There's the sad spectacle of mayors groveling for money, but then there's a longer term sad spectacle of many of these failing local governments engaging in long term corruption, slighting people for short term gains, and particularly upstate New York where the onion wrote an article making fun of a cities proposal, an area which is notorious for it's brain drain where union workers, rigged business models, ..all with the buffalo billions scandal (just Google it, about the solar City plant in buffalo) still overhanging in the midst of a state governor engaged in three stacked federal investigations on top after one of the most abysmal and embarrassing presidential election in American history, both candidates being from New York, regardless of which side you take. Corruption, and a long history of incestuous government and business politics with a culture of conflicts of interests and corruption being the norm, meanwhile driving out every big company that has wanted to come to the point that solar City/Tesla the new chip factory want to have nothing to do with them, is really due to one thing, the self destructive nature of people who take and slight people for short term gains, or use their power to embed themselves from criticism and ensure entitlement to things they do not continually have to prove they have earned.

In the long run, this mentality results in a brain drain, and a sad cycle of cities being poor, raising homeowners taxes further until all the people successful enough to own homes leave to go elsewhere and take their jobs with them, until the government is solely responsible for providing economic welfare to the people. After decades of this, governments become used to playing both the economy and the government and lose all concepts of a healthy balance between the two.

After living in cities like this, and growing up poor I can say I don't think it means these cities shouldn't try or that the rest of the world should forget about them, I just mean there is something so inherently self destructive about the idea that cities that grovel for business ironically display their own ability to address their own problems. Being self sufficient, and fostering that sense in people even to people who are born in an economic disadvantage is important for ones own sense of what they can accomplish. When a city has a government used to playing god government and business and the city is accustomed to being the victim bad things happen.

I can say it's a sad story. Most people who grow up in cities this isolated and depressed are not only unknowing of how to advocate for themselves, many have justified their culture by being voilently xenophobic against people perceived to have "money" contributing an even more viscious cycle of the brain drain.

New York has been losing young people for over 25 years. I don't suspect Amazon would come here, but even so it would take decades to see a real culture change and ultimately every individual needs to contribute to a positive change and a success attitude.

I was in Seattle this summer and anytime Amazon or an Amazon employee came up, people in Seattle became slighted and disgusted and immediately blurted out some passive agressive comment about Amazon or a negative stereotype about Amazon employees, even from store owners down the street from Amazon buildings that clearly benefited from the company being there, but didn't seem to understand that or be grateful or even objectively consider their self destructive attitude. This happened to me several times while being in Seattle and visiting friends at Amazon.

It is because of that culture that is hard to change that even after all this time of Amazon being there, still within a stone's throw away is hate and animosity to the very thing poor cities seem to think their people will benefit from. Assigning blame to either the company the people the mayor's or Amazon employees doesn't seem like a productive conclusion, but acknowledging that the behavior I've witnessed to anyone who realizes where I work even if I never mention it, immediately becomes hostile to me and assumes the worst about my character and motivation ("all you care about is money" actually no all I cared about was physics in highschool and I kept pursuing my curiosities never parties worked hard in highschool and college and everyday since then for something I'm endlessly curious about and never got a degree in political science or economics but here I am responsible for what you deem to be an inequality I meticulously designed for your demise).