The latest BusinessWeek has a summary of how Google convinced a poor North Carolina county to pay $212 million in exchange for siting a server farm there -- without even getting a guarantee of how long they would be there or how many locals they would employ. Poor suckers.
But wait. A few pages into the article there's a table of recent corporate welfare handouts, topped by Washington's $3.2 billion gift to Boeing in 2003 to site final assembly of the 787 in Everett. That deal surely played a part in improving perceptions of the state's friendliness to business.
Of course you have to spend money to make money, especially in a globalized economy. But how do you walk the fine line between losing to competition and selling out taxpayers? Unfortunately the magazine suggests just a few tentative ways to safeguard the investment.