I understand that it does not work this way.

I understand that corporations like Ford Motor Co. are complex business entities; that because a corporation's main charge is to maximize shareholder value, quasi-altruistic development projects can't necessarily dip from the company trough, even when that trough is nearly $17 billion deep; and that multinational corporations create subsidiaries specifically to tackle specialized projects, and to segregate expenditures in this manner.

And yet, when Ford says it needs more than $239 million in public tax incentives to make good on its $740 million promise to redevelop the Michigan Central Depot and adjacent parcels— more than $100 million from cash-strapped Detroit — what I want to know is, are you kidding me?

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That Ford, with $16.7 billion in cash on hand, per its last earnings report, can ask a city that emerged three years ago from bankruptcy to forego future tax revenue is astounding.

And it should be ironclad proof that tax incentives, the routine granting of same, the accompanying song-and-dance that justifies them and the lens through which we view development is more concerned with scoring high-profile wins than making sustainable progress toward a healthy city and state. The rest of the tax incentives Ford is seeking would come from the state (also facing a deficit), Wayne County (still recovering) and the public schools (where to even start?).

Detroit should call Ford's bluff.

Instead, city officials are greasing the wheels for Ford's request. Underscoring how farcical this process has become, city officials say the first round of tax breaks must be OK'd by Oct. 16, lest the vacant-since-1988 train station fall into worse disrepair. The Detroit Economic Growth Corp., the city's economic development arm, says work at the train station won't begin if the incentives aren't approved.

These are what we call high-pressure tactics.

The context in which these questions are even possible is one skewed to put business, and commercial development, first; one that forgives tax payments from businesses, but not from people; one that prioritizes high-visibility private projects over sustainable small- and mid-sized business growth.

Consider the $4 billion in future tax revenue the State of Michigan, the City of Detroit and environs were willing to sacrifice to attract a second Amazon headquarters. Or the $618 million in tax breaks recently granted to billionaire Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert's $2.2 billion skyscraper development, or the $325 million in tax subsidies awarded to the billionaire Ilitch family's $863 million Little Caesars Arena, all projects from which billionaire developers swore they'd walk if the public subsidies they sought were not granted.

Ford execs told Bloomberg last year that the company needs $20 billion to weather the next recession. It's worth asking what Detroit — a city that still struggles to provide services, is still losing population, still has an unemployment rate almost double the state's and still faces a balloon payment to its pension funds in 2024 — would need to weather the next recession; the city had a fund balance of $593 million at the end of the 2017 fiscal year.

If it's hard to understand how a multinational corporation can soak a struggling school district for tax breaks, it's even harder to understand how government officials can justify foregoing tax revenue now in exchange for convoluted estimates of future employment: New jobs, construction jobs, indirect jobs.

Detroit officials will likely argue that the value of new activity, increased density and the excitement generated by those things will offset any future tax revenue the city sacrifices. It's an argument that ignores both the increased burden new activity puts on a city's infrastructure, and the fact that that healthy communities invest in things like schools and roads, which is why businesses want to invest in those communities.

Ford promises to site 2,500 permanent employees at the train station, set to become a center for autonomous vehicle research. The automaker estimates another 2,000 construction jobs, and another 2,500 "indirect" jobs. While the tax incentives would exempt Ford from corporate taxes and freeze the taxable value of the train-station properties at their pre-rehab value, the city projects increased income tax revenue generated by those new employees, and increased property tax revenue once tax incentives expires.

"Today, this property earns the city $200,000," said Arthur Jemison, chief of services and infrastructure for Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. "When it's done, five years from now, it will earn the city $10 million a year (in projected income taxes from workers). This is not income we would ever receive unless we abated it ... These are the instruments in the toolbox that help people bring jobs to communities. We have very high taxes, and we have to offer abatements to be competitive."

Some of these estimates are speculative, and almost impossible to enforce, if a developer doesn't follow through.

But most important, using this kind of speculative math to show value ignores the more direct way cities already have to extract value from new developments — levying and collecting taxes — and it's all premised on the idea that without these incentives, the developer du jour would walk.

It is possible that Ford would walk away from the development it promised in June, an announcement that felt, to many, like a milestone in Detroit's decades-long effort to rescue a building that has become an international symbol of the city's decline. Perhaps Ford would squander the international praise and the hometown goodwill heaped on the automaker after its plans were revealed.

It's also possible that Ford would step away from its plans to build an autonomous vehicle tech center, something it desperately needs to compete with newer, high-tech companies playing in the same space, and the signal the train station rehab sends to the young, talented workforce it needs to attract.

But is it likely?

Let's find out.

Nancy Kaffer is a Free Press columnist. Contact her at nkaffer@freepress.com.