Amazon?s HQ2 debacle is the latest sign that the public has gotten wise to corporate subsidies When Amazon announced the long-awaited ?winners? of its search for a second headquarters last November, the swift and visceral backlash from residents and local officials of New York City seemed destined to fizzle with time, just like similar outrage every time a city gives out half a billion dollars to build a stadium or lure a manufacturing plant.
But this time was different. Amazon endured three months of negative publicity in New York before giving up the $2.8 billion in subsidies the state and city offered the company in return for a new campus in Long Island City, a neighborhood in the midst of a development boom that?s already the priciest in the borough of Queens. While a similar fate has not met Amazon?s other HQ2 location in Crystal City, Virginia, and a smaller operations center in Nashville, Tennessee?at least not yet?New York?s victory over a company as wealthy and powerful as Amazon will no doubt embolden residents of other cities to rise up the next time an elected officials tries to give a sweetheart deal to a corporate entity.
And it was no small victory. At the time of the announcement in November, Amazon?s deal with New York stood to become the fifth-largest corporate welfare subsidy in American history, according to a Curbed analysis of data from Good Jobs First. It would have made Amazon the fifth-highest recipient of corporate welfare behind only Boeing...