Several reporters have asked me what subsidies my city of San Jose may offer to attract Amazon’s new headquarters. My response? None.

Recently, states and cities have been luring companies with subsidies. Wisconsin wooed electronics manufacturer Foxconn with a $3 billion taxpayer-funded dowry. Iowa gave Apple $213 million in state and local tax incentives to bring a 50-job data center to the state. The commonwealth of Massachusetts and city of Boston brought General Electric headquarters to Beantown with a $145 million incentive...