Basically, a plea for everybody else to make it more difficult to do business in their local community, so NYC can be more competitive. I'm sure there is a tragedy of the commons somewhere in the "pitting cities against one another" as he mentioned. But perhaps it isn't ideal to think that a large corporation needs to come to your city and fix your problems either, and that it's not fair that they don't want to.

With a corporation the size of Amazon, US cities aren't just competing against each other. The US is a whole is competing against other countries. And these companies are competing against other global companies. Of course they are going to want the lowest hassle, highest efficiency, and largest margins possible.

Surely helping the poor and encouraging business don't need to be diametrically opposed. One might think the two go hand in hand.