Mississippi

It's a safe bet to say that many Americans see tax incentives as a way to directly encourage business investment. But in fact, this is not actually what happens. Rather, as an article in today's Clarion-Ledger shows, businesses usually make an investment decision and whatever comes to them in the form of incentives is pure "gravy."

I would also bet a few dollars that this sort of thing happened recently at Honda. Honda has been doing well over the past few years and likely wanted to re-invest some of the revenue it had generated. But rather than immediately putting the money to work, the execs realized that they could convince state lawmakers to compete against each other in the form of incentices, which would in turn lower their investment cost.

At this point, you may not like the CEO of Honda, but I say don't hate the player, hate the game.