>> Per the report, the package of tax breaks and incentives was achieved through local officials bound by nondisclosure agreements, quietly struck legislative deals, and parliamentary sleight of hand to avoid public scrutiny of the deal.
>> So the residents of Richland Parish did not have much of a heads-up on what was coming.
No voting, no public interests, only closed-door politics.
From an interview[1] given by the author: "I think the next most important reason they distrusted the federal government is their experience with protective agencies in the state of Louisiana, and they thought, “Gosh, these are a lot of people we pay taxes to but they don't really protect us.” And they’re right, because Louisiana is an oil state - that was a big discovery for me - and it outsources, in a way, the moral dirty work to the state. So, the state actually pretends to protect the citizenry from hazardous waste and pollution of air and water and ground, but it doesn't actually protect it very much. It gives out permits, as one Tea Party person said "like candy." And so, they felt the federal government is just a bigger, badder version of a state government which isn't protecting us. So, they'd had bad experience. They’d been burned, and I think that's the second kind of source of resistance to the government. But the third is that they saw the government as an instrument of what I'll call “the line cutters.”"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangers_in_Their_Own_Land [1] https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=18-P13-000...
I was listening to a podcast recently talking about how if Dems ran on a platform of, "we're going to abolish all the BS from this admin and do the trials correctly and put these crooks in jail," they'd have tons of support (and I agree). But tepid positions and weak statements with no real plan to do anything (other than preserve the status quo) has become the party's playbook. No wonder it's failing.
*And I hated Ronald Reagan at the time
Now bring me some downvotes to show me the error of my ways... Thank you for restoring my lack of faith in humanity...
The US needs to do something about lobbying. It seems too late already, but maybe you can get things to improve a bit.
If states all worked together, they could plausibly prevent this race to the bottom by agreeing on a universal sales tax minimum, but there are many obstacles to that as well besides some vague sense of "lobbying". You'd want all states to work cooperate on their minimum tax, but every state has a big incentive to break from the cartel and offer lower taxes in exchange for getting all the datacenters built there. There are lobbyists who are working against this, but it's not just meta and google, it's also local utility companies and construction/trade unions (who all want their state to defect and be the one to get all the new money and jobs)
They averaged 7 crashes a month near the site at the time of this article. The community isn’t even 2000 people. They’d had 1 fatality already by the time this article was written as well.
It’s so dangerous the local school has shut down their playground despite being a mile away. If kids being unable to have a basic outdoor recess isn’t enough to make you care I don’t know what will.
https://lailluminator.com/2025/11/22/meta-data-center-crashe...
It's more likely to impose them.
Neoliberalism is a blight upon the world and it has only been around for 50ish years or so. It doesn't have to be this way.
Key difference with this and TFA though: Loudon has never offered a tax abatement
There's one example. I'm not saying on the whole they're positive.
> The company is expected to take advantage of a new Louisiana incentive program, established by Act 730, that offers qualifying projects a state and local sales and use tax rebate on the purchase or lease of data center equipment. Meta is also expected to participate in the state’s Quality Jobs program.
So it is entirely normal that the county officials wouldn't know or really get a say, and the county is the one that's missing out on sales tax. The Louisiana governor isn't hiding the fact that they're going to give them tax breaks, though. It's right in their announcement.
I’m probably going to get down voted for this, but that doesn't sound like a bad deal. They’re giving up tax dollars that the region wouldn’t have received anyway without the project in exchange for a big (admittedly temporary) economic stimulus while the data center is built.
I live in a relatively small rust belt town that’s seen several data center projects recently, and while they have slightly increased the cost of electricity, they’re also employing a ton of people at well above market wages, plus bringing in out of town labor who are spending their checks at local businesses and paying taxes on those checks locally.
Make hay while the sun shines.
* you offer a tax break to a guy who was going to come anyway
* you give away the entire surplus - i.e. the sales tax is how you were going to see things anyway
* you don't capture any of the non-tax surplus (i.e. not many jobs, or jobs are all across county lines)
Some of these are fine because states should make cross-county decisions but the others are a matter of negotiation and I think states find they see more money if they advertise willingness a priori with a durable promise. Overall, I think it's hard to be in the position. I would probably also do what they did, but if someone used any of those justifications to not do it, I would probably also understand.
feels like short term job creation program at best.
You're usually better off landing a new Target.
