> Your entire post just described, by definition, a race to the bottom.
Every negotiation is "race to the bottom" for the side that is paying - they want to pay as little as possible. However, there is the natural bottom for it - as soon as the deal costs more than it brings in - in fact, as soon as the deal costs more that what it brings in, including reasonable profit - the side that is dissatisfied would refuse to make a deal. What would be the point?
> It's absurd to think Amazon is doing NY a favor by bringing more than $0.
Why is it absurd? If Amazon is doing NY a disfavor, why NY wants it? Do they hate themselves? Are they gluttons for punishment? Were they forced into the deal by a secret Amazon ninja army? No, I don't think so - I think they want the deal because the think the deal is good for them. Of course, you know better, but I think for most people your argument is not exactly obvious. Or correct.
> they say to me "Well, you currently earn nothing, so you should be mighty thankful we'll pay you even $1/hr".
They can. And you can say "go fish, I won't work for $1". And then they'd say "well, how about $10 - would you work for $10?" And you'd say "now you're talking!"
> The corporation would make more money.
No they won't - people wouldn't work for them, and corporation rarely are able to make money when having no employees. That's why only about 2% of the workforce earns minimum wage. One would expect the greedy corporations to pay absolute minimum, right? But they pay way more. You'd have to find a theory that accounts for that. I have one, but looks like you do not.
> Do we want people to get paid $1/hr?
We want people to get paid whatever they can get paid. As we can see, it's in about 98% of cases more than both $1 and minimum wage.
> and letting Amazon pay less than they should is exactly the same, and has the same outcomes.
No it does not. I welcome you to consider why business-to-business transaction is different from person-to-employer relationship (hint: people can go hungry and sick, but corporations rarely die from not being able to locate headquarters in New York). It's a business transaction, one that NY made voluntarily, and one that they expect would be very profitable for them. Of course, as everything in life, they might be wrong - sometimes business transactions go bad - but declaring this transaction is wrong because you could've gotten everything and more for free makes no sense. You couldn't have gotten it for free, and dreaming about it doesn't make current transaction destructive for society, quite the opposite - it brings jobs and investment.