Consider, in Wisconsin, we have to pay on the order of roughly USD400M to USD500M per year, for about the next ten years. And we're a state that, compared to New York, is mired in abject poverty.
And to add insult to injury, that USD400M per year is for only HALF the jobs that New York is getting. And they don't pay as well.
Wisconsin also doesn’t have corporate taxes so a lot of the Foxconn benefits were structured as direct payments rather than tax breaks.
And many weren’t even dependent on Foxconn employing a certain number of people, which is why now that their plans have scaled down the numbers look disastrous.
> assuming 15k jobs in New York is $75MM/yr, which is a lot of money
They'll probably pay it back in payroll taxes. The subsidy effect is an unfair tipping of the scales in favor of large companies. But mass has its benefits. You can't renovate LIC in the hope that businesses will move there. An anchor employer underwrites infrastructure with broader social benefits without requiring the city to co-ordinate lots of smaller employers. (The follow-on question being, how do we make such co-ordination easier.)
