The Atlantic, November 12, 2018: Amazon’s HQ2 spectacle isn’t just shameful- it should be illegal
Fourteen months ago, Amazon announced a national beauty contest, in which North American cities could apply to win the honor of landing the retailer’s second headquarters. The prize: 50,000 employees and the glory of housing an international tech giant. The cost? Just several billion dollars in tax incentives and a potential face-lift to the host city.
Every year, American cities and states spend up to $90 billion in tax breaks and cash grants to urge companies to move among states. And since cities and states can’t print money or run steep deficits, these deals take scarce resources from everything local governments would otherwise pay for, such as schools, roads, police, and prisons.
There are three major problems with America’s system of corporate giveaways. First, they’re redundant. Second, companies don’t always hold up their end of the deal. Third, even when the incentives aren’t redundant, and even when companies do hold up their end of the bargain, it’s still ludicrous for Americans to collectively pay tens of billions of dollars for huge corporations to relocate within the United States.
