Politicians care about jobs more than anything else,

as you can tell from how often they mention them.

These are the things I focus on. Jobs, jobs, jobs--

Jobs, jobs, jobs.

Jobs, jobs, and jobs. Period.

-Jobs... jobs... jobs. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

It's about jobs, jobs, jobs. Good-paying jobs.

It's about jobs.

Jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs. American Jobs.

Politicians seem to think that jobs are like Beetlejuice.

If you just say the word a magic number of times,

eventually they'll just pop up out of nowhere.

Now, more specifically tonight, I'd like to talk about

one of the ways that politicians try to create jobs.

Economic development incentives.

And I know that that doesn't sound interesting.

Wait, wait, what are you doing?

You're putting me picture-in-picture?

Is that Entourage: The Movie?

Fine, you know what, switch over the audio,

listen to the first line. You'll be back.

I may have to jerk it before we even get there.

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -Oh! Oh, how about that?

All of a sudden, a show about economic development

doesn't seem like the worst thing

you could be watching, does it?

-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) -So... (CLEARS THROAT)

-As I was saying... -(AUDIENCE CHEERS)

Economic development incentives are essentially when state

and local governments offer perks to companies

to entice them to build or expand in their area.

Here in New York

there is a program called StartUp New York

which launched with some pretty astounding tax breaks.

AD ANNOUNCER: Start-Up New York creates zero tax zones

for new businesses for ten years.

Zero property tax, zero corporate tax,

zero business tax, and zero income tax.

Wow. Zero property, corporate, business, and income tax.

(SLIDE WHISTLE ASCENDING)

And I believe that that sound you just heard

was Donald Trump getting an erection.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

Wait for it. Don't wor-- Wait for it...

-(SLIDE WHISTLE DESCENDING) -It's gone again.

-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) -See ya next year, little buddy.

And look, it's not just New York.

All 50 states offer some kind of incentives,

like tax-breaks to attract companies,

and the argument is, that they attract employers,

which attract jobs, which lead to spending,

which creates more jobs and so on, and so on, and so on,

and many places have bought into this, hard,

trying to outbid one another for businesses.

Indiana even once took out attack ads on other states,

like this billboard, which read, "Illinnoyed by higher taxes?

Come to Indiana, a state that works."

And that's pretty aggressive, although, it's actually much

tamer than their original billboard,

"Just Arkan-saw your tax bill?

Ida-hope you like our tax breaks.

Because if you Colora-don't,

we'll Conneti-cut your fucking balls off."

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

And if a company is big enough,

it can even start a bidding war itself.

That is actually happening right now, with Amazon.

They are planning to build a second headquarters

somewhere in North America

and they are making governments bid for it.

They even released eight pages of instructions for candidates

telling them to "think big and be creative,"

which led many cities to do stupid shit like this...

NEWS REPORTER 1: Overnight, the Big Apple

looking more like an orange.

New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio

lighting up the city in, quote, "Amazon orange."

The city of Birmingham is using giant Amazon boxes

to try to get Amazon's attention.

NEWS REPORTER 1: Stonecrest, Georgia offering to create

a new town of Amazon, Georgia.

They would create a new town and name it "Amazon."

You know, to compete, I'm not surprised

that Omaha, Nebraska didn't offer to let Jeff Bezos

kill any three people he likes.

'Cause you know he would. Look at him, he wants it so bad.

It's the only thing he can't have and he wants it.

And numerous mayors made direct appeals to Amazon

with videos ending in versions of the same bad joke.

Hey Alexa, where should Amazon locate HQ2?

ALEXA: Hmm. In Frisco, Texas.

Alexa, where is the most interesting company

in the world gonna locate?

ALEXA: Obviously, Washington, DC.

So, Alexa, where is the best place

for Amazon to locate its second world headquarters?

ALEXA: Danbury, Connecticut.

I told ya so.

You know, my one and only worry with all of those ads,

and I mean this sincerely, is, are they almost too hilarious?

But those stunts are just window-dressing.

What Amazon cares much, much more about,

as they mentioned in their instructions 21 times,

are incentives.

And while few places are revealing what they offered,

we do know that New Jersey reportedly offered

seven billion dollars in tax breaks,

which is an insane amount that other places

may now have to compete with, and think about what that means.

That could mean billions of tax dollars

that would not be collected for things like roads,

or schools, or hospitals, and Amazon already has

more money than it knows what to do with.

How else could you explain the existence of Goliath?

A show that, and this is true, literally nobody has ever seen.

Nobody. No human. No animal. Nobody.

-Nobod-- No one. -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

Does it even exist?

If you make a show and no one watches it,

does it exist? Discuss.

And... And that is the thing here.

