I'm sorry but these arguments are philosophical and completely ignore the facts of the deal:

> So the difference between the state and private citizens is one of choice. You have no choice but to deal with the state

Amazon is an interstate business with $240B in revenue. New York City has $100B in revenue. Amazon has a lot of different cities to choose from. They aren't trapped in any meaningful way, which is why this is a negotiation at all.

> When the government treats two entities differently, the one with the advantage can put the other one out of business if it acts competently. So Amazon would be able to eat all the little guys.

The deal offered to Amazon is the exact same deal offered to any business moving jobs into the state (including any of Amazon's competitors that would like to take this deal). Please look at the requirements for qualifying here: https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program

And if you don't want there to be big businesses in New York State I feel like that's kind of a separate argument.

> We see the gain because it happens in one place. The pain is spread across many businesses -- possibly numbering in the thousands.

This is nonsense. It goes completely in the face of basic economic principles. More jobs creates an increase in aggregate demand which helps everyone. Beyond that, the gain is extremely diffused through taxation.

> It's also worth thinking about the fact that those jobs will be created anyway.

This is totally false. Amazon currently employs about 1/6 of the number of people they would be employing at the low end of the estimates. Will Amazon continue growing their NYC offices? Of course. To the tune of 80-90%? Absolutely not. Those jobs are going to Virginia, and along with them one of New York City's prime chances to diversify away from finance money. Beyond that an additional 11,000 union construction jobs were lost.

> What I'm saying is that no jurisdiction should offer preferential treatment to one company. If you would like your city to have very low taxes, great. But everybody should be able to take advantage of them, not big companies alone.

Again, this is pretty ignorant of the reality of the situation. I don't think there is a single state without economic development programs similar to the Excelsior Jobs Program. These programs are widely supported on both sides of the aisle as being beneficial to everyone. The idea that the tax break to Amazon equates to "very low taxes" is wildly misleading. It's a temporary 10% discount on the city with literally the highest taxes in the country, and again, very very small companies can and have taken advantage of the Excelsior Jobs Program.

> The crack bit was meant to highlight the short-term vs. long-term effects. Short term, Amazon comes to town, many jobs are created, all is great. Long-term, biasness across the country will fail to compete -- some for good reason, others because they couldn't get preferential treatment.

The long term effects are also New York City further cementing itself as a tech hub, diversifying away from finance. This could've been a huge, decisive step in that direction, signalling to other companies our commitment to the future and technology. Instead it was a lost of 36-51,000 good paying technology and union jobs, and a loud signal to this country's tech businesses that we will not be welcoming to them. And again: the preferential treatment thing is just not reasonably true. All companies moving a significant number of jobs to New York City have access to the Excelsior Jobs Program.