Bloomberg BNA – July 25, 2017
Written by Greg LeRoy
Why Amazon Should Pay to Arrive
Instead of paying the retail giant to help it undermine other retailers, I recommend that public officials turn the table: when negotiating with Amazon, you should expect the company to pay for its arrival, not taxpayers.
I know that’s counter-intuitive, but it’s based on cold, hard market logic. My argument boils down to this: Amazon is coming because it must; Amazon is driving the convulsion in retailing that is harming local retail economies; and governments should not pay to accelerate that harm. …
The rampant retail layoffs make it clear: When Amazon.com’s CEO Jeff Bezos touted the projected “creation” of 100,000 jobs, he was actually describing retail job churn, not net job growth. Indeed, theInstitute for Local Self-Reliance estimates Amazon had caused a net loss of about 149,000 American jobs by the end of 2015.
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