Amazon’s HQ2 Spectacle Should Be Illegal

https://www.theatlantic.com/article/575539/

by tysone • 8 years ago

406 279 8 years ago

theatlantic.com

tyingq2• 8 years ago

Of course, if you push too hard, jobs move to a different country.

_bfhp• 8 years ago

Why are corporations moving out of the US to different countries? Why can't they stay?

belltaco• 8 years ago

Because people who buy shares want the share price to go up.

Retric• 8 years ago

A better question is why don't companies move outside the US? Why do they stay?

And the answer to that has nothing to do with taxes, it's all the things taxes pay for like an educated population, low crime rate, rule of law etc etc. On top of that warehouse jobs can't be moved outside of the US due to shipping latency.

nine_k• 8 years ago

Moving money streams overseas: tax optimization, especially if much of the money is spent on local operations, realty, etc on an overseas market.

Moving factories, etc overseas: labor cost optimization.

IOT_Apprentice• 8 years ago

Jobs already move to other countries. Will Jeff Bezos want a house in Dubai, like the Halliburton guys?

Amezarak• 8 years ago

Of course, and if companies push that too hard, then their services and products can be banned or severely tariffed.

Democratic countries do not have to lay down and accept whatever megacorporations want to inflict upon them.

koboll2• 8 years ago

That comment makes no sense in the context of HQ2. The choice of NY/DC strongly suggests that these are places Amazon was expanding to anyway, for business reasons (execs nearer business/defense higher-ups they are selling to). If you're trying to move to the cheapest possible place, you would never choose these locations.

tyingq2• 8 years ago

The context is the article suggestion to outlaw local and state tax incentives.

cremp3• 8 years ago

What Amazon did shouldn't be illegal; what the cities did to try to get Amazon to them should be.

Rather than punish Amazon, punish the public servants who thought a large tax break for years, or real estate deals, would really be big enough to draw the company in.

What Amazon did was playing the field; why not get a bonus for letting others compete; rather than taking nothing because it was already decided?

vkou3• 8 years ago

Rather than punish Amazon, punish the public servants who thought a large tax break for years, or real estate deals, would really be big enough to draw the company in.

They are reacting to incentives, just like Amazon is. They are stuck in a tragedy of the commons, and each is trying to play the field, as best as they can.

I'd place the blame on the agent with more power (Amazon), and the one that initiated this spectacle (Amazon).

lotsofpulp2• 8 years ago

Blaming someone doesn't fix the underlying issue. Forbidding special tax treatment to individuals and other entities is a realistic solution and easy to execute.

cremp3• 8 years ago

They are reacting to incentives

That they are, but only to say 'I created 50k jobs; re-elect me.'

To me, that's not much as an incentive but a plea for holding power. At the end of the day the public servants have limited time to make things happen. Companies don't.

If you go buy a new car, you haggle with the dealer. That's just something you do. You have total control to walk out (you have more power,) and you wanted the new car (initiated.)

Yes the dealer will be upset that you haggled, but they still get paid commission, even at a reduced rate. You go home happy, because you got what you wanted, the dealer is happy to have gotten something over their competitor (and the money doesn't hurt); win-win.

cwmma3• 8 years ago

this is, in fact, what the article advocates, making it illegal to offer such subsidies and prevent the race to the bottom between jurisdictions.

cremp3• 8 years ago

First, Congress could pass a national law banning this sort of corporate bribery.

That doesn't sound like what they were getting at.

Sounded to me like they were attacking Amazon because they were playing the field.

scarejunba4• 8 years ago

Let me see if I understand this correctly. You want to ban me bidding on something because it raises the price for when you eventually win it. No thank you.

Say I'm running a town in Colorado. You think Amazon is going to set up in DC. Well, I want a shot at that. Having an Amazon HQ in my town would be wild. It could reverse economic decline and everyone's life would likely improve with the added dollars to the local economy. I want to bid on that and go all the way up to my break even. What if it makes it more valuable to move here? I want the shot at that.

Either you give me the chance to do that or you give me megabucks to not do it. But if you're using the law to compete economically we're probably not correctly using comparative advantage.

If it gets net negative for you at some point, don't bid! Why use the law to stop me from bidding?

conanbatt2• 8 years ago

Prevent the race to the bottom is the mindset of "there should be one single unified government that has all the leverage".

I prefer to give leverage to the citizens: let them decide if they want to subsidize amazon or not, as opposed to governors and elected officials that profit disproportionately more.

thousandautumns• 8 years ago

What Amazon did was playing the field; why not get a bonus for letting others compete; rather than taking nothing because it was already decided?

You are assuming they were seriously considering the other cities, rather than making a show in order to secure as favorable terms as possible from the cities they were already planning on.

fhood• 8 years ago

You mean you weren't deeply surprised by their decision to be near the actual and financial capitals of the US?!?!

snidane• 8 years ago

Correct. But you don't want to eliminate municipal competition either.

The problem here is of representation. Ie. the city residents could not agree with their tax money being spent on this.

This is an example where a direct democracy shines, basically any decision which lasts longer than a current politicians' mandate should be voted directly by citizens to align the incentives. Any decisions with effect roughly contained within a voting period could be delegated to 'managers', ie. politicians voted for administration of public things.

The problem today in countries without direct democracy for longer term issues is that they elect these 'managers' to decide on matters vastly exceeding their mandate.

darawk• 8 years ago

I would argue the problem here is of special treatment. We do want municipal competition, we don't want company-specific competition, though.

JumpCrisscross2• 8 years ago

city residents could not agree with their tax money being spent on this

New York City taxpayer here. Fine with it. 25,000 high-income jobs, even if after 10 years, makes the new engineering campus on Roosevelt Island instantly more productive. Those jobs will pay taxes, spend money in the local economy, and drive demand for East River infrastructure improvements.

I do believe that these sorts of subsidies should be required to be put to a popular vote. Wouldn't be a bad state constitutional amendment, actually...

Nasrudith• 8 years ago

Competition should be party neutral period as a rule of law thing alone in my opinion. As in offer tax incentives for say having 6k office workers who make a median income of 70k and don't impose externalities beyond a large office building's traffic - all legitimate interests to the locale and who they are doesn't really matter.

But that it is for specific companies both misses the point of a healthy economy and leads to corruption by definition - not being treated equal under the law.

