Good post. I hope the info is good. I see a name like "prison planet" and it doesn't exactly make me think "veracity!".
But that aside, the climate here in Minnesota is such that local government assumes that every entrepeneur has this big pot of money that's only there to react to things like city mandated parking lot upgrades, and other stuff that has to be done on 30 days notice or less. I call it the ten thousand dollar surprise. Happens pretty frequently. Happens to home owners too, so although property tax rates are nominally low in the suburbs, they are actually about 2.3 times higher (in my area) because of occasional one-time charges for things. For example, the required upgrades to mound type septic systems that look and function as if Rube Goldberg had designed them.
I've been a consultant working for many of the larger businesses here since the 80s and it's amazing how many of these companies have shrunk their Minnesota presence dramatically. There are companies that have moved in, but not enough to compensate for the loss.
Meanwhile, taxes just keep going up. There are more people on welfare.
I don't think the article touches on another phenomenon: A lot of people who are in business for themselves have structured their businesses to use foreign workers housed abroad. I think there's a whole generation of entrepeneurs who wouldn't even think to hire locally based employees. They're not being mean. They just are tired of being beat up by regulations and an uncertain business climate.
I was at one meeting where a top dog in a well known company uncharacteristically and bluntly said that his company is in an adversarial relationship with the government for the foreseeable future and that the company strategy has changed to remain successful in this environment. Note the word strategy. This means that the way the company operates, its mission, how it expects to perform, etc are all tied to avoiding being beat up by regulations.