Does any construction project go on forever?
It’s just a building. Come on.
But I don't see what other options are available for states to compete with each other if not through tax breaks.
Edit: I suppose if you ban tax breaks, if a state wants to be competitive, they still can but through modifying the tax code for everyone instead of giving certain people exceptions. That doesn't seem like a terrible alternative..
Question: why are these huge data centers being built in remote regions and small towns?
Answer: because the companies building the data centers are essentially getting free power and water at the expense of the area's citizens. The only locals who benefit from these projects are the politicians giving the land away.
It is, however, in the Mississippi River delta... so I wouldn't put flooding out of the picture.
There's also not "competition" here. It isn't as if data centers have almost any positive local effects, beyond their property tax revenue. They have very few employees and if the property tax is cut they ultimately don't generate any income for the locality.
I can tell you that as someone living in Idaho, I see no differences when I work with the datacenters in Oregon, Washington, or Utah. I'm not benefited in the slightest by the few Idaho datacenters that I interact with currently.
It's the same argument that's been used to give sports stadiums sweetheart deals. These things have almost no local benefits and a lot of negative side effects with their presence.
They should compete based on actual policy including tax policy. "Tax breaks" for specific projects are just unfair and a quick race to the bottom. Instead, areas should be required to treat all entities equally. Even tax breaks for specific industries like tv/film production are unfair but at least industry wide tax breaks treat individual entities more fairly.
If a state's taxes are too high to attract investment, then they should have to lower taxes for everyone (of the same type).
> exempt from state and local sales and use taxes on its data center equipment for the next 20 years
That said, the real issue IMO is that "use taxes" are just absurd to start with. Why should a random city/town be taxing products neither made nor sold in their jurisdiction. If anything, the sale of the datacenter product/services should be taxed but the external inputs "imported" from other states or countries is crazy to tax.
Again, I will die on the hill that a land value tax makes this all very simple. A LVT is the perfect strategy for extracting public value from data centers since electricity & water availability is a major input to a lands value.
Federal ban on tax breaks for companies over a certain market cap?
Why can't they compete on "we have a good regulatory setup" or "we have good schools for your employees" or "we are a nice place to live"? Why compete on "we'll soak or own taxpayers more than the next state over so you can make even more obscene profits"?
data centers could be a great thing for helping with the duck curve and the like, if they can throttle up and down based on energy cost
Bullshit. There is one political party in the US entirely dedicated to this outcome.
Anti growth environmentalism is so toxic when we could just be pursuing wide spread clean energy and growth.
Like, the problem was always the asymmetry. Can FB police everything? Probably not. Should they be able to operate at scale if they can't? Unclear. Section 230 blah blah platform not responsible for things users post
But YOU sure get banned. At any time for any reason. When you then "report" (that button does... what, exactly?) an actual problem, platform happily tells you no community standards were violated.
You might even get banned for something you were forced to do https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24776748 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201306)
See, this is why shit like holding his feet to the fire for Dumb Fucks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 matters. I don't care if he was young, he also hacked Crimson reporters. Because what he ('he', assuming he didn't just steal it from the Winklevosses) built early on has evolved into a platform that is many things and fucking broken (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6090712) on top of that
I do hate it though, Mark has meaningful funding to build some actually useful AI, hell if he started bottom up, he can have his anime waifu he wants.
I'd say it has nothing to do with the article but a lot to do with the context of OP's post.
0. https://apnews.com/article/tina-peters-polis-colorado-clemen...
But yeah, sure. If you aren't female, LGBTQ+, Black, an immigrant, a scientist, someone who needs medical care, someone who eats food, or someone conducting research, they might seem the same.
> Per the report, the package of tax breaks and incentives was achieved through local officials bound by nondisclosure agreements, quietly struck legislative deals, and parliamentary sleight of hand to avoid public scrutiny of the deal. [1]
There also isn't some magical expertise loss from these datacenters not being local.
About the only risk is that the various governments become so hostile to people in the US using their datacenters as to apply taxes and fees on usage. Which is unlikely to say the least. The owners of these datacenters want them used and if they can convince a government to give them preferential treatment they can likely convince the same government not to tax their clients.
I guess there is also the risk of the government spying on the incoming and outgoing prompts. But lets be really real here, that's unlikely to matter to almost anyone other than people working for our government.
