With you, I question the wisdom of unelected (read: unaccountable) government groups getting to siphon off taxpayer money directly to big politically connected companies instead of leaving it with the taxpayers to invest into their own businesses and incur risk of their own choice.

Your point about how we’re allowing our Utah State

government to arbitrarily pick winners and losers in the marketplace

is well-taken. That’s pretty much the polar opposite of the freedom and liberty our forebears gave so much to establish in this nation.

All that said, however, it can be a big problem that expectation of those incentives is so entrenched in the system. My understanding of the reason Walmart (and their ginormous tax base) went to Springville and Payson (skipping unfortunate Spanish Fork) is that Spanish Fork (for whatever reason) didn’t want to play the non-level-playing-field incentives game — and their neighbors did.

You say “our tax payer investment in promoting tourism produces a positive return to the state in the form of taxes through increased production of goods and services.” Aside from this being a classic example of the broken window fallacy, you are describing socialism (or collectivism if you want to call it that) while claiming that it isn’t. You rationalize this because “There is no private, for profit business paradigm for this kind of promotion.” It might seem like a good idea to you, but what if you thought it was a bad idea? Would you still support collective investment for the state’s profit?

If socialism is the redistribution of wealth and the centralization of control of the means of production, then you have described it with your very denial. I don’t know what else socialism is.

Utah competes for tourism and business on a global level against no only the other states, but also other countries.

There is no private, for profit business paradigm for this kind of promotion. i.e Why would I invest money with no possibility of a profit reward?

In the other hand, we know that our tax payer investment in promoting tourism produces a positive return to the state in the form of taxes through increased production of goods and services.

This is not socialism, it is smart business.

The interesting thing is that it seems like an easier task to rally together to defeat Utah’s national politicians (i.e. Chris Cannon) than it might be to de-seat some of the local ones.

And concise! Good heavens, man! How do you do it?

I just finished a piece over at my own blog that was so long I had to divide it into two parts. And it probably should have been four.

If I ever learn how to write as astutely and concisely as Connor Boyack, I will have attained my life-long dream.

-Rock Waterman
http://PureMormonism.blogspot.com