Part of the blame lies with US cities. The confiscatory level of property taxation first drove many companies out of cities, but there are
NO or nominal property taxes in other countries. All you need do is cross a little ocean, which is not the obstacle it used to be.
Just think, you dream up some idea for a widget you want to manufacture. You look to locate your plant in, say, New Haven, Connecticut. The mil rate there is over 8 mils, that is, for every $1 million you invest in your factory, you have to pay the dunderheaded lazy thieves in city hall $80,000.00 per year. Say your factory costs a modest $5million. You will have to pay the thugs in city hall $400,000.00 per year just for the privelege of locating your plant in the midst of the squalor known as New Haven.
Do you know how hard it is to make an extra $400,000.00? One must stay up pretty late at night to earn such a sum. It doesn't come easy, and in fact, it's simply easier to leave town, or not show up in town in the first place. They wonder where the businesses have all gone. Where the jobs have all gone...
Then you have to worry about the lawyers.
Now, put your factory in sunny Mexico, or Guangdong, and you don't have any of those worries. No little old ladies will slip on your sidewalk, or if they do, no lawyers will come knocking. Oh, and property taxes? Guess again.
And you just might find more people there who speak English and who can read a ruler than you will in New Haven.
Why would anyone in their right mind put a manufacturing plant in an American city? Because they erected nice billboards to "attract business"? Right.
Low costs will attract business. Low risk of litigation, a business friendly environment.
I'm really surprised at the nitwits that run our cities. They steal and tax and run violent filthy slums right into the ground, then they spend taxpayers' money on billboards as if someone is going to actually be fooled by such misguided blather... like this one:
Hey suckers! Put your factory here! We can tax you, sue you, inspect you, steal you right out of business!! Step right up...
When a city has to put up a billboard, it's time to get out of town!
Yes, we're in a world economy but any fool should be able to realize that when a country runs huge trade deficits, ever-growing fedgov budget deficits, debt exploding at the personal, corporate & gov't levels, increased regulation and taxation, open borders that allow millions of non-Americans to attach themselves to our system...sucking out billions in services, then it should be obvious that the US approach to this "new world" is patently suicidal. Anyone who cannot fathom the de-construction of this country as a result of these disastrous policies suffers from ultra severe rectal-crainial inversion.
If that is the Wilmington I'm thinking of, don't drive through there at night.
The confiscatory level of property taxation first drove many companies out of cities, but there are NO or nominal property taxes in other countries These days big companies like Boeing and Intel run competitions between cities and states that end up handing over huge benefits to them. Tax rebates, tax abatement, outright grants, bond funded development loans are just some of the goodies they get for locating a plant somewhere. Or even keeping one where it is.
The assertion that property taxes don't exist in other country's is simply untrue and depends on the country. In any event, Mexico has its own special tax: Mordida, a bribe paid up the line from the lowliest Mexican bureaucrat or street cop right to the top. Many companies have found out since moving there that this is an expense they never planned on which grows every year (think "extortion at the point of a gun").
Property taxes rightly belong ONLY on productive property. That was the original intent of the Anglo-Saxon system. By comparison, the Spaniard system only incurs taxes when a sale is made, thus providing no incentive to productively use property. The result of such a system is called "Latin America". Still think it's just property taxes?