PeterisP• 8 years ago

From the perspective of the whole country, perhaps we do want to reduce municipal competition and outright prohibit giving expensive handouts to bribe companies to pick their location.

From the perspective of a city, giving $x so that the HQ gets built there instead of some other city might make sense.

From the perspective of the whole nation, the notion of handing out large amounts of money to gain taxes in location A and lose taxes in location B is clearly ridiculous - let the company pick whatever city is most competitive without the handouts, and if some other city wants that HQ, well, they need to provide better services, not just a discount (which essentially is a loss for the combined coffer of all the governments), unless the gov't "one level up" has considered that it's better for national interests that this area needs to be subsidized above others.

For any single city it may make sense to underbid other cities, but for all cities together it makes sense to cooperate/collude so that underbidding doesn't happen.

umeshunni• 8 years ago

Ie. the city residents could not agree with their tax money being spent on this.

City residents generally vote against any new development (literally NIMBYism), so it's pretty likely that this would have been something they're against.

joezydeco• 8 years ago

...what the cities did to try to get Amazon to them should be

Oh, there's some karmic payback for the cities doing what they did. You see, all that inside information that the 236 other cities gave away to Bezos? He gets to keep that:

http://inthesetimes.com/article/21571/the-hq2-scam-how-amazo...

"Amazon now has a treasure trove of non-public information about America’s future, in addition to knowing how much cash cities are willing to part with to land an Amazon facility. And it got all that, along with a giant PR benefit from the bidding war, for free.

If you knew a city was going to build a road in a particular place, you could make a lot of money buying up the real estate there. Imagine that on a national scale and you can see how Amazon will grow far wealthier from the data it collected than even the raw dollars extracted from HQ2’s big winners. In fact, this was the real reason Amazon orchestrated the whole charade."

dmix• 8 years ago

While true I'm not seeing how this fact will influence cities/public servants to not be so dumb in the future? Or stop these corporate welfare parades from happening again...

But knowing how regulation typically works they probably wont help either. They'll probably be over-bearing and quickly out of date, or more likely end up hurting local communities trying to get new business from small-medium scale companies while big mega-corps continue with business-as-usual getting free rewards from the state at the expense of citizens and smaller firms.

claydavisss• 8 years ago

It shouldn't be illegal to demonstrate that you are dumber than Jeff Bezos.

Really, this is what it comes down to...Bezos outplayed the cities. He'll never get a deal like this again, but since he only wants to make a splash like this once, there's no incentive for him to appear as a fair bargainer.

megaremote3• 8 years ago

Why? One small group of people make the decision, the entire city of millions suffer.

stusmall• 8 years ago

I don't know about illegal, but our local governments should be smarter than falling for that trick to get a massively regressive tax set up. What a scam.

jdmichal2• 8 years ago

Prisoner's dilemma. Not bidding is a great decision and probably globally optimal for the players. But once one bid is entered, the rational choice for all other actors is to also bid.

aidenn03• 8 years ago

At some point the tax breaks mean that increased revenue will not offset the increased infrastructure costs; at that point bidding is no longer rational.

cepth4• 8 years ago

Some back of the envelope math. Amazon is receiving $1.525 billion in incentives from NY state and city, conditional on creating 25,000 jobs (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/nyregion/amazon-long-isla...). That's $61,000 per job, paid out over 10 years.

From a purely fiscal point of view, do we expect these jobs to generate $6100 a year in additional tax revenue for the state and city? That would be the "breakeven point". This could come in the form of additional state and city income taxes, consumption that is taxed, etc. Payscale says the average Amazon software engineer makes around $109k (https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Amazon.com_Inc...).

If we believed that Amazon is actually creating 25,000 NEW jobs, as well as jobs that otherwise would not exist, it seems pretty reasonable to say that the state and city come out ahead net-net. However, I have trouble believing that the "knowledge workers" who will join Amazon would otherwise have been unemployed and underpaid. Factor in the various negative externalities of increased commercial and residential rents for others, potential traffic/congestion issues etc., and it seems like Amazon got a sweetheart deal.

WhompingWindows• 8 years ago

Thank you for running the numbers. How can we price in the wasted time/effort of the dozens of other cities who put in bids? How about the many millions or perhaps billions of dollars of free advertising and air-time taken up by this charade? I am neutral on Amazon specifically but surely we should not allow big companies to run roughshod all over our desperate cities? Look at Foxconn and Scott Walker for another example of companies harming and exploiting a metropolis/state. It really rubs me the wrong way.

throwaway57525• 8 years ago

How can we price in the wasted time/effort of the dozens of other cities who put in bids?

Be reasonable. That's an absolutely ridiculous counterpoint, and a perfectly reasonable answer is "assign it zero" since no city was compelled to apply. Should we dispense with competitive processes completely? Why have the Olympics, for instance, because it's such a waste of time for everyone that doesn't medal?

Further, the Scott Walker/Foxxcon debacle is a completely different category than the HQ2 situation. However, it is not going to be productive discussing the reasons that an ostensibly large manufacturing site was situated in an electoral battleground state with substantial involvement at a federal/executive level.

dkrich• 8 years ago

Unfortunately I think casting Amazon as the villain here is incorrect. I say unfortunately because that would be the convenient thing to do. But Amazon doesn't have an obligation to repair America's infrastructure or create jobs in cities that haven't succeeded in attracting skilled employees in large numbers. If Amazon believed they could legally gain an advantage by having cities compete against each other, they are almost obligated to do so. But perhaps there's a less cynical way to look at it. Maybe Amazon really didn't know at the outset which city they would pick, and only after considering everything submitted to them, concluded there wasn't a strategic case to be made for putting a second HQ in a city other than DC or NYC. I actually believe that to be the most likely scenario, but maybe I'm naive.

