In celebration of Beacon’s 20th Anniversary, Beacon President and CEO Justin Owen wrote a book called Modern Davids: Celebrating 20 Years with 20 Stories of Everyday Tennesseans Fighting Big Government. We will be sharing an excerpt from the book each month to tell you more about our heroes. The book is out now! You can secure your copy by clicking here.
In 2017, Beacon did something we’d never done before. We produced a mini documentary. “Rigged: The Injustice of Corporate Welfare” analyzed the harm that can be done by government picking winners and losers through corporate handouts and tax incentives.
Ron Becker, who we featured in our documentary, runs the Great American Home Store in Memphis. He started working at eleven years old. In the documentary, Ron reflects, “I was taught by my grandmother that at the end of every day you ask yourself, do I owe my boss because I didn’t give him a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, or does my boss owe me?” Hard
work has been his mantra ever since.
When Ron began expanding his furniture business, he had heard about tax incentives for local businesses. He inquired with the local chamber of commerce, which swiftly told him there are no such incentives for retail.
Imagine Ron’s surprise just a few years later when news broke that Swedish furniture giant IKEA was coming to Memphis and would be receiving a $9.5 million taxpayer handout for opening a single store in the city. Its location? One exit down the interstate from Ron’s flagship store.
The local government was literally paying his competitor to open down the street.
“It’s disheartening when one company can come in and get all the free publicity…I didn’t see any of that when I opened our store,” said Ron. “I’ve spent forty years of my life in this market employing as many as two hundred fifty people. [IKEA is] not doing anything different than the people who have been here all our lives are doing.”
And he wasn’t the only one paying for the competition. Louis Caddell can list off all the taxes his furniture store has to pay, including sales taxes, payroll taxes, fuel taxes, and the list goes on. And it infuriates him to know that some of the money he has to fork over to government can go to competitors like IKEA. “They should not be paid any of the citizens’ tax dollars. That’s very unfair to the businesses that don’t get any tax breaks.”
The reality is that some ninety-eight percent of all the jobs in Tennessee are created by those existing home-grown businesses. Yet the government gives almost all the handouts to the other two percent. The government should be creating a level playing field. Like the umpire in baseball, it should stick to calling balls and strikes from a neutral standpoint.
“Rigged” really struck a nerve. It was featured in twenty-one different film festivals and screenings all over the world, and it won six national and international film festival awards. Ron, Louis, and Beacon went on to be featured in a full PBS documentary produced by John Stossel on the topic of corporate welfare.
Sadly, the story didn’t end well for everyone. After our documentary aired, Louis went out of business. As long as government keeps picking winners, there are bound to be losers. Hopefully, though, as a result of our work, there will be fewer losers when we’re done.