Lots of emotion in that post, but to my mind it comes down to equality under the law. Governments shouldn’t be able to negotiate ad-hoc taxing/regulatory rules on a per business basis. The tax and regulatory regime should be the same for all businesses in the jurisdiction. Level playing field ...
A secondary reason against these deals is that I don’t think government bureaucrats are particularly good at negotiating these deals. Too easy for businesses to change their mind/plans and not suffer any real consequences.
> If we did not give private corporations any free public money, they would still build their business facilities, because doing so is a necessary part of doing business, which is what businesses do.
Listen, I hate Big Companies as much as the next guy, but let's be honest here. There are very valid arguments on both sides of the equation. I'm going to look at a different, but related (and better-studied) phenomenon: farm subsidies.
It's not hard to see that farm subsidies have some upside: they stabilize the agriculture economy, and this policy treats food as a matter of national security[1]: it would be a very bad thing if food production ceased. On the other hand, others argue that farm subsidies hurt the economy and the public more than they help[2]. There's no easy to answer to this, but it's not like FDR started subsidizing farmers out of the blue.
Similarly, there must be arguments both for and against allowing Amazon's doing. I would genuinely like to hear both -- after all, I have no horse in this race -- but this article is too slanted to form any kind of educated opinion.
without any sarcastic intent, Amazon is a business, and business has that "for profit" mention to is mission.
I operate my business in the U.K. I could have chosen any of the other 140-160 countries, but I didn't. It is convenient AND profitable to do so in the U.K. taking advantage of the goodies this state offers (for my case).
I am a nobody, and therefore I have no bargaining power to get more out of this setup. I follow the rules and drink my tea at 5pm.
BUT (big but here) if I could, then I would most definitely bargain with HMRC (UK's IRS) to pay 1% instead of 15%-30%, and have a couple of steers named after me. :)
Yes we know. So what? The point is not that Amazon shouldn't try and do this out of the goodness of their hearts, it's that they shouldn't be allowed to do it by federal law.
Lots of swearing, not a lot of logic, facts, or accuracy. It's wrong from the very start (Bezos is not, by any measure, the "richest person in history". I'm not even sure he makes the top 10 of "richest Americans in history"; he's beaten by both Gates and several gilded-age robber barons, and they're in turn dwarfed by historical figures like Alan Rufus or Mansa Musa I).
As for the actual meat of the article:
> Companies like Amazon build new headquarters and other facilities because they have a business need to do so. If a business has a business need to build a business facility, you do not need to pay the business money to do so.
Right, and I purchase lunch because I have a biological need to do so. And yet! Businesses still compete for my lunch order on price, including "paying me money" to win my business (or as normal people call it, offering me a discount). It's almost like my market transaction, freely entered into by both parties, rewards both of us, and both of us have an incentive to find, respectively, a good vendor and good customers! And in a market transaction, those incentives will often end up causing a competition based on price or other crude metrics like size!
> The only thing that every damn city in America is bidding on here is the right to have a business facility located in a certain place.
Which is a thing which has value, and thus is the sort of thing that people bid on, yes. What element of your time on planet earth led you to believe any other thing might possibly happen?
Now, it's totally possible that the eventual deal will prove to be a bad one for the lucky city (...or even Amazon) but 1) no such deal exists yet 2) we have no idea what the terms will be and 3) unlike the perennial boondoggle that is subidising stadiums, an Amazon headquarters could conceivably have a transformative effect.
> There’s an easy way to ensure that this charade doesn’t happen: a federal law banning these kinds of state and local subsidies to private businesses.
1) I have zero faith in the ability of legislators to draft a law that actually prevents this and 2) Amazon's HQ search is the worst possible example of what needs to be stopped. How about the subsides for making films in a state? Or the hideously pointless stadium subsidies?
I hate corporate welfare as much as the next quasi-minarchist libertarian (which, spoiler alert, is a LOT), but come on. This reads like the result of a college student who just sat through their first lecture on corporate welfare, spent 60 seconds on google news, and then spat out some clickbait.
Regarding the 'richest person in history' claim, I remember reading about this a couple of year ago [1]:
(top) 1. Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa Abraham Cresques—Getty Images/The Bridgeman Art Library
Year: 1280–1337
Country: Mali
Wealth: Richer than anyone could describe
Mansa Musa, the king of Timbuktu, is often referred to as the wealthiest person in history. According to Ferrum College history professor Richard Smith, Musa’s west African kingdom was likely the largest producer of gold in the world—at a time which gold was in especially high demand.
It's pretty hard to define wealth, since so much of it historically has been illiquid. If you can't turn all or most of your wealth into some other form of asset, should it really be counted? But you can say the same about Bezos' fortune: he can sell $1B of stock per year, but selling much more would devalue his worth considerably.
And of course is there a difference between the absolute control that absolute rulers had and ownership?
But there's little argument that Mansa Musa was the richest of all time and that Putin is currently the richest.
A secondary reason against these deals is that I don’t think government bureaucrats are particularly good at negotiating these deals. Too easy for businesses to change their mind/plans and not suffer any real consequences.