"Incredibly, I have heard city and state elected officials who were opponents of the project claim that Amazon was getting $3 billion in government subsidies that could have been better spent on housing or transportation. This is either a blatant untruth or fundamental ignorance of basic math by a group of elected officials. The city and state 'gave' Amazon nothing. Amazon was to build their headquarters with union jobs and pay the city and state $27 billion in revenues. The city, through existing as-of-right tax credits, and the state through Excelsior Tax credits - a program approved by the same legislators railing against it - would provide up to $3 billion in tax relief, IF Amazon created the 25,000-40,000 jobs and thus generated $27 billion in revenue. You don't need to be the State's Budget Director to know that a nine to one return on your investment is a winner."

Sorry, but this is just spin.

Of course the city was giving them something - that's what the $3b in "tax relief" was about.

Things get better with scale. If an existing local business could create 25-40,000 new jobs and generate $27 billion in new tax revenue, they'd also be able to get a $3 billion dollar tax break.

Ah, so you like winner-take-all economics where those who are already winning have it easier to keep winning.

Gotcha.

The tax incentives in the Amazon deal were almost entirely general incentives available to any company that invested in building or expanding in that location.

Quantity discount.

For example, if you buy 10 cars from a dealer you're going to get a better per-car deal than if you buy 1.