>At the 50-75 year timeframe we are talking about at least hundreds of billions of dollars of economic value, if not trillions. The clustering effect of becoming Silicon Valley 2 cannot be overstated.

What are you talking about? Put those numbers back where they came from - your ass.

>Personally I think the cities that only have tax incentives to offer will not come out the winner. Amazon cares a lot more about the surrounding infrastructure and ecosystem than a short term $1 Billion.

Agree but that's not the point. Amazon isn't really considering twenty cities, they're considering maybe three but they really want these cities to think they're on even ground so they can extract as much tax breaks as possible from one of the cities they would choose regardless. It's about maximum short-term extraction from their existing long-term choice.

>It’s completely irrational anti-capitalistic knee jerking to whine that cities shouldn’t be working hard to support HQ2 in their backyard. We are watching capitalism at its finest here folks

Let's not use 'irrational' this way, it's perfectly rational to be against this but...

You're right, this is exemplar of capitalism, it's also why I lot of people are turning their noses up at it. HQ2 really illustrates we've moved from seeing markets as a tool which are sometimes useful and sometimes not to being a market society which sees markets as the outsourcing of morality. No ideas have to be considered, the market will decide (and it's always right), it's a strange faith.

>and market efficiency driving negotiation and competition is creating significantly better outcomes than the “fuck Amazon they don’t need handouts” crowd would arrive at.

What is that outcome? That Amazon locates where it would have located regardless but with enough tax concessions that it's benefit to the community is substantially reduced? That Amazon's size allows it to pit cities against each other to lower costs, achieving economies of scale that upstarts just won't be able to match and further entrenching it? That Amazon shareholders get a nice dividend next year, funded directly from the concessions that Toronto or Atlanta gives them?

>If someone came to your town and said, I want to build a $20m community arts center with a theater, coworking space, parks, gardens, and playground — would you want your town to say “good luck with that” or would you want them to say “that’s amazing what do you need from us to make that happen?!”

If someone came to your town and said, I want to build a $20m sports stadium — would you want your town to say “good luck with that” or would you want them to say “that’s amazing what do you need from us to make that happen?!” Just because Amazon happens to be for-profit, their presence in your city is an extraordinary asset and it makes perfect sense to entice them to come.

Giving a bunch of concessions to Amazon isn't going to benefit the average Atlantan. Lots more people but without the corresponding taxes to keep public services up. Just like stadiums, this isn't a company working to benefit the surrounding community in the best way possible like some PR might tell you, it's Amazon trying to save as much money as possible, nothing else. Benefits to the surrounding community is a side-effect, a leakage and Amazon has every incentive to plug that leak wherever possible, here it happens to be taxes.

>In fact, you can’t even consider building at anywhere near HQ2 scale without an intimate partnership with the host city which is, in one form or another, going to require somewhere on the order of dollar-for-dollar public investment to match the private investment.

This is just sick, it's corporate welfare. If I'm paying for Amazon, then I want part of the profit.

>We’ve proven that this public/private partnership is basically the most effective growth engine we’ve got.

It's also a significant contributor to our inequality problem. Growth at all costs isn't the answer so neither is making Amazon's costs public but allowing it's profit to remain private.