| > I would seriously doubt that any city would be offering this if they didn't believe that it would be net positive for their area. I would. What's good for a "city" is not necessarily good for the residents of that city. These are two totally different entities with their own wants and needs, that are not guaranteed to act in the others best interest. In fact, occasionally the incentives are so misaligned as to be polar opposites. For example : > Between increases in property values (thereby increased taxes) Increased property value is never just a "good" thing. It's an explicit tradeoff. More expensive property is "good" for the municipality government (their incomes rise), but generally bad for most actual humans (their expenses directly increase as a result of this, doubly so if they aren't wealthy enough to already own property). > number of high-income earners, and new spending from these people, Again, this is not a good thing, it's an explicit tradeoff. This is good for high-income earners (who can use each other to push their own careers forward), but is explicitly bad for everyone other resident, who can't. If a bunch of "high earners" enter your market, and you yourself are not a high earner, your income remains mostly flat, but literally every cost you have has gone up significantly. (Housing, Transportation, Education, Medical, Daycare, etc). You are now competing against high-income people for almost everything, but with little-to-none of the money they have. You will loose, every time. |
The idea of high-income earners driving up costs for everyone may be true as well. I don't have enough background other than anecdotal evidence to say one way or another though. Looking at price increases and any benefit changes to low income earners / low income migration from the area would be an interesting study once Amazon HQ2 gets off the ground.