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After all the pageantry Amazon picks the #1 and #2 most obvious cities for HQ2. Which leads me (and many others) to believe that they would have expanded their NYC presence anyway. Amazon already has THOUSANDS of employees in the NYC area. It was inevitable.

What rubs people the wrong way was that Amazon got a tax break it didn’t need.

And even after this deal has “died”, Amazon will STILL continue to expand in NYC! Certainly won’t be Jersey.

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And yet the elected officials of NY didn't think Amazon would choose NY without offering Amazon incentives to expand in NY. Why did they do that?

A good portion of the tax incentives Amazon would have taken advantage of were through existing programs that any business could use. One of the real incentives offered was probably in the form of cutting down on red tape for construction of the new campus.

I think they were being stupid. Their terrible rhetoric around the issue certainly doesn't imply that they grasped the situation.

If they publicly bemoaned the shakedown from the get-go, but claimed they hsd to participate abyways, they would have improved their negotiating position, and maybe diffused blowback too.

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