Unfortunately I think casting Amazon as the villain here is incorrect. I say unfortunately because that would be the convenient thing to do. But Amazon doesn't

Unfortunately I think casting Amazon as the villain here is incorrect. I say unfortunately because that would be the convenient thing to do. But Amazon doesn't have an obligation to repair America's infrastructure or create jobs in cities that haven't succeeded in attracting skilled employees in large numbers. If Amazon believed they could legally gain an advantage by having cities compete against each other, they are almost obligated to do so. But perhaps there's a less cynical way to look at it. Maybe Amazon really didn't know at the outset which city they would pick, and only after considering everything submitted to them, concluded there wasn't a strategic case to be made for putting a second HQ in a city other than DC or NYC. I actually believe that to be the most likely scenario, but maybe I'm naive. The unfortunate fact is that the politicians who emptied their pockets are to blame. But they too are only doing what they believe both benefits their constituents and of course helps them stay in office. To put it another way, if the mayor of Pittsburgh said "we aren't going to play ball and give a handout to one of the largest companies on earth" people who live there probably would have revolted. I don't think there's a good solution except for voters to become smarter about how their budgets are spent and make clear to politicians they don't want tax dollars wasted courting a company that doesn't need any government assistance.