…by New York State:
You can’t make major changes like these in a state like New York without attracting lots of free attention and publicity. Do the job well and you won’t have to spend a penny on publicity. If New York state became a genuine leader in business-friendly reform, headlines everywhere would blare the news out for free. Every sentient business leader in America would know that New York state was open for business again.
But other states have nothing to worry about. The corruptocrats in Albany and in the City aren’t going to change their ways any time soon.
The principle involved could be analogized to political campaign “earned media” – you can get free coverage by making news.
States like New York, Michigan and others think they have to resort to advertising to get folks to move there. They think that small businesspeople are as gullible as your average low-information voter or consumer.
On the other hand, Texas and other states can easily poach small businesses right out of California by simply telling the truth about their business climate. Some other states that are even friendlier don’t have to advertise at all.
A state that does the actual, honest-to-God “right thing” and makes its environment friendly to small business (the best correlation to friendly to the principles of free enterprise) always has had people flocking to it from places like California.
Make the business climate hostile to small business and friendly to big businesses that are willing to resort to collusion with government to coerce an advantage for them (not all are like this, but too many of them are), and you end up with “crony capitalism”, which I prefer to call by a much more accurate name: twenty-first century fascism.
Everybody loses, it’s just a matter of time – it’s a distortion of market forces in addition to an abrogation of God-given liberty, so it will end up imploding. At the risk of somebody invoking Godwin on me, every statist in the 20th century innately knew that they would have to expand their territory and resources to try to forestall the inevitable collapse – their approach will always fail.
It’s all part of the same spectrum, and the tendency by central powers (governments, bureaucrats, etc.) is to continue to move toward the extreme, and not toward the end that is more free.
It’s up to an informed electorate to restrain them. Which is also why they attempt to control the content of education, in order to make people be good citizens of the Glorious Peoples’ Republic of Whatever-stan.
As I live in California, in my case, all this translates in plain English to …
“I am doomed.”
You are right, this will not make any difference – not on business, in any case. But that is not the point of the ads.
The point is, Mr. Cuomo is running for president. Most everything he has done since getting to Albany has been about that. This ad is aimed at people in other regions of the country who, not having any evidence to the contrary, will come away with the meme that Cuomo is good for business.
Problem is, he does seem to have a good, solid foot in the door for the nomination. Mostly by default. Hillary is probably too old and tainted and Biden, well, will probably be avoided if possible.