Mayors Should Take a Stand Against a Future Amazon HQ2

In the wake of the incentives bidding war over Amazon’s HQ2 comes a new round of calls to action. Should the federal government limit or ban the reverse-Robin Hood practice of state and local governments offering taxpayer money as big corporate subsidies? The logic is simple: These bidding wars place cities and states in an unenviable prisoners’ dilemma, where they compete with incentives and have little reason to cooperate. Some say a higher level of government needs to intervene and stop the madness, as the European Union has done, but I believe there is no way the federal government would do that for us.

I am all for ending incentive insanity, but the federal level of government under Trump is even more dysfunctional than ever: American’s faith in the presidency and Congress is near record lows; Congress remains divided and dysfunctional. Since it’s not likely that the U.S. government will end this incentives race, mayors need to step up and agree to end these corporate subsidies on their own.