Amazon created competition between cities to land its HQ2 location, along with hefty tax subsidy packages. While this process garnered significant media attention, businesses and municipalities regularly engage in these types of deal making in which the promise of jobs and economic development all ostensibly justify enormous costs at the taxpayer's expense. Amazon alone has received over $1.6bn in economic development packages for it's various warehouses, so it's high time that we ask what's really going on behind the scenes. Does the public actually benefit from corporate welfare deals or is this just another method of transferring wealth out of local communities? In addition, we explore miscellaneous tools used for similar means, like Tax Increment Financing, and Tax-Exempt Municipal Bonds for stadium construction.

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Chapters

02:31 Economic Development Incentives

14:01 Company Queens of Tax Grift

37:40 Tools of Diverting Public Funds: Tax Increment Financing

43:40 World of Sports

Listener Comments

That point [@17:03] about Tesla using publicly funded research and privatising it and selling it back to taxpayers hits home for me. My country’s government (Australia) has slashed science funding, forcing all our scientists overseas. We were leading the way on renewables and solar technology but all the scientists and their research went to Tesla, who are now selling us back solar storage technology. We could have been a world leader, but now we are double dipping. -- AlpineBlizzard

Sources

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Published 20-12-2018 3:01