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Rural North Carolina Experiences Data Center Boom
1sockchuck writes "Rural counties in western North Carolina have hit the data center trifecta, landing major projects from Google, Apple and Facebook. These marquee tech companies will invest more than $2 billion in small towns like Forest City, Kings Mountain and Maiden, a town of just 3,300 residents. How did western North Carolina become a tech hub? Aggressive tax incentives and an abundant supply of cheap power, a legacy of the textile mills that once thrived in the region, which narrowly missed winning a $499 million Microsoft data center project that ended up in Virginia."
Maybe not extremely young workers...but perhaps slightly older people, who are wanting to buy a house, and perhaps raise a family?
Places like this can be DIRT cheap to live. Cheap to buy property and build a home, and actually have some land for it to sit on.
Even if you do get a bit less of a bill rate than you would, say on the west coast...with the extremely LOW cost of living, lower taxes, etc, you can really sock some money away. Sure, it will be a bit different lifestyle, but slowing down a bit, getting out of all of the air polution, and actually being able to see some stars at night....well, sometimes, that ain't all bad.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The article was light on details, but the reason why companies typically do this is because the states hand out idiotically huge tax incentives that there's no way will ever be paid off by the presence of the company.
I've never heard of them actually paying for the federal taxes, just agreeing to not charge all the normal taxes the state does. So how does the state or locality have to pay off anything to break even? Even if they charge no taxes at all, the presence of the company will bring in income tax, sales tax from employees and all the stuff they buy and all the temporary construction workers in the area.
By the time the jobs would be around for long enough to finally start to break even, it's been long enough that the companies have started looking around for who's going to offer the best tax incentives for them to either upgrade their facilities to stay or move.
I still don't see this "break even" you're talking about. Jobs come in for a while. It's doubtful any of these companies are going to move these data centers ever, as they are huge investments. They might not expand them if they get a better deal elsewhere, but even if they did close one, they'd sell it off and another company would open a datacenter there. Nobody just shutters a billion dollar datacenter and lets it sit empty.
it's almost certainly about nothing other than getting ridiculous handouts given by desperate leaders in order to make them look good at any cost to their constituents. See also sports team stadiums.
I've certainly seen some crazy things with stadiums, like subsidies, but then those stadiums often bring a lot of money into a community as well. I guess I'd just have to see some real hard numbers on the situation before I dismiss this as a political stunt that harms their constituency. I read an article or two on most of these and all I saw were tax breaks with a bunch of conditions (healthcare for employees, move into one of several very poor areas, etc.). As far as I an tell, it's the state giving up tax revenue they would not get anyway if these companies chose another location.
Historically NC has been called, the vale of humility between two mountains of conceit (SC/VA). I'll admit they have their share of rednecks and old boys, but that state is a hell of a lot more progressive than the adjacent areas. It is a shame that they automatically get lumped into cousin-fucker stereotypes, because they have tried really hard while their neighbors wallow in their own shit, jump for handouts and fight tooth and nail to stay in the past. I say this as a South Carolinian.