This has nothing to do with Amazon "playing games" and everything to do with politicians making deals so multi-billion dollar companies can avoid their tax obligations. Hilarious, anywhere else in the world it's called corruption, but in America "It's just business"
>They may very well be making a good decision from their narrow perspective, and the city that Amazon chooses may very well see a net increase in tax revenue.
There is no universe where that is true. It just means all the cities are in a race to the bottom competition. Sure their tax revenue may have net increased, but it will be by a much lower amount than it should be.
"Net increase in tax revenue at all costs" is not the goal here.
What do you think is going to happen when this happens all across America, and every time a monster company does something they get out of paying billions in tax?
I'm saying that, in the context of the world as it exists today, if I am the mayor of Boston, it will benefit my city to offer Amazon tax breaks to entice them to build there.
I think perspective is key here. From a broad economic perspective, Amazon is going to build this thing somewhere, and so these kinds of trade-offs seem pointless. Economists likely object because the whole thing is economically inefficient from a broad (national) perspective.
But from the perspective of a local government, that may not be the case. A local government is concerned about the local economy more than the national economy, and so offering these perks makes sense.
Again, I agree that the whole thing is regrettable, and that it probably hurts the economy as a whole. I wish Amazon didn't play these games. But I also think it's worth pushing back against the idea that these local governments are clueless idiots. They may very well be making a good decision from their narrow perspective, and the city that Amazon chooses may very well see a net increase in tax revenue.