We give companies a lot of money through these incentives.

By one estimate, in 2015 they cost state

and local governments 45 billion dollars.

And that money can go to some questionable projects.

For instance, a few years ago,

Kentucky took a big swing on this...

A full-size replica of Noah's ark

is drawing thousands of visitors to Williamstown, Kentucky.

REPORTER 2: This is the Ark Encounter.

A chapter from Genesis told on a $100 million budget.

Four floors of Noah, his family,

and beasts great and small.

The project received $18 million in Kentucky tax incentives.

Eighteen million dollars

of tax breaks for a gigantic ark museum.

And I'm not saying that is inherently a bad idea,

I do kind of want to see this thing,

especially as its website genuinely has a section

devoted to the question, "What about all the manure?"

The answer, apparently, is,

"Slatted floors or multiple-level cages,"

which is really not a good answer,

'cause you do not want to be the animal on the lowest level

of that ship.

And while the ark clearly created some jobs,

there were some caveats to those positions...

REPORTER 3: Critics complain of discrimination in hiring.

Only Christians, no gays or lesbians,

and single people have to sign a chastity pledge.

-(AUDIENCE GASPS) -Oh, come on!

Aside from the homophobia,

chastity is a pretty weird rule to put in place for a museum

that's pretty much a gigantic replica of a floating fuck-zoo.

They... they weren't brought in two by two

so that everyone would have a swim-buddy,

they were on that boat to fuck.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS, CHEERS)

To fuck!

But the justification

for taking a gamble on a gigantic ark,

was that it would be a boom to the whole area,

and to hear one local official tell it,

the economic impact has been underwhelming.

The ark's success has not had the ripple effect

many hoped it would.

REPORTER 4: Downtown Williamstown,

which was expecting increased car and foot traffic,

has almost as many empty store-fronts

as occupied store-fronts.

REPORTER 5: What's it meant for downtown Williamstown?

Nothing.

I don't wanna sound negative in this interview, but...

there's nothing here.

Yeah, and that kind of makes sense

because once you've spent three hours walking around

a wooden boat with sexually frustrated tour guides

and haunted by the mental image of a miserable zebra

neck deep in shit,

'cause apparently decks were assigned alphabetically,

you're probably gonna skip lunch in town.

And look, a well-designed, closely monitored program

with clear goals might make sense to an area,

but too often the terms are extremely lax.

Some don't require that jobs be created at all,

and some require almost laughably few.

Remember StartUp New York? Zero taxes for a decade?...

-(SLIDE WHISTLE ASCENDING) -Oh shit, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Don't think about it, I'm sure it will pass.

That program is hiring requirements--

That program's hiring requirements

were that you create just one new job a year,

and the state recently considered

scaling that back to one new job in the first five years.

And sometimes these incentives are given out

even when they may not be necessary.

Take a look at Fargo, North Dakota.

-(SLIDE WHISTLE DESCENDING) -You know what, he's not wrong.

He's not wrong and I knew that would do the job.

Fargo gave a tax break to FedEx

for moving a facility to their city, but why?

Did they really need to?

'Cause just listen to what happened when one

city council member asked that very question

of a FedEx representative.

Mr. Wilson, if you don't get this exemption,

will you still move to Fargo?

-MR. WILSON: Yes, sir, we will. -Okay.

Yet, ten minutes later,

the council voted to give FedEx that exemption.

Why?

Also, if someone wants to willingly move to Fargo,

you don't offer them tax incentives,

you simply offer them a full psychological work-up

that starts with the question, "Who did you murder?

We'll still let you live here, but we do need to know."

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

And then... Then there are programs

narrowly set up to encourage a particular industry to grow.

Which can sound great, but may not lead

to good, permanent jobs. Take film and TV incentives.

At some point in the last couple of decades,

nearly every state decided that they wanted to be

the next Hollywood, and now, 31 states

have incentive programs for film or TV.

The problem with that is, if you are one of them,

you have 30 other states competing with you... hard.

And because film productions are portable,

if you try and scale back your incentives,

they'll just go wherever a better deal is.

Just listen to this movie producer

who has taken advantage of multiple states' incentives.

I would never make a movie where I didn't get an incentive,

and I don't ever intend to.

But at the end of the day, if there's an incentive...

it's good for me.

-And look... -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

He's not wrong, I mean yes,

he looks like every woman's worst ex-boyfriend,

but he's-- he's not wrong.

It is not his job to worry about whether his incentives

are good for the states.

It is his job to, I'm assuming, refer to sushi as "sush,"

because he definitely does that.

But it should be someone, someone's job,

to worry about the effect of these programs.

And on some occasions when states have done that,

the news they got was not great.