The unfortunate fact is that the politicians who emptied their pockets are to blame. But they too are only doing what they believe both benefits their constituents and of course helps them stay in office. To put it another way, if the mayor of Pittsburgh said "we aren't going to play ball and give a handout to one of the largest companies on earth" people who live there probably would have revolted. I don't think there's a good solution except for voters to become smarter about how their budgets are spent and make clear to politicians they don't want tax dollars wasted courting a company that doesn't need any government assistance.

bambax• 8 years ago

Totally agree with you. I'd like to know what happens if a city doesn't hold its side of the deal, perhaps on a technicality; can the other party sue -- and win? Has it happened before?

jackconnor4• 8 years ago

I didn't see Bezos pointing a gun at anyone's head to force their city to bid. This is 100% on them, if they thought it would be a waste of money, they could've opted to spend nothing. "Running roughshod all over our desperate cities", while a fun turn of phrase, completely and utterly misrepresents what happened here. Don't blame Amazon for the actions of local governments, though I know it's the easy/lazy way of approaching the problem.

justaman• 8 years ago

Is there also a possibility of an incalculable factor which will yield a return on investment given that this project would bolster a middle class thus creating an increased likelihood of higher education for the next generation? My point is that something like this is never fully thought out and the future isn't written yet. These projects could boom or bust.

clarkmoody• 8 years ago

This is often the case with government grants to cities as well. The cities that put together bids collectively spend more than the amount of the grant back to the winning city.

nck4222• 8 years ago

Another thing to factor in, if there were no tax incentives given to open/expand offices in the DC/NYC areas, would Amazon have expanded their presence there anyway?

Considering the two areas, it seems likely they would open additional positions there regardless of whether the areas "won" the HQ2 battle, much like they're doing in Boston (and probably other places as well).

This makes tax incentives even less worthwhile.

kodablah6• 8 years ago

Factor in the various negative externalities of increased commercial and residential rents for others, potential traffic/congestion issues etc., and it seems like Amazon got a sweetheart deal.

I think it's only fair to factor in the various positive externalities. Some of those abatements you mention are for development of the spaces they are occupying, which Amazon has committed to do in the billions. Growth pains almost always exist. In places receiving large amounts of migrants (seriously, Amazon is small number compared to the influx of out-of-state employers moving to other regions) they will experience unquantifiable negatives, but we should not let this detract from the similar unquantifiable positives of economic mobility.

ApolloFortyNine• 8 years ago

All these cities are simply gambling on becoming the Silicon Valley of the East. If they do take off, this $1.5 billion would be a steal.

specialp• 8 years ago

There are already more software devs in NYC than in Silicon Valley. There's also triple the amount of people in the NYC metro area, and a lot of other industries. I'm not sure NYC needed to give a lot of money to attract them. It isn't like NYC is some former steel town or something looking to bootstrap an industry. On the contrary, NYC has added 375k people to its population in the last 10 years which is about 40% of the SF total population.

NYC also has a Gross metropolitan product 3.5x the bay area. I think Silicon Valley would like to be the NYC of the west.

moate5• 8 years ago

It seems very unlikely that New York City needs to pump taxpayer money into proving to multinational companies that there is value to being located near the talent concentration they already have. It seems unlikely that Amazon's presence there is going to be the spark that finally ignites their struggling tech sector, or attracts job seekers from outside the region (spoiler: New York doesn't have these problems). It seems much more likely that Amazon is contributing to many of the existing NYC area problems (Read: housing/infrastructure) by further straining resources AND demanding they be paid a ransom for not building in Baltimore.

At this point, based on the cities chosen, it seems more like Amazon held these 2 obvious choice cities hostage by threatening to move to smaller, less established city instead. "Give us all your subsidies, or we'll just go build in Baltimore"

rb808• 8 years ago

Absolutely. Right now there is SV and everwhere else. This puts NYC in clear #2. Its already the biggest second office for Google and FB. Once it gets critical mass its cements its position and will attract lots of smaller companies.

throwaway57525• 8 years ago

Easy to imagine that generates $6k per job given wages and payroll taxes. Further, halo effects and construction act as multipliers on that.

pc86• 8 years ago

I don't think construction costs are a multiplier of payroll taxes as far as the city government is concerned, and the folks at Amazon making big money would be employed regardless. Yes, some people will move into NYC for these jobs, but many of them will just move from another NYC firm to Amazon, maybe for a small raise. It's very conceivable that the folks moving within NYC will have a payroll tax increase of less than $6k.

GhostVII4• 8 years ago

But even if the state and city come out ahead, they could have benefited even more if cities weren't allowed to compete for these types of contracts - without these tax breaks, Amazon would still have to build a headquarters, and a similar amount of jobs and tax revenue would have been generated, without requiring any incentives. It may not have been in New York, but someone in the US is still benefiting.

chrisseaton5• 8 years ago

Is that how you run your businesses? It doesn't matter that I didn't win this contract - it's ok though as someone else won it and they'll benefit instead?

nyokodo• 8 years ago

More taxpayers bring additional costs so it's more net revenue we're interested in. Additionally the window to compute the total net benefit is not bound to 10 years but for many decades, as long as Amazon is there. For instance over a 24 year window (how long they've been in Seattle) the required net additional tax revenue to break even would only be ~$2500 per year. And it's not just salaries that would generate this revenue, it's also property taxes and taxes on services providing for the HQ and employees. Increased rents and property prices are actually good for local government tax revenue.

cepth4• 8 years ago

Additionally the window to compute the total net benefit is not bound to 10 years but for many decades, as long as Amazon is there. For instance over a 24 year window (how long they've been in Seattle) the required net additional tax revenue to break even would only be ~$2500 per year.

What discount rate are you using? My quick calculation is already pretty generous to Amazon, since they already get 10 years to generate the 25k jobs. Presumably, some portion of the $1.525 billion is available immediately for campus improvements etc. It's not worthwhile to project 24 years out, especially when considering the time value of money.

And it's not just salaries that would generate this revenue, it's also property taxes and taxes on services providing for the HQ and employees.

Yes, I mentioned that increased consumption is likely taxable. The question again is whether this consumption would've happened anyway, by other companies, or by Amazon's future employees working at other companies.

Increased rents and property prices are actually good for local government tax revenue.

Would you be in favor of widespread gentrification? It's not hard in an accounting sense to "optimize" the local tax revenue generated in New York. Just make it a city where cost of living is so high that only the wealthiest can afford to live there. In a city where affordable housing is already in very short supply, and homelessness is still a major problem, I'm not sure how "good" it is for the city to have to spend more on rent assistance.

The "effective property tax rate" in New York is ~0.8% (https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-property-tax-calculato...). To generate an additional $1k in property tax, the price of a property would have to increase $125k. Maybe good for the city, certainly not good for the middle-class and poor New Yorkers who have to contend with higher rents and cost of living.

