Thursday, April 28, 2011

State Flip-Flops On Amazon.com Deal




Our Proud State Renegs On Deal With Amazon.com

I'm not usually surprised by votes cast by the members of the General Assembly. Of course, being "perplexed" is another matter, but I'm usually not surprised. For instance, we all knew the mini bottle would one day see its demise, the ciggie tax was going to see an increase, and were pretty confident a state lottery was on the way.

What I'm getting at is, I'm taken aback about the decision our reps made regarding the Amazon.com distribution center in Lexington County. As I say to my sweet little girl, WoWEE!

Don't get me wrong, I get the "Government shouldn't be involved with _____." I do get it. Further, I get the 'principle' argument, and if that's the battle cry, then so be it.

What I don't understand is that our leaders are constantly touting business recruitment and growth, and then they vote to shut this South Carolina job machine down. Further, they've yanked Amazon's deal while the company is building a huge facility and have 10's of millions of dollars to be serviced. I mean...

A few thoughts come to mind:
1) Should we just shut down the Dept. of Commerce? Given this development, or lack thereof, what's the use?

2) Why would any big corporation come to South Carolina? We just pulled the plug on what other cities and states are begging for. Moreover, who knows... we may have just earned ourselves a nice shiny brand of, "Don't go to South Carolina." Should we form a 'committee' to look into our deal with BMW, Wal-Mart, Target, and Boeing?

3) If big business leaders combine this vote with our deal killing "Point of Sale" tax law, we have 0 shot at out-of-state investors. Zero.

4) I don't know if the folks at the State House know this, but Amazon.com (DOT COM) is an Internet sales company. They're going to sell books, candles, pogo-sticks, and Obama birth certificate commemorative plates no matter what our State House has to say. Further, South Carolinians are going to buy the same amount of stuff from Amazon.com, no matter their domicile. Now, thanks to today's vote, it will be workers in another community packaging Amazon's enormous amount of ordered products.

I understand that SC is a small business state, and that's great. That said, these 3,000+/- workers would be buying meals, golf balls, haircuts, homes, and insurance from Midlands merchants. Well, that's now gone.

Here's the rub as I see it. Midland's legislators were probably torn, as it hit them directly. House members in other counties, however, felt the pressure from their small business constituents, and that's the difference in the vote count.

I don't pretend to be an expert on macro-business or the legislative bill. I do know that South Carolina is competing for jobs in a global economy, and we, for five months, enjoyed a nice victory.

Congratulations to anyone who thinks they won something. Congratulations too, to the city that lands the whale that is Amazon.com, and their 3,000 new jobs.

2 comments:

Wes said...

FYI:

It's = contraction of "it is"
Its = posessive pronoun

Anonymous said...

totally agree with you.


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