pour, I'm just getting back to this after 2 days in CLE without wifi and the weekend.
Let me repeat for at least the third time, I am not anti-auto-plant. Nor am I against taxpayer spending on economic development. what I am against is tax dollars being spent stupidly.
I am not really sure how this thread turned into RTP vs. an auto plant. I am also not sure that either of us really understands the details of how RTP got started, because I can't find much detailed info on the web, and you have not provided any links to back up your statements about it. Nonetheless, I agree with you that starting RTP in the 50s and attracting an auto plant in 2014 are vastly different exercises, so I see no point in continuing that particular argument.
I would appreciate it if you would provide a link backing up your statements above about the ROI on the BMW plant. I am interested in these things and would like to review the information myself.
Now, to get back to where we started. As far as I know, there is no auto manufacturer who has proposed building a plant in NC. Rather, a group of politicos (who are connected to some big contributors who have some land under contract) want to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars getting a "megasite" ready just in a case a manufacturer does come calling. "If you build it, they will come."
Now I submit to you that this is far different from the bidding war when BMW was looking for a place to build, or the recent bidding war over Boeing. In those situations, you are bidding on a known quantity, and you know if you spend the money, you will get a return. I don't like incentives, but states have no choice but to play the game. That is not the same as spending taxpayer money with no idea if it will ever pay off. NC is not the only state trying to attract an auto plant. The Triad "megasite" is not the only place to build. And if an auto maker ever does express interest in the megasite, there is no guarantee that NC will put up a big enough bribe to get them.
If someone asked me to invest a lot of money in a highly speculative land development project like the "megasite", I would demand a very high return on my money if the project was successful. I am not sure whether even the Spartanburg plant has met or is likely to meet that bar. To determine if it has, you have to take into account the money that was spent vs. the money returned, adjust for inflation, and adjust for the time (lost opportunity) cost of the initial investment. Further, as you have pointed out with regard to RTP, it is not really fair to compare a project that has succeeded against a project that may never happen - past performance does not indicate future performance, and all that. Therefore, "Spartanburg paid off" is not necessarily a strong argument for "we should make this speculative investment on the X% chance we'll get another Spartanburg" unless X is a decently high number. Again, I wish you would provide a link to the information you have mentioned above.
So finally, when someone asks me whether I think Greensboro should spend money on the megasite (which is actually nowhere close to Greensboro) I think about the "lost opportunity" cost of that money, and how it could be spent on improving our local infrastructure, increasing spending on education, and supporting our local small business incubators. That investment is a lot more likely to pay off, and is guaranteed to stay local. It may not pay off in multiples as large as the speculative auto plant might - but to me, that's like the difference between investing in blue chip bonds vs. small cap tech stocks. I am not comfortable with politicians betting my money on small cap tech stocks, because I have little confidence that they know what they are doing.