It's sad that people sit here and beat their chest about how wrong Amazon is without looking at the other side. Amazon doesn't owe you jobs, tax revenue, or anything else. The discounts are reductions in the amount of money they would owe local and state governments IF they moved their location there.

Since they aren't obligated to move their business there, they don't owe you that money. That's not your tax discount money to spend on other things, it's their tax discount money that they no longer potentially owe you.

The underlying flaw of all of this is that Amazon should "be a good corporate citizen" (do what we want with their money), that tax credits are made of money otherwise spendable by governments (when in fact they're otherwise spendable by the corporation, because it's their money until they owe the tax debt), and that we should be able to beat and shame billionaires into giving us their money and providing these opportunities. Good luck with that strategy, but I think it's unwise.

So while the college students can proudly stand there and talk about how they won with their ideals, the people who would actually benefit from it (families, struggling people who could use additional services paid for by additional tax revenue) are given not the benefits but the warm and fuzzy feeling that the collective nose has been cut off to spite the face.