Time Warner Cable would like to thank the city of Charlotte and the state of North Carolina for the generous handouts of taxpayer-funded corporate welfare that helped make their newly-christened $82 million data center possible.

In return, Charlotte residents pay the nation’s highest cable bills, according to a piece in the Charlotte Observer.

Time Warner Cable maintains a cozy relationship with state and local officials — friendly enough to help win the company a state Job Development Investment Grant worth up to $2.9 million in public tax dollars in return for hiring 225 workers in their eastern national data center. Critics contend Time Warner was going to need to hire workers with or without the grant.

According to WhiteFence, the average Charlottean paid $51.18 for standalone high-speed Internet services in October.

The group surveys pricing from utility providers nationwide and builds a national price index for different services, including broadband.

No city pays higher prices that Charlotte, N.C., according to the group. The WhiteFence Index also shows Internet pricing is rising steadily, up from less than $40 charged this past May.

The Libertarian Party of North Carolina is probably the biggest opponent of corporate welfare handouts in the state:

By taking money from the taxpayers and giving it to businesses in the form of “corporate incentives,” our state and local governments are playing a game of Reverse Robin Hood. They are robbing from the poor and giving to the rich. The Libertarian Party of North Carolina denounces all corporate welfare programs as fiscally irresponsible and calls for their immediate abolition.

Millions of dollars are taken every year from our taxpayers and stashed into various funds and programs at all levels of government. The purpose of these funds is supposedly to attract businesses to our area and help them expand, under the theory that this will create jobs and promote general prosperity.

This theory has two fundamental defects. First of all, the government has no place in deciding which jobs should be created and maintained. A free market is infinitely better equipped to respond to the economic needs of businesses and consumers. When the government starts funding already successful companies, it becomes harder to compete in the marketplace if you have a new company with an innovative idea or service.

More directly, we can not have general prosperity until we rid ourselves of our excessive tax burdens. The first cause of economic prosperity is when consumers have money to spend. But we have less and less spending money, as governments take more and more from our paychecks. And then they use that money taken from us as legal bribes to entice their corporate favorites to come to North Carolina.