A Lesson Not Quite Learned

Illinois was attempting to woo Honda into placing their new manufacturing fascility in Illinois. Honda wasn’t convinced that Illinois was the right place, instead choosing Indiana.

The choice of the site near Greensburg, Ind., some 50 miles southeast of Indianapolis, ended the Illlinois bid that included a letter-writing campaign by Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama to Koichi Kondo, president and chief executive of American Honda Motor Co. They urged him to bring the facility to Illinois.

As late as Tuesday morning, U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Chicago) said lawmakers “acknowledged we’ll do what we need to do to sweeten the deal.”

“Everybody agreed, consensus-wise, we’ll do whatever we need to do to make Illinois the more attractive state,” Emanuel said.

Its reprehensible that politicians will cut sweetheart deals for large corporations yet the average Joe Business Owner has to deal with burdensome taxes and regulations. The obvious lesson is that taxes and regulations are bad for business, bad for workers and bad for consumers.

Why do politicians realize this in specific instances, yet fail to apply that knowledge to the economy as a whole?

HatTip: IlliniPundit