’s really no different from this stomach-turning scene from Succession: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biN5cvMjRtI Absolutely vile.

nonethewiser

Purposefully misleading or just misinformed? There is one permanent job being created, but that's not what the tax break is for. Cities offer tax breaks because there are other advantages. Vendor services, long term tax base (largely through property tax), infrastructure improvements (grid capacity, fiber, etc)and temporary construction work. You might say the temporary construction work is worth very little, but then you have to recognize much of the tax breaks are bound to the temporary construction phase as well. We can weigh the pros and cons but this article is not doing that.

mumbisChungo

A good faith dollar-focused rebuttal would probably involve one or both of directly addressing the claims of the cost-benefit analysis or discussion of costs to the tax base not considered in the C-B A.

caesil

This is a straight up lie of a headline. The tax exemption was for SALES TAX on MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT for CONSTRUCTION, because those local purchases helped the local construction industry. You can read the actual authorizing resolution for yourself here: https://rocklandida.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Authorizi... The idea that permanent jobs were some kind of a trade, or even factored into the decision at all, is completely fabricated.

ETH_start

>The story goes that Milton Friedman was once taken to see a massive government project somewhere in Asia. Thousands of workers using shovels were building a canal. Friedman was puzzled. Why weren't there any excavators or any mechanized earth-moving equipment? A government official explained that using shovels created more jobs. Friedman's response: "Then why not use spoons instead of shovels?"