Quote:Like yesterday's fashions, old policies never die, they simply return with new accessories. So it is with Rand Paul's proposal to create "economic freedom zones" for Detroit and other depressed cities -- a recycled version of the "enterprise zones" of 1980s.

But if past is prelude, this idea won’t work — not because it doesn’t make sense, but because Washington won’t allow a sensible version to pass its august chambers.

Freedom zones are Paul's answer to Obama's bailout -- oops, aid package -- for Detroit and a way to show minorities that the GOP cares. Unlike Obama's plan, Paul won't offer federal handouts for housing, brownfield cleanup, highways and gang-busting. Rather, he'll slash federal taxes (income, corporate, capital gains and payroll) and regulations (EPA's stormwater clean up rules) for areas where unemployment is 50 percent more than the national average.

For Detroit, this would work out to a $1.3 billion stimulus over 10 years. “These zones don’t ask Houston or Atlanta to bailout Detroit,” he said last week. “It frees Detroit to bail itself out.”

That would be a correct statement if Paul's proposed bill had included spending cuts to offset the lost tax revenue. It doesn't.

That issue aside, the theory behind the freedom zones concept is that jumpstarting growth in depressed areas requires not a top-down industrial policy with Uncle Sam picking winners and losers. Rather, it requires giving these areas a more competitive economic environment that overcomes their existing disadvantages -- inhospitable climate, dying local industries -- to boost local entrepreneurs and attract outside investors.

This approach worked well in England, turning London's depressed docklands into a super-dynamic hub for finance and other businesses in the 1980s. It also transformed India's Bangalore from a sleepy little town (that Winston Churchill once compared to a prison) into a global IT powerhouse in the 1990s.

But it has been a disappointing failure in America. Why? Because neither Republicans nor Democrats have ever managed to create anything resembling a genuine enterprise zone...

http://washingtonexaminer.com/rand-pauls...le/2540513

I did a major study of the Enterprise Zones and Jack Kemps approach for a small business development center many years ago.

They can absolutely work, if- BIG if, they are allowed to be implemented in a clean "politics" free way. As in not a bunch of feather-bedding of the programs by the politico's from the Fed, state and local levels. ALL levels. They all want a hand in there to claim credit and it simply screws up the very idea behind the programs. Picks the winners and losers exactly as this article argues against.

There's no need for the offsets the author mentions either. That can be more than made up for with increased economic activity, a revitalization of entire swaths of destitute areas and a reduction in the other services these areas will drain.

It would be the right approach, which is why it will probably never happen.

Since a zone like this in Detroit would probably only attracts white people, their dollar bills would not be welcome by the racist, pro-discrimination liberals that infest the city.

(12-11-2013 05:19 PM)Lord Stanley Wrote:  Since a zone like this in Detroit would probably only attracts white people, their dollar bills would not be welcome by the racist, pro-discrimination liberals that infest the city.

That could well be one major obstacle. Others that are hard to overcome are when those used to making or enforcing the rules come to realize that that game is over. It essentially takes the suspension of ALL kinds of rules, regs, requirements, all kinds of dumbschit.

As proposed the Enterprise Zones are actually quite simple to conceive and "seed". When actually attempting to be implemented they become damn near impossible. Too many chiefs, too many fiefdoms. .

I thought it might involve a nuke.

(12-11-2013 06:11 PM)THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:  I thought it might involve a nuke.

I was thinking a fleet of bulldozers and an giant incinerator..but that would work also.

(12-11-2013 06:11 PM)THE NC Herd Fan Wrote:  I thought it might involve a nuke.

Yea, or that.