Please rip off our community

I had a lovely visit with my brother and his family over New Year. His granddaughter, now 3 weeks old, is easy to hold – when she’s not squalling. The boys – 19 months and 4 years – were as rambunctious as expected, though their father was good at issuing time-outs when needed. The older boy managed to stay up to midnight on New Year’s Eve, though he was in bed promptly afterward. The adults complained a lot about how cold it was outside, which prevented the boys from working off some energy.

The trip south featured a snowstorm in Toledo. My progress was interrupted by some kind of backup in Findlay, Ohio. There was highway construction that funneled us down to one lane, but that process was a lot slower than I would have guessed – I managed 3 miles in 45 minutes. I got off for lunch and asked the waitstaff for an alternate route back to the highway. They were gracious in providing directions, but didn’t know what would cause such a delay.

There was so much slush and salt on the roads on Christmas day and after that by the time I got to my brother’s place my car was more pink than red.

On the trip home I began at a car wash (conveniently adjacent to the hotel). For this trip the sun was out and the sky mostly clear (though still cold). The only delay was in Toledo for a 10 minute backup.



Amazon, the retail behemoth, announced in September that it was seeking a location for a second corporate headquarters. That prompted cities and states to submit bids to tempt Amazon to choose them for HQ2.

Nancy Kaffer of the Detroit Free Press saw Detroit’s proposal. Such a proposal would have been impossible for Detroit just 10 years ago. To be able to put together such a bid Detroit and state gov’t assembled a pretty good team to create a comprehensive package. It features something others don’t – Detroit’s easy access to Canada offers a two-nation headquarters. Detroit has come a long way in 10 years.

The Hoghtower Lowdown, written by Jim Hightower, says that what Amazon did was take “milk the taxpayer” to a whole new level.

That game is usually played by a big corporation playing off one city against another in trying to get the sweetest pot of tax breaks and gimmies. Nearly every large corporation plays that game. But Amazon simply said we’re building a new HQ, here are the jobs we’ll bring and the money we’ll invest, and these are our requirements in tax breaks. Then Amazon sat back and let the bidding war take over. As Hightower puts it, state and local officials have …

rushed to Bezos’ corporate castle to grovel, dance, beg, and stage dog-and-pony spectacles in the perverse hope that Amazon might choose *their* taxpayers to rip off.

Hightower documents the ways this is a ripoff.

Taxpayers get stuck with a huge tab for those new jobs. New York paid Yahoo $2 million per job, Louisiana paid Valero Energy over $15 million per job. The tax breaks are huge, the trumpeted job counts are a mirage, and the investments do not pay for themselves in increased employee taxes.

Workers get shafted two ways. First, these behemoths are notorious for paying poverty wages. Second, the competition drives out local businesses. Jobs lost far exceed jobs gained (even if inflated job numbers are actually met).

Communities suffer too. The small and locally owned businesses (which really do create jobs) don’t get corresponding tax breaks and gimmies. The towns face empty storefronts. Communities also become homogenized. Tax revenue is lost both because it is sucked up by the behemoth and because the local job creators are pushed out of business. They lose revenue for roads and schools. Inequality grows.

We should all say what Little Rock, Arkansas said to Bezos: “Hey Amazon, we need to talk.” Our human scale and non-hectic quality of life “would be totally wrecked” by your demands and “we can’t sacrifice that for you.” That letter appears as a full-page ad in the Washington Post – which Bezos owns.