Why Amazon’s Search for a Second Headquarters Backfired

Amazon’s much publicised hunt for its second headquarters (HQ2) seems to be drawing some negative PR given the disclosures around how much of taxpayers’ money politicians are willing to fork out as incentives. “Each year, local politicians spend up to an estimated $90 billion to lure corporations like Amazon to their states, which The Atlantic points out is “more than the federal government spends on housing, education, or infrastructure.” Especially at a time when concerns around the concentration of power among a handful of big corporates, particularly big-tech are rising. Some of the stats in this piece from WIRED are startling.

HQ2’s public nature and enormous size turned individual proposals into front-page news—especially how much lawmakers planned to give the retail giant. Maryland, for example, was willing to fork over as much as $8.5 billion…
..The size of the deal quickly sparked outrage from both sides of the political spectrum, particularly in New York….“The richest man in the world just got $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies? How does that work?”…

…The company regularly receives public incentives to open facilities like warehouses and data centers, which Good Jobs First estimateshave totaled $1.6 billion. An investigation from the nonprofit New Food Economy found that some Amazon warehouse workers are paid so little that they often qualify for another type of public benefit: food stamps. In some cases, taxpayers may even be subsidizing Amazon’s electricity costs, according to a Bloomberg report from August.

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