Sops Are SOP

This St. Louis Post-Dispatch story talks about a $150,000,000 investment in its St. Louis plant by Proctor & Gamble.  The headline, of course, lends some of us to question what "investment" means: P&G eyeing $150 million investment at city plant.  The lede, though, confirms what one might expect to find if one were as cynical as I am:

Procter & Gamble plans to
invest $150 million in upgrades to its manufacturing plant north of
downtown over the next five years and is asking the city for a tax
break to help offset the cost. 

The investment will preserve 435 existing jobs at the plant,
create up to 30 new jobs and could set the stage for P&G to add
new product lines at the 33-acre campus at 169 East Grand Avenue,
just east of Interstate 70.

Cincinnati-based P&G unveiled its investment proposal at
Tuesday's meeting of the city's Land Clearance for Redevelopment
Authority.

Though P&G and St. Louis have yet to establish the size of
the incentive package, the LCRA approved entering into a
redevelopment agreement with the company, which must still receive
final approval by the authority. [Emphasis added.]

Again, the city gets to play favorites and pass out favors to large businesses while leaving its smaller businesses to pay full freight, along with the city earnings tax it exacts to allow those companies' employees to play the lunar landscape simulator that is driving downtown.

Why is a company with annual sales of $79,000,000,000 asking for this pittance?  Because it can, and because it will get it.  That's how the crony capitalism game is played: special boons for the connected instead of a level playing field for all business.

But at least the city isn't co-signing a loan for them or building the new edifice for them based on a promise of mixed use property development nearby.  It probably didn't occur to Procter & Gamble to push it that far.