Another story about greed

I was driving around the other day and noticed yet another parcel of land that was plowed to make way for expensive new homes, high-end retail shops, condo's and up-scale apartments.

In most cases this would be seen as growth, but in a down, or even slumping housing market who will be able to afford these expensive new homes that the developers are building?

I understand that if a developer purchases land and builds a commercial building and it sits empty for a few years, the developer can do alright with the tax deductions and losses from the empty building. I don't think the same tax deductions apply with residential property.

The theory seems sound, build a big building for business' and the business' will come and hire lots of workers and pay them lots of money and those people will buy the expensive homes, right?

The problem is that the business just aren't there, in fact the states largest employers are big retail, and everybody knows retail doesn't pay squat.

So, the land gets plowed, the commercial buildings get built but the business don't show up, and the buildings sit empty. The developers are doing alright because of the tax thing, but John Q. Public doesn't see an increase in high-paying professional jobs.

These same developers and other developers build retail malls hoping all the workers from all the jobs created by filling up the empty commercial buildings who got high-paying jobs from the business' and purchased expensive homes will need a place to shop for high-end goods and services. So they move forward and build the big retail mall.

Building the big retail mall has created jobs! That's a good thing right? Well, no the jobs created are retail jobs and those low-paying retail workers can't afford to purchase the expensive homes and condos the developer built. So the highly payed business workers don't exist and the retail business' suffer. Now the retail sales are down so the retail hires less workers and that means the high-end retail mall looks like a ghost town.

So because the business didn't come, the state didn't get that business tax revenue.

Because the business didn't hire workers, the state doesn't get that worker income tax revenue.

Because the workers didn't purchase the expensive homes, the states doesn't get the property tax revenue.

Because the workers that didn't purchase the expensive homes aren't there to shop at the retail mall, the state doesn't get that sales tax revenue.

Because of slumping sales, the retail mall needs less low-payed workers and the state gets even less of an already small income tax revenue chunk.

The low-payed retail workers put additional strain the states already stressed "low cost medical care" budget.

I'm not sure I like where all this is going to lead our state and it's budget?

Unless you have a good, secure well paying job, and you can keep it, this is going to suck for a lot of people.