Readers React: The battle over business incentives: do they work?

To the editor: Your pictures on the Business page tell it all. ( “California vs. Texas,” Business, Aug. 24)

The governor of Texas with a kind of halo around his head, spouting half-truths, while Jerry Brown, whose father was responsible for superior higher education at minimal cost, works to bring back the kind of democracy for which Pat Brown was justly famous.

People from low-income families like myself could achieve educational goals impossible in other states.

Probably I would be turning hamburgers to this day, not teaching in a college, except for the Brown family.

Sam Eisenstein, Pasadena

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To the editor: Objective analyses have shown that so-called business incentives are ineffective. Such subsidies replace market incentives with political ones.

That a so-called conservative — Texas Gov. Rick Perry — would tout hundreds of millions of dollars in such corporate welfare as “job creation” shows how little he understands or appreciates the free market.

A healthy business climate means fairness to all, not favoritism for the few.

Chris Norby, Fullerton

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To the editor: Thanks for the insight on the hyped rhetoric about business tax breaks and incentives in Texas and California.

A related issue is how much tax each state collects relative to its needs.

Texas’ lower tax rates are below what’s needed to run the state, leaving responsible states to carry the “moochers.”

I doubt Perry mentions this when he talks up the “Texas Miracle.”

Thomas McGovern, San Bernardino

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