Tax Breaks for a Noah’s Ark Theme Park

  In what should have exemplified all that is wrong with the Republican Party, Gov. Steven L. Beshear of Kentucky, a democrat, is offering tax breaks to the folks over at the Creation Museum for the building of a Noah's Ark theme park. The excuse for this is that the park will create jobs and help out the economy.

While most people would object to such tax-breaks on the grounds of separation between Church and State, I object on the grounds of there being special tax-breaks in the first place. What, you might ask? Should I not, as a libertarian, be supportive of big business interests? Libertarianism has nothing to do with being pro business and this is a good example of that. For a libertarian, the purpose of government is to protect people from direct physical harm caused by other people without their consent. The government is assumed to be competent enough (if barely) to deal with something relatively simple like stopping terrorists trying to set off a nuclear bomb on our soil. The government is most certainly not competent enough to handle something as complex as the economy any more than we are going to take them seriously when it comes to leading the moral life or getting into heaven. If the economy is assumed to be beyond the understanding of government, we have no choice but to label any attempt by government officials to offer special deals to businesses as a conspiring with a special interest against the general public.

I put the challenge to my readers. If Gov. Beshear is correct in his premise that it is possible for the government to help boost the economy by providing special tax breaks to businesses for building theme parks, what grounds do you have for objecting? Surely you would not hold the Noah's Ark theme against such a project. Would you let such a minor thing as the separation of Church and State get in the way of creating jobs for the people of Kentucky? I reject his premise so this can never become an issue for me.