Imagine this. Your employer loans you $12.5 million to build a country-western music theatre, pays you $1.5 million a year to manage it, then tells you when the debt is repaid you can buy the theatre for $1. And as a perk he gives you a house to live in.

That would never happen you say? Probably not unless your ‘employer’ happened to be the government.

In fact, it recently happened right here in North Carolina. Local government officials in Halifax county borrowed $21.5 million (in bonds) so country music impresario Randy Parton – country legend Dolly Parton’s lesser known brother – could build a 1500 seat music theatre in Roanoke Rapids. They spent $12.5 to build the theatre; the rest will go to related expenses – such as $3 million put in a reserve fund to guarantee Parton’s annual $1.5 million “artist fee.” (Carolina Journal; 4-26-07).

Here’s the bad news: Parton has not booked a single act for the theater. It’s sitting empty.

This is a little (relatively) part of a big trend. Today, it is routine for government to subsidize private businesses. Washington subsidizes everything business from oil companies to widget makers. State governments subsidize banks. Local governments subsidize country-music theatres. As a result government has created a new breed of entrepreneurs who profit not by their productivity but by their ability to get their hands on taxpayers’ money. Couple this with a natural propensity for greed and it spells fiscal disaster for taxpayers.

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