I think that Louise Story's pioneering investigation into the border wars that give excessive breaks to corporations is very important. I have 2 comments. 1) It will be difficult to end these practices because the officials who offer them benefit from having the power to do so. 2) Ms. Story said that the incentives for businesses to hire people are unnecessary because they must employ those people in order to keep operating. There is an important error in this view. What most corporations are doing is substituting automation/computerization for human employees. Driven by the desire to reduce costs, they are doing so by lowering the quality of service. Automated phone systems, self check-out at supermarkets, and customer unfriendly procedures at chain store pharmacies are 3 examples that bother me the most. I think this new normal in deteriorated service is lowering the quality of life for us all and adding to structural unemployment. It was once thought that computers could never replace the human care of other human beings. But it is now being done at the cost of poor human care, especially in education and healthcare. I suggest this is an important issue to investigate.

Tax incentives can be structured to guarantee the creation of jobs, you just have to be smarter than the politicians that have been engaged in enacting them to date. The analysis will tell you the results of what the less than competent politicians' attempts have achieved. The analysis will not tell you what can be done.