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Since I can't afford to hire a full-time person to keep the home-office computers running, and because the wizards at Microsoft keep devising ways to make the systems ever more complex and difficult to upgrade and maintain, I rely on the expertise of local computer dealers.
They're a competitive bunch, and will bemoan losing a bid to another shop. Frequently they question the competence of another shop's technicians, or propose to undercut a rival's offer on a new monitor or the like.
I spread my business around -- I need them all, and I recall the challenging environment here a decade ago, when there were no local computer shops.
There was mail order, of course, and those companies were usually good about warranties and returns. But when you didn't know whether the problem was with the printer, cable or adapter card, it was difficult to know what to order.
Local shops could help with the diagnosis, and if it came to that, start replacing parts until the system worked properly. I'm glad they're here. And competitive as they are, they all agree on one thing -- their major competitors aren't each other, or even Wal-Mart, but big mail-order companies like Gateway.
People will see a slick magazine ad and a sizzling price, then order the machine, thereby exporting money from the local economy and avoiding the local sales taxes that pay for the parks and fire departments people say they want.
If they run into trouble, and despair of warranty
service from remote locales, they often call a local shop
-- which didn't sell the machine, and which often can't
make repairs because name-brand
computers use
proprietary parts, rather than the standard off-the-shelf
components that the local shops use when they build
systems.
All told, I like the local dealers and I want them to stay in business. And their biggest threat, they tell me, is Gateway.
In an honest place, normal competition would sort this out, and if the local merchants offered good products and services at a fair price, they'd thrive and prosper. If not, they go out of business, and that's as it should be.
But in Colorado, the local computer shops are forced to subsidize Gateway, which is opening a software design and data center in Lakewood.
Lakewood has arranged for $195,000 in tax rebates to Gateway during the next four years. Jefferson County has agreed to refund $300,000 of Gateway's taxes.
That corporate welfare doesn't come from pockets around here, but the state Economic Development Commission -- funded by all Coloradans -- has committed $550,000 in direct grants and loans that don't have to be repaid if the company meets certain employment and wage goals.
This might be justified, at least in some eyes, if Jefferson County were some pocket of poverty. But the average per-capita annual income there was $25,929 in 1995. And that needs augmented by taxes levied on Chaffee County, where the average personal income was little more than half that, $15,625?
Others might justify this subsidy if Jefferson County were losing population like San Juan or Jackson County. But Jefferson grew from 438,430 residents in 1990 to 498,468 in 1997 -- 60,0388 more people, or more than the combined total population of the 19 smallest counties in Colorado.
Friends in Jefferson County report that the last thing they is more tumescence -- they already endure more than enough congestion and sprawl.
Even so, they must pay to suffer more. If they don't send Gateway money to the City of Lakewood, County of Jefferson and State of Colorado, then men with guns will come by and take away their homes.
As to what might be done about this, I thought of proposing a boycott of Gateway. But the people who succumb to those bucolic Holstein images when they should be checking a Federal Trade Commission report about Gateway's false advertising -- they deserve what they get.
I also considered calling for a boycott of Lakewood and Jefferson County, which are apparently so prosperous that they have extra money to pump into struggling $6 billion a year corporations, and thus don't need any money from us high-roller $15,000-a-year types.
But I'd really like to see the conservatives get riled about this -- you know, the folks who complain that in the wholesome America of yore, accepting welfare caused shame and stigma.
However, the last I heard, all those good Republican officials of Jefferson County, along with such GOP luminaries as Sen. Ben Campbell, planned to appear at the formal announcement ceremonies at the Lakewood City Hall on Thursday. And instead of denouncing the welfare queens who sponge off honest, hard-working small-town people, they were going to be photographed, in public, shaking hands with the moochers.
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