EDIT: Not to mention that it's hard to see how increased rents lead to more revenue for the city. The state may be able to bring in more corporate tax income, but a more valuable property means that property owners can also claim more in depreciation etc.

taurath• 8 years ago

Payscale is wrong because 30-200% of those salaries are paid in stock

pasbesoin• 8 years ago

And how many competitors shrink as they compete on an uneven playing field (the basis of these "incentives" -- taxes and such) with these behemoths?

If you're big enough to "break the rules", arguably you're a monopoly or close enough to this to merit great suspicion and corresponding oversight.

reaperducer• 8 years ago

Don't forget that a good portion of those Amazon workers will also bring their spouses. They may even become permanent residents.

The math is more complicated than any of us understand.

megaremote3• 8 years ago

A good portion of those Amazon workers will already live and work in NY, and leave their current job where they aren't being subsidised to one that is.

sjg0072• 8 years ago

$6k per job seems like it will be break even on state income taxes for sure.

thrower123• 8 years ago

Particularly in New York, with their state income tax brackets. Not to mention any NYC income taxes added on top.

Virginia has lower rates, but they still ought to make out.

https://www.tax-brackets.org/newyorktaxtable

https://www.tax-brackets.org/virginiataxtable

NathanKP• 8 years ago

Accurate. As an Amazon employee living in NYC last year I paid 14k in state taxes to NY state and almost 8k in local taxes to NYC.

Just on income tax alone that covers the $6k and that's not considering side effect impacts I have on city income in the form of paying my rent and paying local businesses which generates even more tax income.

Now of course this is all dependent on the fact that I wouldn't be generating any money for the city if it wasn't for Amazon which isn't true. I'd still have a job, it just might not pay quite as well as working for Amazon, but I'd still be contributing income tax.

Overall though from what I can tell NYC is getting a good deal and will end up with more money despite the tax breaks.

tekno45• 8 years ago

Isn't just planned amount of Salary to be paid and taxes collected from that?

How can we find out if these jobs will pay that much?

freeopinion2• 8 years ago

I think the numbers and the philosophy are fascinating. Not just the Amazon deal--all these corporate invitation incentives.

Let's say Boeing decides to move their HQ from Seattle. Should a city like, say, Chicago, offer incentives to land the new HQ? What is the economic loss to Seattle? What is the economic gain to Chicago?

Why should Boeing or Amazon get off from paying taxes, but Bob's Sandwich Shop doesn't? One obvious answer: Bob's Shop doesn't really matter. But what if, say, McDonalds threatens to pull out of Chicago unless they get the same deal as Boeing? Does McDonalds matter? Do they employ enough people? Are they hard enough to replace? How about Walmart?

It intrigues me that municipal bidding has not spread to be leveraged by more corporations. I mean more blatantly leveraged. I mean like Boeing/Amazon-level blatant. Imagine if Carrier turned the tables on Trump. Publicly.

If Chevron threatened to pull all its stations from a city, would any city care? Is there enough competition to fill in the hole?

What do you call a corporation that exists in a space without enough competition to fill in the hole? Should you treat such companies differently? Should you let them not pay taxes? Should you impose monopoly regulation on them? Should you handcuff them? Or roll out the red carpet?

Should you punish any corporation that achieves this status? Or should should encourage the innovations that allow such creations?

zoomablemind• 8 years ago

Boeing is in Chicago since 2001. And yes, the tax incentives were awarded [1].

McDo upgraded to shiny new HQ in Chicago this year, reportedly with no tax incentives [2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/11/business/chicago-offering...

[2] https://www.dailyherald.com/article/20160613/business/160619...

nerpderp82• 8 years ago

Boeing already moved HQ from Seattle to Chicago.

None of this bargaining should be legal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing

CydeWeys2• 8 years ago

From a purely fiscal point of view, do we expect these jobs to generate $6100 a year in additional tax revenue for the state and city? That would be the "breakeven point".

You need way more than $6,100 per employee per year to reach break-even, as those employees will have definite costs to the city in the form of expenditures on services.

Strict cost accounting isn't really the right framework to use because cities have many people who cost more in services than they earn in tax revenues. You can't get rid of them because they're "unprofitable", and it isn't a city's job to turn a profit.

onetimemanytime4• 8 years ago

>You need way more than $6,100 per employee per year to reach break-even, as those employees will have definite costs to the city in the form of expenditures on services.

will they not rent and buy sandwiches from the area? Or pay the NY state /NYC income tax? Or sales tax on a lot of stuff they buy /spend? NY comes way out ahead, IMO, over 10 years. Amazon pays $100+k salaries for such staff

walshemj4• 8 years ago

Probably not as much as you think in the USA. Social services, based on my last statement from the HMRC is a huge amount of the taxes I pay dwarfing the defense budget.

Its the same at county level to.

tracker12• 8 years ago

... as those employees will have definite costs to the city ...

Yeah, because none of those employees will pay property, income, sales or other taxes locally...

skookumchuck• 8 years ago

Amazon received incentives from the government, but the vendors they will provide business to did not. Amazon will likely pay out billions to build their new campus - going to construction companies that will pay taxes.

konschubert• 8 years ago

Amazon would have created those jobs either way, maybe just elsewhere.

So every dollar spent is a dollar lost for the US.

chrisseaton5• 8 years ago

...unless the cities competing got them to create a better environment for Amazon and so made Amazon more productive, earning more money overall.

CPLX2• 8 years ago

This analysis is flawed.

In order to calculate a breakeven you need to determine the marginal increase in government expenditures created by a new city resident, which is obviously nonzero.

walshemj4• 8 years ago

But most local government pay out goes not on high paid engineers if its anything like the UK - I know someone who was the lead councillor for social services in a large local council he had a large budget.

philwelch• 8 years ago

Economic behavior has a compounding effect. Each Amazon employee who lives in a city contributes demand for local businesses that end up creating other jobs.

winter_blue• 8 years ago

I live in NYC, and the Total New York State & City Taxes is over $10,000 a year on a $109k base salary. See: https://arjun-menon.github.io/tax-analyzer/?income=109%2C000...

Moreover, the $109k is likely just base salary — there is probably additional stock and cash bonuses on top of that. Note that NY does not have a lower tax on capital gains or dividends (like the federal tax code), so they’ll be taxed like regular income. The $109k is also likely an outdated or incorrect number, as that’s too low a base salary for a Software Engieer in NYC — I expect the average SWE base at Amazon to be something closer to $130k.

