Money is a powerful incentive. It helps explain why Micron Technology, the Idaho-based memory chip manufacturer, is looking to set up shop outside Syracuse — an area with no historical link to the company, or to semiconductor manufacturing.

State officials, hoping to break Central New York out of its economic doldrums, promised Micron $5.5 billion in cash-like incentives in 2022.

But on top of that, Albany offered the company a whole lot more to overcome obstacles and costs that other New York businesses routinely face.

From now on every business owner in the state, looking at his or her own challenges, their tax bills, their regulatory burden, should be asking the question: How different would things be if my company was a politically favored project being announced by the governor? What favors would Albany do for me?

What would Micron get?

Call it “the Micron test.” The answers help identify the ways and extent to which New York makes it artificially difficult to do business — and outlines specific changes that could make doing business easier.

For starters, Micron got a big head-start in getting through SEQR (pronounced “seeker”), New York’s onerous environmental review process.

SEQR, on a good day, requires developers to pay for studies and jump through hoops to get permission for otherwise routine construction.

But the process is frequently abused by project opponents, and developers often have to turn to the courts for help getting things unstuck.

In a nutshell, SEQR scares many developers away from even proposing projects in New York, because there’s so much uncertainty about how long approvals will take — or if they’ll come at all.

Micron looks for the most part to be avoiding that problem.

Onondaga County’s economic development agency will be quarterbacking Micron’s SEQR process, and has already conducted — and paid for — detailed studies to make it easier to give the final sign-off on construction. State economic development officials are also giving Micron white-glove service.

And once the plant is built? Micron’s property tax bill will be just a fraction of what it otherwise would, thanks to a steep discount granted by county officials.

Compare that to existing New York companies, who are saddled in many parts of the state with a higher property tax rate than what’s levied on owner-occupied homes (read: voters).

Micron, by all indications, will also enjoy a complete exemption from New York’s corporate income tax, which would otherwise shave about 7% off its profits.

Here, at least, Albany officials deserve credit for a 2014 change to the tax law that exempted larger manufacturers from the state’s corporate income tax. But smaller manufacturers, who are instead typically subject to the personal income tax, aren’t so lucky.

Micron’s planned manufacturing operations reveal some of the starkest differences between the company and other New York businesses: State officials have promised that it can build a three-mile natural gas pipeline to power the site.

Yet for years state lawmakers have been pushing to make it more costly for new businesses to tie into the gas grid, and regulators have thwarted various proposed pipelines that would provide the needed supply. 

The tightening supply means that parts of New York City and Westchester County have periodically been unable to add gas service at all.

One town about 50 miles south of the proposed Micron site has been under a gas hookup moratorium for a decade, preventing new restaurants and other businesses from opening.

For bigger manufacturers competing in the global market, access to gas can be crucial. When a paper plant in upstate Essex County couldn’t get a pipeline extended, the operator had to turn to a “virtual pipeline” — trucked-in deliveries of compressed natural gas, with drivers making several hour-long trips each day.

To meet the rest of its energy needs, Micron is counting on discounted electricity from the state Power Authority. Preliminary calculations value the savings at about $3 million per year once the plant begins major operations.

Other New York companies get marked-down electricity from the Power Authority’s massive hydroelectric dams, but Micron’s would by far be the largest such discount in terms of the amount of electricity involved.

Instead of trying to stanch (or distract from) economic bleeding with high-profile mega-projects like Micron, New York pols should roll up their sleeves — and begin rolling back the things that needlessly make it more expensive to do business in New York in the first place.

Ken Girardin is research director at the Empire Center for Public Policy and author of its recent report “The Micron Test.”