I'm glad, maybe this will lead to a movement cracking down on that sort of corporate welfare in general.

Because if not for Bezos, those funds would have gone to other companies—some of which might have actually needed them, and weren’t just using their clout to try and get free cash while floating on billions in profit.

So now we're going to blame Bezos for using a incentive-program the way it was expressly meant to be used? Perhaps we should also start shaming white collar professionals who take advantage of 401k plans and Mortgage Interest deductions. If they didn't try to reduce their tax bill, that money could have gone to others who actually needed them.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

> Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Why not both?

> Mortgage Interest deductions

Can we get rid of those?

> Don't hate the player, hate the game

Without the players, the game ends.

Amazon can afford to pay its own costs many times over. Many SMEs cannot. I'd have had a lot of respect for Amazon had they just chosen a site on logistical criteria and built it out of pocket. Instead, I despise them even more than before.

These tax breaks existed long before Amazon planned on moving to New York. SMEs could and still can utilize them if they choose to do so. There's nothing that prevents them from doing so and they also have more incentives available to them than larger businesses.

> There's nothing that prevents them from doing so

If Amazon moved in the public coffers would be 3B smaller and those benefits might not exist.

> I'd have had a lot of respect for Amazon had they just chosen a site on logistical criteria and built it out of pocket.

Amazon is a publicly traded company. Like every company, the point of the business is to generate profit. This means reducing overhead costs in order to do so.

Sure, they could do it out of pocket, but why do that when NY was offering standard business incentives to bring them there? Why cost your investors money when you don't need to?

Look at any large company, they're going to do the same thing and try and leverage any avenue to reduce overhead costs. It's just smart business, period. Show me a company who paid their own way without any state or local tax breaks and I'll show you 100 fold more who did.

Amazon doesn't pay dividends, so the magnitude of profit has no direct relevance to shareholders.

So if it won't harm the shareholders ( most of whom are secondary-market holders and thus not investors ) why not what is morally right versus technically right?

Isn't that what we ask engineers to consider before working for ad networks, for example? Why does that not scale to companies?

Whether a company pays a dividend or not has no relevance to whether profit should matter to an investor. I'm not sure what you're trying to make a point about here. Additionally, I'm not sure what your point about "secondary market holders" vs "investors" is about either. Would you mind clarifying these?

> Whether a company pays a dividend or not has no relevance to whether profit should matter to an investor.

What? The point if owning stocks is receiving dividends, otherwise it's just speculation. Without dividends, you can only realize gains by selling to someone else, turning the whole thing into a Ponzi scheme.

Instead they wasted how much time and money on a fake search, only to have the whole thing blow up in their face.

The idea that they had to do this out of "obligation to shareholders" is ridiculous. Amazon has avoided profit in search of growth for decades. For a supposedly long term thinking company this was a misstep.

The funds don’t exist. They aren’t going anywhere because NYC now has less money than before not more.