Besides, I don’t think a business development tax break is unfair as long as it is being granted to all companies (and not just Amazon). That’s what people should be fighting for. In addition, a large chunk of the incentives are state tax credits (I assume non-refundable ones). This means the state is simply going to revive reduced additional revenue because Amazon is moving in — they don’t per de lose money (unless whatever business was going to be built in Amazon’s place would have not have gotten these tax breaks). The way this is being portrayed — it sounds like it’s a literal giveaway to Amazon, which I’m not sure it is (it would be, if it largely consisted of refundable tax credits and state capital grants).

losvedir• 8 years ago

But surely tax breaks vs subsidies should be calculated differently? That is, letting Amazon skip paying $2 billion in taxes over 10 years doesn't cost the city anything directly. So from your "purely fiscal point of view", then isn't it just the cost of the marginal person on the infrastructure and housing prices, etc, vs the taxes collected?

From the article, it looks like the city may actually pay up to $500 million in a "capital grant", but I'm not sure what form the rest of the subsidies are in.

That said, the article uses wording like "Ohio taxpayers sued the state after it paid the automaker DaimlerChrysler about $280 million in tax exemptions and tax credits" so my perspective might be wrong here. It just feels misleading to use the verb "paid" on tax credits to me. Like, if I bought a Tesla, and got the $7,500 tax credit, I wouldn't feel exactly like the government paid me anything. Sure it cost the government that much, in some sense, since I would have paid the government those taxes had I not been given the break, but that doesn't really apply to the Amazon case since they wouldn't have paid those taxes anyway, since they wouldn't be in that state.

mrbgty• 8 years ago

There's another problem here that isn't addressed by whether its a net plus revenue to the city. The tax break isn't applied across the board to all companies which means that Amazon is getting an unfair competitive advantage.

I don't really think of a company like Amazon needing a competitive advantage.

jakelazaroff3• 8 years ago

I can't find where I originally saw this, but as a thought exercise:

What if, instead of giving $1,500,000,000 to Amazon, NYC gave out $60,000 subsidies to some 25,000 (!!!) local small businesses?

quantdev• 8 years ago

>If we believed that Amazon is actually creating 25,000 NEW jobs, as well as jobs that otherwise would not exist, it seems pretty reasonable to say that the state and city come out ahead net-net.

From NYC's perspective, many of these probably will be new jobs, because many knowledge workers who wouldn't otherwise will move to NYC because of an Amazon job.

Further, $109k/yr/employee is way too low for NYC Amazon engineers; this is likely ignoring the equity grant which is taxed as ordinary income. The average will skew much higher. It seems that each new employee will very easily generate over $6100/year in state+local tax revenue.

Further there are synergies and network effects from NYC having more tech jobs and these nth-order effects will also generate tax revenue.

You can argue that this charade wasn't good for America, but it certainly was good for NYC.

rtkwe• 8 years ago

do we expect these jobs to generate $6100 a year in additional tax revenue for the state and city

The answer is probably not. Most state income taxes are pretty low and property taxes aren't much better for the city/county level kickbacks.

sdinsn5• 8 years ago

State income tax is 8.8% in NY. Do the math, 6.1k is met easily.

matt40775• 8 years ago

The issue isn't wether or not these incentives are net positive for the location that wins.

The problem is the prisoner's dilemma of the situation, forcing jurisdiction into a race-to-the-bottom competition.

That's because Amazon would hire these people anyway. NY and DC may come out ahead. But for the country overall, it's purely a transfer for billions from taxpayers to Amazon stockholders.

walshemj4• 8 years ago

If you take that to its logical conclusions then states being able to set their own income taxes, sales taxes and their own employment laws is equally guilty.

Those low tax states are net recipients of $ from states like NY and CA - of course that would mean major changes in the constituation :-)

mactrey• 8 years ago

However, I have trouble believing that the "knowledge workers" who will join Amazon would otherwise have been unemployed and underpaid.

No, but they might otherwise have been employed somewhere else, like SF. It's a zero-sum game, which is part of the reason why this whole bidding for corporate headquarters business is silly from a national perspective.

sdinsn5• 8 years ago

Another thing: if the cost of living increases due to the HQ's presence (which it will), then that means property taxes increase. Everyone will be paying more in property taxes, so $61000 per job is incredibly easy to meet.

JudasGoat• 8 years ago

Also how is a smaller competitor going to be on a level playing field. For example existing NY companies paying full taxes are partially paying Amazon's subsidy.

kodablah6• 8 years ago

Completely disagree that it's a problem or that it needs a solution and completely disagree it should be solved at the national level. If communities want to mortgage certain parts of their cities, that is their prerogative. It's growing tiresome reading all of this non-representative nonsense about wanting to change how other peoples' communities spend their money. This is no different than saying every state should tax income or tax businesses a certain way. The same reasons in favor apply.

The real problem with articles like these is that they say something is a problem and just expect you to magically believe it is. They throw out large numbers given in tax breaks and just say "poof, this is a problem" as though the readers automatically assume paying less in taxes is a problem. There are many people that believe that in many cases money is better spent elsewhere and the taxes are too high in the first place. There are many others that believe it is ideal to give to the job creators. And many others believe companies providing disproportionate benefits deserve disproportionate concessions. Whether you believe this or not is less important than your ability to understand why others do. The absence of that understanding, and similar dissonance across other issues, aptly explains our current political spectrum. But at least, for the time being, those that disagree with this article can still have these kinds of financial choices at the community level.

bepotts2• 8 years ago

Agree completely. To some people, the tradeoffs between having Amazon come with a couple tax breaks and not having Amazon come at all is worth it. Nobody put a gun to the heads of these city officials - everyone knew what was going on and city officials went along willingly.

If Amazon had chosen Detroit or some city in America's heartland, the national press would have been praising Amazon for "spreading the wealth". Instead of getting mad at Amazon, policy makers should look at why Amazon chose these locations and seek to replicate these conditions elsewhere.

Apocryphon5• 8 years ago

It's doggone impossible replicating cities that became central shortly after the creation of the United States, or even earlier. If Amazon had picked Austin or Pittsburgh you might have had a better argument, as those are seen as up-and-coming tech hubs. Instead, they boringly chose cities that are already central to American economic and political life.

arcticfox2• 8 years ago

It's anti-competitive against companies too small to pull this type of stunt though.

