When Amazon put the word out that it was looking for a home for its second headquarters, cities like Detroit got downright crazy, putting boundless energy into luring the online retail giant, offering everything under the sun, including ridiculously enormous tax breaks.
Now, it's clearer that Amazon likely suckered cities like Detroit, writes John Gallagher of the Detroit Free Press:
More and more it sure looks that way. Amazon hasn't yet announced where its sought-after second headquarters, known as HQ2, will go. But the latest news is that Amazon is close to splitting the decision between two cities, New York and Washington, D.C., which were the obvious front-runners all along.
If the outcome was fore-ordained, more or less, why then did Detroit and more than 200 other metros in North America throw vast amounts of tax incentives at Amazon hoping to lure HQ2? Detroit alone, working with state officials, offered Amazon $4 billion to get the 50,000 new jobs and billions in investment that HQ2 supposedly will mean...
But now it appears that Amazon's lottery-like competition for HQ2 was more about sussing out every city's best offer so Amazon could gain bargaining power with the eventual winner or winners. . . .
So next time a giant corporation dangles the lure of new jobs and investment in exchange for billions and billions of public dollars, let's take a pass.
