Dear Rhode Island, do you know where your tax incentives are going?

A few months ago, General Electric announced it would be opening a location in Rhode Island ("where the only way to get a job is to have an Italian last name"). Of course, the state has been throwing tax incentives all over them in eternal gratitude. Oh, yes, this is a whole new beginning for this backwards decrepit little state. Everything's gonna get better and, in true trickle-down prosperity fashion, this company's presence here is going to attract loads of other high-profile employers with awesome pie-in-the-sky jobs! 

Hmmm, why am I experiencing a serious case of deja vu right now?

Back in 1996, Fidelity Investments announced plans to open a huge campus in darling little Rhode Island. This was treated like the second coming, with the state government going ga-ga over how this is going to transform the local economy and lead to so much awesomeness and blah blah blah.

Of course, nothing’s free.

“Rhode Island has been extremely aggressive” in offering tax breaks to Fidelity, said John Bonnanzio of Fidelity Monitor & Insight. That state’s assistance is reflected in Fidelity’s newest addition to the Smithfield campus, a gleaming, high-tech, 550,000-square-foot facility. 

Recall that I worked on a six-month contract at this campus back in 2015 (which I realize now will be the last job I ever have in America). My first disturbing observation during my time there was that the building I worked in (#100) was half-empty, with rows and rows of unoccupied cubicles; I kept expecting to see tumbleweeds circle past me where I sat. My second disturbing observation was that, of the people working in that building, I’d estimate that half are from India.

I wonder if this was what poor little Rhode Island expected out of their deal with the devil.