It feels wrong to have everyone playing by different rules. Why should my small business across the street pay for Amazon's public services because they're able to make every city in the country race to the bottom?

enraged_camel2• 8 years ago

> If communities want to mortgage certain parts of their cities, that is their prerogative.

This is not the community choosing to do so via, say, a referendum. This is an elected official making these decisions on behalf of, and without any input from, the community.

You might say, "but that's why we elect politicians!" But it's not so simple. People elect politicians to run the everyday affairs. A megacorporation asking your city for incentives in return for jobs and massive investment should be regarded as an extraordinary occurrence, and should be decided via a public vote.

kodablah6• 8 years ago

should be decided via a public vote

Completely agree, but I am having a hard time reconciling that with my belief that if a citizenry wants to remove the handcuffs of its leaders to make these moves, they should be able to. I think transparency in public spending and negotiations is what we should be asking for at a higher level.

Spivak2• 8 years ago

It's not an extraordinary occurrence though, your state probably already hands out billions in subsidies, investments, and no recourse loans.

If you don't trust your representative to act in your best interest in a negotiation then that's what's broken.

ptero• 8 years ago

I mostly agree with your sentiment (as I understand it), but I think your approach is overly simplistic. Specifically, this:

If communities want to mortgage certain parts of their cities, that is their prerogative.

That (usually) works OK for small communities with residents paying for their decision, for example a condo complex community debating whether to build a pool or a playground. For HQ2-scale projects the decision to mortgage parts of a city is done by bureaucrats that have no long-term financial stake in the result: they are here today, gone tomorrow. Letting them decide such things (often in secrecy) is way too cavalier. My 2c.

kodablah6• 8 years ago

is done by bureaucrats that have no long-term financial stake in the result

This is true in many cases (and not in others, such as sports team funding which are often voted on). If we want to have a more nuanced discussion about transparency and direct representation on financial decisions of a certain size (a hot button issue concerning being able to vote on property taxes in my state), that would be reasonable. But it's hard to have these kinds of discussions with pro-tax/anti-company-concession advocates shouting so loudly.

In the meantime, on the scale of politicians with less representation to their constituency, using a federal level mallet is the exact opposite of representative. The city I live in gave large tax breaks and land to companies moving in, seemingly unfairly so compared to existing local companies, but if most of us didn't like the outcome (which most of us do and applaud their appetite for growth/prosperity) we'd have no problem running the mayor and councilmen out of town.

JumpCrisscross2• 8 years ago

For HQ2-scale projects the decision to mortgage parts of a city is done by bureaucrats

Requiring these sorts of subsidies to be approved by a majority of a city's voters wouldn't be a bad restriction to put in place. I'm a New Yorker, and I'm fine with the blood money we had to pay to ensure we got Amazon. But I'd feel much better if I knew it was supported by a majority of voting New Yorkers.

jimbobimbo6• 8 years ago

If local officials, elected by local residents, are not allowed to make such decisions, then who is?

Shivetya• 8 years ago

those same bureaucrats make billion dollar promises to public employee unions that are not sustainable but you won't see nearly the protest against that as with this deal. pension deals that are given for promise of reelection support. promises the politician won't have to be there when the city, state, or county, cannot pay them out. This is happening all across the US with estimates in the hundreds of billions of unfunded liabilities.

tax breaks to corporations at least have the promise of taxable income directly or indirectly later on. so if we are to claim there need to be limits on those types of expenditures we need to be honest and make it for all promises above a certain dollar amount.

tathougies• 8 years ago

I am against corporate giveaways, but I also am against making it illegal for legislatures to legislate. Such things shoukd be handled by the electorate voting out the lawmakers who swindle them through taxes with little to show.

moate5• 8 years ago

What about the electorate voting in candidates that are in favor of banning this practice and those candidates exercising the will of the people by adding a law to the books to prevent this sort of giveaway? If the people want it changed in the future, it can also be undone in a similar manner?

tanilama3• 8 years ago

Why the hell are U.S. cities spending tens of billions of dollars to steal jobs from one another in the first place?

First, US, at this point doesn't have a shortage of jobs, it has a shortage of good jobs. In case of Amazon, it creates good jobs, then it is a demand and supply problem.

romed• 8 years ago

I've interviewed about 100 programmers who just passed their 366th day at Amazon and are looking to get the hell out. Further down the ladder their people are pissing in bottles and collecting food stamps. The only person at Amazon with "a good job" is Bezos himself.

tanilama3• 8 years ago

It is pretty out of touch statement, if you read it carefully. There are probably 1000 people waiting in line to fill those 100 people's jobs. The good jobs you described, decent pay without labor or stress, I do believe they exist, but it is not common, and surely won't become the norm.

zanny• 8 years ago

For most employers satisfied, happy, and content workers are just underexploited. If they aren't miserable you aren't getting your monies worth.

Its a legitimate mindset way too much of the business world in the US believes despite the psychological evidence that content and happy employees are more productive.

The consequence of such a widely held backwards rewards structure is that in almost any job there is someone else doing something even worse that is more than willing to take your spot to reduce their misery by a fraction.

GhostVII4• 8 years ago

I feel like there is some selection bias there - you certainly aren't going to be interviewing very many people who are happy with their current job at Amazon.

nusq• 8 years ago

Cooperation between cities and cartel is no illegal. Cities were caught in a prisoner dilema and forgot to cooperate.

clamprecht• 8 years ago

Does the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment apply to laws that affect businesses? If so, then these kinds of perks may be illegal. But I suspect that equal protection only applies to humans. Lawyers?

dragonwriter5• 8 years ago

Does the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment apply to laws that affect businesses?

Yes.

If so, then these kinds of perks may be illegal.

Probably not; except for subject matter subject to strict or intermediate scrutiny, unequal treatment that has a rational relationship to a legitimate government function (which is quite broad for state governments, as they have general competence rather than limited purposes for federal Constitutional purposes) is allowed.

krrrh3• 8 years ago

Hayek proposed a new amendment that would state, “Congress shall make no law authorizing government to take any discriminatory measures of coercion.” [1] Which would help end this sort of structural corruption.

Corporate welfare is one of the plainest examples of the state using its power to transfer wealth from the general population to the ablest and wealthiest among us. It’s immoral at a fundamental level, and as stated in TFA, corrupting the economy and society in this manner is a bipartisan practice.