It's not really a conspiracy, perhaps more a delusion.
Obama: Affordable Care Act; allowed LGBTQ+ to openly serve in the military; American Recovery and Reinvestment act supported a lot of infrastructure improvement; Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; JCPOA; A whole bunch of action on climate change.
Biden: Inflation Reduction Act which provided large investments to fight climate change; CHIPS and Science Act; codified federal protection of same sex and interracial marriage; Rejoined the Paris Agreement.
The president can only do so much without laws backing it.
Mamdani is basically doing the same thing other Dems do, only the Internet lefties give him the benefit of the doubt/kudos instead of the piling on they give Dems. Abigail Spanberger has been insanely effective yet gets zero of the kudos Mamdani gets because she's just a Dem.
1. Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street
JBE came in before Trump made it a sin to vote Democrat in Louisiana and after Jindall (2 term republican) did such a horrific job that the GOP couldn’t recover no matter who they ran. He also faced possibly one of the worst candidates in history in Rispone for his second term. He was one of the last blue dog democrats, had decades of great reputation built up, and had no problem being extremely cozy with oil/gas. He walked a very thin line super confidently and basically was a 1990 Democrat. It didn’t hurt that he basically saw him nothing but success during both of his tenures. He was an incredibly capable governor.
Frankly he’s an anomaly. They won’t have Democrat Governor for decades just like WV won’t have a democrat senator again for a long time since Manchin left.
Keep in mind Louisiana has had a Republican legislature for literally decades now, a super majority years-running currently. The current state is the result of Republican policies and it’s a red fortress for the foreseeable future, especially with the changes they made to primaries and voting, coupled with the recent SCOTUS ruling on gerrymandering. No matter what happens in the coming midterms, I guarantee you the legislature will remain a super major majority for the Republicans. It is a cartel state now where they literally remove positions when Democrats win, as New Orleans learned with their court clerk who was recently elected.
Louisiana is THE Republican state and offers too few electoral votes for the Democrats to pay attention to it. And every year they stay away from it the deeper entrenched Republicans become as they pass more and more laws of favoring their ability to keep their seats. The current legal landscape is so dire it’s an understatement to call it an uphill battle for non-republicans.
We apply interstate commerce extremely broadly to all sorts of things (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich; six marijuana plants in a basement for personal consumption = interstate commerce!). Why not here?
> The government also contended that consuming one's locally grown cannabis for medical purposes affects the interstate market of cannabis and the federal government may thus regulate and prohibit such consumption.
I contend that cushy state/local tax breaks for datacenters affects the interstate market of datacenters and the federal government may thus regulate and prohibit such consumption.
The SCOTUS ruling overturning Federal intrusion into state tax law would be 9-0.
And yet, growing six marijuana plants for personal use in California (never leaving the house!) was "interstate commerce". Read the link!
If that's interstate commerce, a California company building facilities in Louisiana seems like a slam dunk.
This was well known before the AI boom - see this study from back in 2016:
https://goodjobsfirst.org/study-state-and-local-governments-...
The numbers are even less favorable today.
Zero is a good alternative in that case.
Someone else did provide evidence, though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48153756
They feel very strongly about a topic, but it’s entirely based on their various personal experiences. They arrive at the conclusion first, and then try to arrange reality around their opinions.
As to his being answered: somebody responding to him in good faith does not suddenly validate what he was doing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48123090
> They are basically the best customers of the grid possible - consistent high usage.
The grid exists to serve the populace. It's why we tend to call it a "public utility".
What's their market cap, again?
The part of this that is broken is we’ve made it way too hard to spin up more power in this country. Growth can be good for everyone.
Most places have two parties, each of which has a position on several thousand issues. You have two choices: combination A of the several thousand issues, or combination B. You don't get to choose with any more granularity than that.
> not to mention the massive power imbalance that results from people with lots of money 'voting' way more than people with less money
This is a power rectification. If you have two streaming services and one is bad, that bad one will fairly quickly receive far less money as people vote with their wallets. That's not rich people with thousands of accounts "voting" for the winner, it's just a more direct system of people choosing with money.
Politics has a far stronger link to an individual's money swaying decisions than that.
Some 16 minutes after he asked the question, so that's not an excuse for criticism of the question.
Because it's their money being handed to a trillion dollar company that has no need for a discount?
