Earlier quoted context omitted.
It still lost income. That money could have gone to New York, or another city, or another country. Instead it remains with Amazon.
That's only true if somebody else wasn't going to give them a big deal. Your premise requires a scenario where all cities work together to specifically avoid Amazon getting a deal, rather than any of them competing. All it takes is one city to breach that and start offering incentives, then it all folds. Short of implementing a federal law against it, there is no scenario where cities were not going to compete to lur…
i would say that's unfortunate rather than fortunate.
Cities competing for businesses is a net loss to the tax payer. If a business is to build a new HQ or invest, they should do it on the merits of their business needs and general condition applicable to all businesses.
If a particular company gets an unfairly good treatment, then it's very anti-competitive for other businesses. Why should tax payer shoulder any burden for a private business specifically, rather than building general infrastructure that benefits all businesses?
> If I'm Detroit and I want to rebuild my collaped city ... offer up incentives such as tax breaks for businesses
that would be great - if it was a general tax break, rather than a tax break targeted at specific companies that others can't gain access to.