[1] http://alex.kozinski.com/articles/Three_Amendments.pdf”

dragonwriter5• 8 years ago

Hayek proposed a new amendment that would state, “Congress shall make no law authorizing government to take any discriminatory measures of coercion.”

All substantive law authorizes government to take measures of coercion (otherwise, it has no compulsory enforcement, and is effectively recommendation rather than law.)

All law distinguishes on some axes, and thus is discriminatory on some basis.

So, Hayek’s proposal amounts to “Congress shall make no law.” Which clearly solves any problem with laws Congress makes, but creates a whole host of new problems. (The system under the Articles of Confederation failed over a less-intense version of the same problem such an amendment would create.)

twblalock• 8 years ago

The author wants to prevent a race to the bottom on taxes. A race to the bottom would be bad if taxes are fair or already too low. But if taxes were too high, a race to the bottom (or just the threat of one) would be a good thing, as it could keep unreasonable tax rates in check.

To put it differently: if companies and individual workers were not able to shop around for the tax regimes they prefer, what would prevent cities and states from raising taxes to unreasonably high levels? Taxes are kept in check by the threat of companies and high-earning taxpayers moving somewhere else.

I would rather live world where taxation is subject to a race to the bottom than in a world where nothing prevents unfairly high tax rates. The latter is definitely worse.

sparky_z2• 8 years ago

I'm fine with jurisdictions competing on taxes, but you have to lower them for everyone. No special tax breaks for individual companies. Provide a level playing field for everyone.

anoncake• 8 years ago

Taxes are kept in check by voters not electing politicians that support too high tax rates. In a democratic society, there is no need for that kind of competition.

protomyth5• 8 years ago

Its hard to make ego illegal. Politicians pull this stunt a lot to "make their city better", but it really comes down to a desire to be seen as a builder even if the cost / benefit just isn't there. Look at all of the rhetoric politicians use when giving speeches about a new stadium. If you get to sit in a box seat and see thousands of fans, its hard not to see it as a success.

The really sucky part is that a lot of people really want the X but don't understand how much their politicians gave up for X. Its often murky and people aren't experts in finance or city budgets. But that new stadium / HQ really looks cool right?

sonnyblarney6• 8 years ago

"Its hard to make ego illegal."

It's very easy to make subsidizing individual companies illegal.

protomyth5• 8 years ago

Given all the tools that are at a politicians disposal, it actually is rather hard to stop all the paths a city can use to participate in this kind of thing since a lot of it is based on what they do everyday.

sonnyblarney6• 8 years ago

Government should ban the subsidization of any specific companies.

Maybe they can give subsidies to businesses under a certain size, or maybe industries wherein there are several players ...

But individual corporate subsidies are irresponsible.

Should be illegal.

chasd00• 8 years ago

the best answer is the town should just have a vote, "we're going to offer between x and y incentives. yes/no?". That's the easiest and most appropriate way to handle it, let the town decide they're the ones paying the taxes anyway. If the people want to go for it then fine.

pauldprice• 8 years ago

I learned years ago that most RFPs are a massive waste of time and effort. But why should the process be illegal? If cities want to compete, so be it. If the citizens don't like it, then vote out the city council. Corruption is illegal... This headline and article are link bait, at best.

asr• 8 years ago

It's worth noting that in Europe things like this are illegal: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/overview/index_en.....

So the idea that it would just be too hard to make this illegal (which I see in at least a few comments) is wrong. We could have laws at the federal level that prevent it. (I'm sure there would be constitutional challenges but that's a separate--and in my view surmountable--issue.)

gnopgnip• 8 years ago

Is what happened with Amazon really fundamentally different than the state building a hospital, staffed by private practice doctors, or a university?

everybodyknows• 8 years ago

Fully agree on principle -- but enforcement remains problematic:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-37444780

An erratically enforced law may be worse than no law at all.

dopamean• 8 years ago

Random question... When Walmart wants to open a new Super Center in a city that doesn't have one do they get incentives from the municipality for that? How often does stuff like this happen at smaller scales?

kukx• 8 years ago

"Every year, American cities and states spend up to $90 billion in tax breaks (...)" Is reducing taxes really equivalent to spending? I do not think so.

tkdc926• 8 years ago

Ok, assume city A offers Amazon one million dollars in tax breaks. If Amazon moves to city A, city A will not receive one million tax dollars from Amazon. If instead Amazon turns down city A and moves to city B, then city A will STILL not receive one million tax dollars from Amazon. City A will NEVER receive one million tax dollars from Amazon, no matter what Amazon decides to do. What am I missing?

Barrin92• 8 years ago

You're not missing anything. It's essentially a zero-sum prestige race, it doesn't make any economic sense.

related to your point, obviously whenever Amazon relocates parts of its staff, some other place loses an equivalent amount of tax revenue, so Americans overall are never better off, but are guaranteed to play localities off each other in an attempt to hand out corporate gifts in a race to the bottom.

We have arrived at a point where not companies compete between each other for economic growth and innovation, but the public competes itself into the ground so that businesses don't have to.

umanwizard2• 8 years ago

"One million dollars in tax breaks" means City A agrees to receive (N-1) million instead of N million from Amazon (and its employees).

"Tax break" doesn't necessarily mean "effective taxes are set to zero".

sdinsn5• 8 years ago

If Amazon moves to city A, it will pay out far more than 1 million in taxes, that's the point. Cities do have an incentive to compete.

sparky_z2• 8 years ago

It's not a net loss to the local government. It's a loss to Amazon's competitors that don't get those tax breaks. That local government is picking winners rather than provide a level playing field, and enriching themselves in the process. It's essentially bribery for favors but payed with tax revenue instead of under-the-table cash.

By all means, lower your taxes if you think it will attract jobs. But lower them for everyone.

jimbobimbo6• 8 years ago

Why federal government (that's article's argument) should be in the business of deciding what kind of agreement local government and private company had reached?

Whenever feds post RFPs for their projects, they put a lot of conditions that company must comply with in order to even be considered. How is this different from what Amazon does?

Amazon has fiduciary duty to their shareholders; local governments have responsibility to their constituents. If both are aligned - why anybody else should have a say in the matter?

You may like or dislike the contract, but as long as both parties are not coerced into the contract (surprise: the city can opt out from bidding!), who cares? The last thing this country needs is more fed involvement.

dragonwriter5• 8 years ago

Why federal government (that's article's argument) should be in the business of deciding what kind of agreement local government and private company had reached?

