This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 14th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. Across the South,

Bucky's, a sort of Mecca for weary families on the road has earned a loyal following and

perhaps not surprisingly some state handouts.

Cato's Mark Joffy and John Mosina of the Center for Economic Accountability talked with me about state handouts and how even a popular brand shouldn't get them.

In 2022, there was a clamor in my home state of Kentucky because

Bucky's was going to launch its first store in Kentucky outside of Richmond.

Now for the people who do not live in what I like to call

real America, the Bucky's story and I'm kidding of course. Bucky's is a

truck stop without the trucks. It is cleaner than any truck stop you've ever been to.

They have a wide variety of beverages and, notably for this conversation,

extremely clean restrooms, which for any parent of small children who alerts their

children that they are not allowed to touch anything when walking into a public

restroom, that is quite a feature and yet immediately behind buckies a very popular place for people to go on the road

There are politicians who are trying to have some of that buckies shimmer rub off on them.

Which I don't think I was stretching it to say that.

So Mark, let's start with you. What do you know? What have you? Because you are a Californian, you know nothing about Bucky's other than what you've read. What do you know about the degree to which politicians are giving handouts to

get these let's be fair about it a very nice truck stop without the trucks into their states.

Well I learned that the city of Rustin in Louisiana gave them very considerable tax breaks

and they're even created a whole dedicated

economic zone just around the buckies so I was as as someone who's not from the

South really impressed that someone would go the really the extra mile literally to bring this glorified truck stop into

...