same thing. The government can take it and give it back to you and call it a subsidy, or they can not take it in the first place (but still take it from others) and call it a tax break. It can matter politically if you call it a subsidy vs tax break, but economically, it's nearly identical. Either way, Amazon's net transfer to the government is $3B less. And either way, it doesn't happen if Amazon doesn't move there. Whether it's a net gain or loss depends for state coffers on the opportunity cost of the land and what Amazon and other tech companies decide to do. I'm inclined to agree with you that NY would've been better off if the deal had gone forward as planned. But our deal was much better all around because I think we were the preferred location.

Overall, though, these sorts of deals are a bad thing. Ideally states would agree not to compete with each other to give big breaks to private businesses. It's basically rent seeking from Amazon. It doesn't improve the national economy, but it is a way for Amazon to extract money from state and local governments. But, if other cities are competing with incentive packages, we might as well too, because even though it's unproductive rent seeking, it's good for the city that wins, and if you're the city that wins, that's all that matters.