> A tax break on future hypothetical tax revenues does not cost the taxpayer anything.

By the definition of cost I think your comment refers to, it doesn't. But be aware that adding a company that size and all the employees that will follow will cost the city money.

> Especially when Amazon could have easily placed their new offices in lower tax or tax free zones.

By the definition of cost I think your comment refers to, this also wouldn't have costed the taxpayer anything ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

That's a non sequitur; Amazon would still have built its HQ2s somewhere if not NY and VA. My point is the tax subsidies are roughly equal to $2B, so they effectively cancel out the fund.

That isn't a very in depth analysis of the situation. Those tax dollars pay for things like infrastructure and services, that all those new employees will be consuming. I would be interested in seeing a more detailed analysis than what's provided in that post.

What's the problem with most projections though? How do they arrive at this number? It seems to me that this is similar to a startup offering 5 year growth projections.

I mean, one problem in this whole assumption to me seems whether Amazon even can more than double in size. If Amazon plans on growing its white collar workforce from 40k to 100k, presumably it needs to double its revenue. We are also assuming that they double revenue/headcount without increasing Seattle headcount, wage growth, or that automation reduces the need to increase headcount. All of this is possible, but it isn't necessarily a shoe in that Amazon even pulls this off.

Another thing that seems to be overlooked is at what price would have Amazon still made the same decision? Could NYC offer $1B in incentives, and Amazon makes the same choice? By helping Amazon artificially lower costs, how does this impact New York businesses like IBM and the many fashion retail brands?