Why are we paying for Trico?

So the Erie County Industrial Development Agency is supporting tax breaks for the Trico Factory's redevelopment into a mixed use facility. This will include: residential use (a glorified way of saying apartments), hotel space (as if we don't have enough hotels in this community), educational (to replace the schools that were closed and turned into apartments), commercial, and retail space. (I ran out of snarky things to say about the last two.)

First: The name of the organization is the Industrial Development Agency. Only two of the proposed uses have anything to do with the word industrial – retail and commercial. At that, I doubt that there will be much manufacturing, if any, in the complex that is going to be redeveloped. Most of the job growth in Buffalo has been low paying sales and service jobs. Somehow I have this funny feeling that this won't be any different.

Second: Why does a capitalist need the government to interfere in the developer's plans? Time and time again I hear the capitalists saying that they want the government out of their faces, hair, business (chose your cliché) and that they could do better if the government would leave them alone. Instead we have the exact opposite here – the capitalist is asking the big oppressive government to give them property, sales, and mortgage reporting tax breaks.

Allow me to translate what the capitalists are demanding the big oppressive government to do: pass the costs of doing business on to the working class and others that pay taxes so that the corporation can record bigger profits, give themselves higher salaries, better benefits, and stick it to the working class with poor wages, benefits, cuts to services that the government provides, and higher taxes. All for less.

We have how many schools that were closed and the Buffalo City Schools can't renovate them into a new school for culinary arts? (A fancy way of saying “cooking.” The best cook I ever met learned how to cook from her grandmother. She was an off the boat immigrant who spoke next to no English and measured everything out by hand, looks, and – I swear- luck. Then again, it was a family thing and capitalism does a good job of destroying families.) Nope. As before, these old schools get sold off to be converted into apartments.

Which brings me to all these houses that are in foreclosure or are sitting empty – These can't be used for people to live in because … ? It's not like Buffalo has a housing shortage. If all the houses we have that are empty were fixed up or demolished (if that bad) and new housing put up … Or banks forced to do something about the foreclosed property. These lofts are novelties, not necessities. They are the latest housing fad. When the loft style goes out of fashion, which it will, what then?

The working class needs good paying jobs. Yes, these will provide construction workers and those associated with it good wages. What about the rest of the working class? Retail means minimum wage. These are always low to to no skill jobs with bad wages and next to no benefits. Many of the people working at these jobs are trying to support families and require food stamps and other forms of public assistance to make ends meet (barely).

And I know people that work in the hotel industry – don't hold your breath om the wages and benefits issue.

And the apartments, retail, etc. are for the highly paid people that will be working in the medical campus – not for the average everyday people. This is all about segregating the people that live in the city of Buffalo from the upper class that will be working in the medical campus.

I think there is a word for this – gentrification.

Plain and simple – the city of Buffalo, Erie County, New York State should not be subsidizing this in any way at all.

It's not our responsibility to support private profit making and gentrification.

What the capitalists want is socialism for themselves and capitalism for themselves.

If capitalism is so great, why don't they try living under it?