Inasmuch as these polls are entirely unscientific, I wonder if the results on this question mean there are more people reading and responding to blueoregon than to the Business Journal's web site.

I saw Chuck's previous post, followed his instructions and voted.

You can't tell anything from those results. I voted in that poll that I oppose tax incentives, but added the caveat that should instead just reduce taxes across the board.

I think a lot of people feel we should have a level playing field but with a lower overall tax burden.

This poll ignores that segment.

This is the equivalence of an online pushpoll.

Business should be run like government.

If they can't make it alone, close em down!

It's called capitalism.

Look it up!

Nike w/o government subsidies? Still wealthier than most Africans nations combined.

"Business should be run like government. If they can't make it alone, close em down!"

1) Tax incentives targeted at specific businesses should be shut down in favor of general tax incentives targeting industries we want.

2) I only wish government would shut down ideas that can't make it alone.

Posted by: Steve | Aug 21, 2005 9:44:25 AM: 1) Tax incentives targeted at specific businesses should be shut down in favor of general tax incentives targeting industries we want.

JK: Do you mean like in Japan, just after the war, where they targeted heavy industry for their post war recovery?

Of course that new, unfavored, upstart, Sony was denied an export license for money to buy the right to build transistors under the Bell labs patent. That probably prevented Sony from marketing the world’s first transistor radio (Sony was second).

Is this what you advocate here, or do you know of a government agency that has a WORKING crystal ball?

Wouldn’t it be better for the government to just provide the best basic services around and let things happen?

Posted by: Steve : 2) I only wish government would shut down ideas that can't make it alone.

JK: I hope you mean “quit supporting” instead of “shut down”.

Thanks JK

Taxpayers won today.

Saveportland.com thanks Commissioners Adams, Leonard and Saltzman for their vote against a ten year property tax abatement for the Alexan project.

Commissioner Leonard correctly observed that the taxpayers could get better value for the city’s taxpayers by collecting property taxes on the Alexan and using the money to supply affordable housing, rather than giving an abatement.

Further thanks are in order to all of those that worked against and testified against this massive tax giveaway to an out of town developer. (By some accounts the actual, per square foot income, to the developer, would have been more from the subsidized units than from penthouses.)

And thanks to local blogs and talk radio shows.

We hope that this will be the start of a new trend of demanding value for the tax dollar, whether being spent or abated.

See www.saveportland.com for additional information about tax abatements.