I'm not sure this type of competition is a great thing for citizens, but is this really a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich? Doesn't most tax revenue in the US come from the rich, meaning they're covering most of the bill? In that case it would be more like wealth transfer from rich people to rich companies with some of that wealth making its way back to a subset of rich people and companies (i.e. investors).
I'm sure there are secondary effects impacting the poor but I'm not sure it's as simple as mean rich people reaching into the pockets of the poor - there's not enough money there for it to be a compelling strategy.
Doesn't matter where tax money came from, that part we are not changing. What changes is where that money goes. It could pay for schools, Medicaid, homeless shelters. Now there is going to be less of that, as we are building a helipad for Bezos with some of that money instead.
Which is why it's a wealth transfer towards the rich.
Yes, it could, but that doesn't mean it would in the absence of the incentive for Amazon. I didn't see any indication in the article that this would be paid for by reallocating funds from social programs or education. Has NY indicated how they're funding the incentive elsewhere? If this isn't known, how can you confidently say it's a transfer of wealth from poor to rich?
To be clear, I absolutely think there are probably more socially responsible things to do with the money, but there's a difference between opportunity cost and exploiting NY's poor to build Bezos a helipad.
Where did NY indicate that they're reallocating money from those programs?
I don't think they would. Big infrastructure in New York is expensive, financially and politically. Without Amazon's pressure, there is no way the new campus would have been developed, hooked up and approved as quickly as it has been.
That's just as bad as Irelands tricks helping to avoid taxes due in the UK and other eu states
Which is also why we see the EU go after Ireland and require that they collect taxes from Amazon :) I recall Vestager starting to get the ball rolling a few years ago.
https://www.duijntax.com/en/advance-tax-rulings-negotiations as just one example reference I could quickly find.
Could that possibly make Amazon more efficient, and so employ more people who spend their salaries and so on, creating a net gain for the whole US?
For example some cities were proposing building things like extra train stations, which benefit everyone, and aren't something Amazon could have done privately.
Public infrastructure is available to all.. why can't the public finance it without Amazon?
Cities may have been hoping that with Amazon moving into a region they would have extra tax receipts which would enable spending they would not have been able to afford before.
They'd be much better spending that money on their neglected public transit or their neglected public housing...
But some cities were suggesting that! They were going to invest in infrastructure, knowing that the extra income from Amazon in the area would pay for it. It was not a zero-sum game.