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Originally Posted by animatedmartian
FWIW, Detroit offered $4 billion. Much of it made up of a Michigan tax subsidy that allows corporations to pay no taxes for 10 years, and then 1.1% 20 years thereafter. The limitation is that the state can determine where this incentive can be applied, but for Amazon, the special treatment was that any site the company would have chosen could use the incentive.
What's interesting is that this incentive was created in 1996. On the one hand, companies haven't exactly been flocking to Michigan to take advantage of this incentive in the time period since then, but on the other if the state has that much to spare why isn't it actually investing it?
Either way, this along with the incentives other cities and states offered, kinda goes to show that companies don't necessarily go after the most lucrative subsidies and the New York media (as they are motivated to do) are kinda blowing the deal Amazon got out of proportion. What's NYS tax revenue, like $78 billion as of last year? That's more than my state's entire annual budget and we offered more money! What the hell Bezos? Sure our state has potholes the size of Mars, but it's free money dude!
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Yeah, that's usually the way it goes with the media. Eventually, someone will do a comprehensive comparison of what different places were willing to offer. Only then will people begin to understand that when Amazon says it wasn't about the money, it really wasn't.
As for those other grandstanding and "outraged" politicians, if Amazon was already in Queens with 30-40,000 employees, and suddenly decided they would be leaving the city for lack of any sizeable incentives, they'd be falling over themselves to blame the mayor and governor for not doing anything to keep them in Queens. Because, lets face it, there aren't a host of corporations running over each other to get there. Except, now with Amazon having a massive headquarters there - largest in the city - others will no doubt want to be a part of the borough.