Assuming the private company isn't doing purely in-state business, the Commerce Clause, and, if it's not either a natural person or an in-state entity, insofar as corporations and other artificial juridical persons are creatures of the chartering governments, the Compact Clause.

jimbobimbo6• 8 years ago

Sure. Only the moment federal govt decides to use that to restrict Amazon's (any company's, really) ability to choose locations, said location will be moved outside of US altogether. Who'll benefit from that?

randyrand• 8 years ago

Or, extend this privilege to all companies and citizens. Competition is a good thing. Just as companies compete for our business, cities should compete for our residence.

jsgo• 8 years ago

Ads, assuming ads based on the status that was popping up in the bottom left, constantly refreshing should be illegal. I got to the point of trying to hover over the link about the people not having standing to sue Ohio to see the URL and couldn't read it because yet another thing was being pulled down after 5 or so minutes on the page. I sat there for a little bit to see how long it'd take to trigger again and the answer is "not long."

As for the topic at hand: I'm against the practice. I'm also against the practice of cities paying for stadiums to lure (or keep) sports teams to their city. And in a lot of cases, it isn't even owned by the city at that stage, but rather the team owner. It is nuts. Quite frankly, as great as it is to get an expansion team to come to your big city for revenue reasons (hopefully. Marlins don't appear to be doing much for Miami, for example), it is also advantageous for the team to move to a bigger city as it increases the pool of potential fans buying tickets, memorabilia, etc. Also, I'd hope that a city I lived in would not pay for the bid to host the Olympics or similar event (tons of money goes into building the stadium and hosting, revenue comes in but not enough to offset, and then you hope you can do something with the building after but in a lot of cases, you can't. Montreal springing to mind here). Also reminded of Curt Schilling's company and Rhode Island. Though honestly, I'm not really all that mad at the companies for engaging in it, so much as cities for taking part in it.

umanwizard2• 8 years ago

What is wrong with it? It's a market solution to Amazon ending up in a city that wants it the most.

Logically, the people who believe "Amazon ruined Seattle" should support a system where the cities that actually want Amazon there can incentivize it to come there and thereby avoid other places.

joewee• 8 years ago

Amazon is going after the federal market in a major way, they MUST expand in the Virginia market. They really have little choice if they plan to support the federal government. They would have moved into the area regardless, crystal city is right next to the pentagon and close to dc. So I think they would have picked that area regardless knowing they prefer urban areas for office locations.

aidenn03• 8 years ago

When I first heard Crystal City, I was thinking first that you couldn't pay me enough for that commute, but then on reflection, if they pay bay-area prices you could afford to have a house between I-395 and the Potomac which would make your commute under 30 minutes.

dnautics• 8 years ago

Congress should institute a federal tax of 100 percent” on corporate subsidies, Jack Markell, a former governor of Delaware, wrote in The New York Times. “This would not include investments in public infrastructure, work force development or other investments that can attract employers while also providing a significant long-term benefit to taxpayers

That's an awfully ill-defined criteria. And anyways contractors for building roads or towing cars, for example are incredibly corrupt too.

ComputerGuru• 8 years ago

Having read the very interesting and thoughtful debate arguments being made in the comments here, I have nothing more to add than to state that this isn't anything new, even if the exact means employed and the parties involved are.

It's a textbook "tragedy of the commons" where, as @konschubert said, the USA los{es,n} out for every dollar spent. But this was never about maximizing revenue/growth/benefit for America, it was cities trying to edge out one another for their own local maxima.

This is also a textbook bidding process, with players holding the cards close to their chest and trying to give up as little as they can while undercutting the competition by as small a margin as they could. The only way to win in a prisoner's dilemma is to collectively not play, something that numerous psychological studies have found to be something humans just aren't good at.

The only part of this that should be illegal (and probably is) is the reveal that there are two HQ2.5s.

metalliqaz2• 8 years ago

how is that probably illegal? For that to be fraud they would had to have contracts with the contestants the specify otherwise.

teh_klev• 8 years ago

This happened in Scotland a few years ago. Scottish Enterprise and the embryonic Scottish Parliament enticed Hyundai's semi-conductor business to set up shop in Dunfermline. Millions were spent on inducements on Hydundai for them to then pull out of the deal and go somewhere cheaper.

Ironically the building is now occupied by one of Amazon's distribution centres, no doubt funded by more public money and employing staff on zero hour contracts with terrible conditions (which the Scottish press reported on).

I wonder why we can't spend these vast sums of money nurturing local indigenous SME's and startups (and I don't mean the sort that involve glorified ToDo lists).

danmg• 8 years ago

State and local governments who submitted proposals and who were rejected should charge them with quid pro quo bribery in each jurisdiction.

onetimemanytime4• 8 years ago

Let me simplify things, USA is great in one way: it has 50 states and thousands of other jurisdictions with their local laws and taxes. Now Amazon said that we plan on bringing xx thousand employees with XXX million in tax revenue and other benefits. Which city can give us a better deal, considering our volume? You buy a screwdriver for $12 but if you want 1 million screwdrivers, the price might drop to $2 or they'll ask you to buy the factory.

So, Amazon asked for offers from 50 US states represented by the BEST (a joke maybe but...) people elected by their voters. If they agreed to it, what's the problem? NY and NYC can hire every law and accounting firm in the country they want to vet it out...who are you to question it, what are your qualifications? Will the restaurants in Queens not report higher sales because of AMZN 25 years from now? Or dry cleaning outfits, dog walkers and therapists? That's MONEY. More or less, every penny they'll make it will be taxed (prob twice) in NY.

enturn• 8 years ago

the Supreme Court avoided a final judgment on the matter by finding unanimously that the plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the suit.

Perhaps existing businesses have a standing to bring a suit by arguing that they already provide jobs. Maybe they already receive a proportional tax benefit?

em3rgent0rdr• 8 years ago

the game of local governments competing to lure big corps with handouts deserves most of the blame. However it is interesting that this game is a result of a prisoners-dilemma phenomenon: although all local governments would be better off if they collectively agreed or otherwise cooperated to NOT entice big corps with special handouts (as the big corps will build in one of them anyway without any subsidy), however all it takes is for one major local government to start waving some incentives for the rest to give in to the game. CNN did a good video on this phenomena: https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/03/13/amazon-hq2-or...

Amazon’s HQ2 Spectacle Should Be Illegal

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