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.
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. Costs 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!