> I don't really understand that even booming areas like Northern VA and NYC have to give a company subsidies to settle there.

Politicians see the chance for tens of thousands of high paying jobs to be a net positive for their city -> politicians compete to bring said jobs to their city. I don’t understand why this is so controversial. Even absent Amazon’s explicit RFP process, which was a bit tacky, you were always going to have cities falling all over themselves trying to gain Amazon’s favor. It’s no different than if you were buying a car and trying to play multiple dealers off each other, just on a larger scale. To think that NYC and DC don’t have to compete to attract business is naive.

Because it’s an unfair playing field. Government is supposed to be a check on corporate power - not guaranteeing it with unfair advantages.

On the non business side our tax dollars are going to support billionaires. At the national level this is pretty close to zero sum. Every dollar Amazon doesn’t pay is a dollar someone else has to. Discrepancies between regions would be solved more efficiently with transfer/equalization payments.

Government is also supposed to create jobs. It's a double edged sword. While it's been relatively lax on the oversight, everyone loves jobs. Unfortunately not enough regulation can lead to the same outcome as too much regulation as when there are too many monopolies like there are right now, it crowds out small businesses which actually create most of the jobs.

Amazon doesn't give out jobs out of the goodness of their heart. Every person they employ they do so with the goal of making more than it costs to employ that person.

So why should they get so much as 1 cent to help with that?

It's an awful broken system and the politicians who enable it should be tossed out of office.

>I don't really understand that even booming areas like Northern VA and NYC have to give a company subsidies to settle there.

Corruption has become so ingrained in the state that it has become part of the official duties of the state.

As a taxpayer I would prefer we didn't give any for profit business so much as a nickel.

Part of what's so ridiculous about all this is if you picked 2 places for Amazon to go then NYC and DC would be right near the top. They want government money, they want access to talent. Obvious choices. If neither city gave them a cent they would still end up there.