[Barrin92]

>The taxpayer in NY ends up better off after this deal;

you added a qualifier that OP did not add. Yes, the new york taxpayer is better off, but this is rent-seeking behavior

New York is better off by subsidizing Amazon in the same sense as Luxembourg is better off compared to other European countries by being a tax haven. Hardly something applaudable.

[Godel_unicode]

NY taxpayers are collectively paying for something of benefit to them with their tax dollars. It's something which can only be paid for by aggregating many people's money together, and creates a spillover benefit for the people paying for it.

That's literally what taxes are for.

[Barrin92]

No, this is not comparable to a simple tax collection. In the usual case, people leverage a tax on people or property within their own jurisdictions to fund programs. That is to say, they themselves pay for their services.

What is happening here is that New York creates an incentive that is supposed to motivate Amazon to move economic activity out of some other location in the US to New York, at the disadvantage of everyone else, who now can either enter into this competition and erode their own tax base, or take the loss.

If you could simply increase your tax revenue by giving tax money away to companies, you would have invented a magical tax money printing machine.

[Godel_unicode]

> If you could simply increase your tax revenue by giving tax money away to companies

I find it the height of irony that, on a site created by a startup accelerator, you're saying that you can't help a business by giving it cash

[Barrin92]

by funding a startup you are adding competition to the market. Funding startups is not a zero sum game. In fact fostering a local entrepreneurship community that can compete with amazon on the market would be to the benefit of workers, the economy, and citizens. Transplanting existing Amazon jobs from one place to the other, is a zero sum game.

related article precisely on this issue:

https://hbr.org/2018/07/landing-amazon-hq2-isnt-the-right-wa...

[Godel_unicode]

You think that Amazon has 25,000 jobs that are going to be transplanted to NY? Come on.

[ljf]

I argue that no, taxes are not 'for' subsidising private companies.