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Daily Podcast for Thursday, December 26, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What do states and localities get for $70 billion

in economic development spending every year?

Is it all just corporate welfare? John Mosina is with the

Center for Economic Accountability. He argues there's nothing more special for a

politician than a ribbon cutting, but the costs and benefits of economic development spending are rarely fully

considered.

We spoke in Colorado Springs in October.

Government officials love to glom on to the coattails of celebrities. So they love funding things like movies in their

states. They love funding these big projects, big downtown projects that where you get to point to something

and say, hey, that's great.

But at a first approximation, how much do states spend on economic development straight up?

Straight up the best estimates are that it's about 70 billion dollars a year

aggregate in state and local economic development spending across the country,

...