Shit zones
Cleveland is asking "socially responsible" partners to invest in Opportunity Zones.
These were enacted by Congress at Trump's urging in 2017. They give major federal capital gains tax breaks to companies investing in areas with at least 20-percent poverty levels.
Remember Richard Nixon's "Community Capitalism"? Remember Ronald Reagan's "Enterprise Zones"? Then George H.W. Bush's "Empowerment Zones"? Or Bill Clinton's "New Markets Tax Credits"? Then Barack Obama's "Promise Zones"?
It's all the same bullshit over and over: Basically eliminate most federal taxes on businesses if they invest in high-poverty areas.
They simply don't work.
Under Reagan, for example, businesses gamed the system and got the tax cuts without doing much of anything. Additionally, the "job creation" was merely the relocation of jobs from an area juuuust outside the "Enterprise Zone", which created no jobs at all. (It did piss off workers who loathed being in poverty-striken, higher-crime areas with fewer amenities.) Even when a new job was created, it came at very high cost -- an average of $53,162 in lost tax revenue.
THE PROBLEM is that high taxes are not why businesses don't invest in high-poverty areas. The real reasons are that these areas lack an educated labor force, the poor lack access to private transportation or mass transit to get to jobs, many poor areas have serious infrastructure problems, and many poor workers have behavioral, child-care, domestic, health, and other problems which make it not only difficult for them to get a job but to perform efficiently and to hold that job long-term.
Opportunity Zones do not address these issues.
But, you know, this is Cleveland. Beat that dead horse. Beat it again! We love to hit things!