"Off-the-shelf"

I think this phrase is meant to reassure people.  See, the state's 6 billion dollar offer to Amazon isn't all that alarming. These are just the "off-the-shelf" bribes we hand out to everybody.

The figure, which Louisiana Economic Development revealed publicly for the first time Tuesday in response to a records request from The Advocate, consisted almost entirely of off-the-shelf benefits the state regularly offers to qualifying businesses, though not typically of that magnitude.

In its proposal, dubbed "Project Pearl" by LED officials, the state pitched Amazon on five locations — three in New Orleans and two in the New Orleans area, although officials were willing to look farther afield.

Of course a lot of the stuff we keep on that shelf is pretty bad already. We saw some of it in the highly questionable deal that is expected to bring DXC to New Orleans.  It also comes at a time when the Governor and Legislature are preparing to sort out just how badly they're going to ask the state's poor to sacrifice in terms of schools, hospitals, and sales taxes so that they can continue subsidizing the profits of some of the world's largest corporations. 

What's worse, though, is that the "Project Pearl" formed for this pitch now becomes the template for the next package offered up in the next such sweepstakes.  New Orleans didn't "win" this round, which kind of feels like dodging a bullet, all things considered.

Amazon has turned Seattle, its current headquarters, into a 21st-century exemplar of income inequality. Living in the Pacific Northwest’s largest city is a beautiful thing for a worker with the skill set to slip effortlessly into a high-tech job. For everyone else, Seattle now features all the disturbing traits of any place that rewards knowledge workers at the top of the food chain and flushes away just about everyone else: from astronomical housing costs that have long since displaced middle- and lower- income people to punishing commutes for everyone who has to move in and out of the city.

Amazon’s arrival is bound to accelerate the displacement of people of more modest means and send the cost of living in the “lucky” victor soaring. The New York and Washington metro areas, already two of most expensive places to live in the United States, would become even more unaffordable for the average worker. (There are actually 15 “cities,” not 20, competing. New York and Newark constitute one mega-city; while Washington, D.C., Montgomery County, Maryland, and Northern Virginia are effectively another single metropolitan area—whether local leaders like it or not.)

But clearly this is all well within the deliberate scope of the policy goal.  State and local political leaders are set on exacerbating the already gross inequalities at work in New Orleans. It's hard to remember a time when this was not the case. It certainly has been the thrust of the post-Katrina era. And the "shelf" full of instruments for funding these schemes off the backs of the poorest people is getting more and more sophisticated.