Datacenters aren't like that. There's a huge construction phase where billions of dollars get spent followed by dozens of long-term employees. The local benefit is mostly just a flash in a pan while the tax break lasts for decades.
Besides, it seems that datacenters are universally unliked by constituents in areas where they pop up. This makes arguments for tax breaks for datacenters seem illogical, at best.
Unilaterally, these favorable arguments come down to something like: "Well, if they didn't offer the tax break here, then Metazonaigoog will just build their new datacenter somewhere else instead!"
To which I can only retort: "Really? You promise? Don't threaten me with a good time -- go ahead and build it somewhere else."
I have only seen this point being brought up by the exact people that will be owning the data centers with little data to back it up besides temporary construction jobs and few long term jobs, most jobs likely imported and not local.
I think states are offering huge incentives because the politicians approving the construction and tax cuts are easily bought out for pennies on the dollar. I don't know if Louisiana is known for being a paragon of honest politicians doing right by their constituents.
Combine that with the fact that large corporations constantly find ways to avoid paying taxes and its hard to be positive about this kind of thing.
Several reasons. It distorts the market for one. One tax rate for me, another for thee. That's government picking favorites. Generally regarded as a bad thing.
What's the argument for a massive AI datacenter that employs very few people, strains infrastructure, and has the stated purpose of doing work that people had been doing, presumably reducing employment?
> data centers of this magnitude offer a ton of economic benefits to the area and the state
Electricity cost increases are subsidized by residents: https://hls.harvard.edu/today/how-data-centers-may-lead-to-h...
Job creation is extremely minimal - data center build outs have some of the lowest job creation numbers per $ spent: https://goodjobsfirst.org/study-state-and-local-governments-...
The states, under Trump, are all working together to ensure a race to the bottom happens, both in the U.S. and abroad.
One hundred and thirty five nations worked together to create a minimum corporate tax rate called "Pillar Two". It would have factored in tax breaks for projects like this by calculating an effective tax rate for Meta, and mandated higher taxes if the effective rate was too low. Trump withdrew the U.S. from that effort and created a framework to retaliate if other countries upheld Pillar Two to raise taxes on American megacorps[1] in their jurisdictions.
____
[1]https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2025/how-us-mu...
It takes no effort and almost always obfuscates the fact that they object but would rather try and put a bunch of burden on the person rather than actually articulate their disagreement. It also gives them the semblance of being “above the fray” and “just asking questions.” It’s this nonsense https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48154443 on repeat. It’s plausible deniability.
I am very surprised this has to be explained on HN. This is an old debate tactic and one that is frequently, as well as lazily, deployed on the internet. It’s a close cousin to sealioning and usually morphs into it. You are engaging in a tactic that covers your rear, requires no actual expression of opinions or values, and burdens others.
It is very unlikely you don’t have an opinion on this subject and yet you are acting like a casual observer with no opinion. If I’m wrong then I bet wrong on otherwise smart money and I apologize for the mistake.
What makes you think that this is something I’m obscuring?
Of course you do. That’s why I said something. Your omission is the problem, you intentionally didn’t say anything.
> What makes you think that this is something I’m obscuring?
This entire comment chain explains why I think that I don’t know why we’re playing games here - just be straight with people out the gate. Opacity doesn’t facilitate conversation. I know you understand what I’m talking about and I won’t belabor the point further.
I won’t engage further then because it won’t be productive. I’ll continue to call out baseless claims of course, but I don’t think there’s any amount of argumentation or evidence that could convince you since you arrived at your position via feeling - proof or citations are just window dressing.
I’m sorry that asking your side to support its claims is so offensive to you. I can’t say I relate to this mindset. It’s completely foreign to me.
If the IRS gives me a 10% tax break, I have more money, and the government has less, right?
Residents aren't paying more for anything and no services are being cut.
The local government is giving a local tax break, which comes out of their local tax revenue.
> If the incentive was not given, the datacenter would not be built there.
Objection, your honor, assuming facts not in evidence!
(Nor are the incentives any sort of guarantee. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/21/foxconn-mostly-abandons-10-b...)
> Residents aren't paying more for anything and no services are being cut.
They are receiving less tax revenue than they would have otherwise had to use on their services.
Yes, and we should ban them from issuing these sorts of race-to-the-bottom sweetheart deal at taxpayer expense to trillion dollar corporations to address that.