They were getting very near the same deal that any other company can get through a common tax-reduction program in NY. The difference was scale: 25k jobs was vastly, vastly more than any other company had used for this.

The sheer number of people from NY saying they are "proud" of this shows just how far removed people are from reality.

If this is true (I don't know either way, I've only followed this casually), why go through the whole dog and pony show in the first place? In that case, Amazon seems to have shot themselves in the foot here by playing a carnival game with the campus selection process. They gave everyone the _appearance_ that they got a sweetheart deal while basically not getting anything special?

and wasted the time and resources of tons of municipalities across the country who placed a bid on HQ2 with the false impression that they had a shot at winning it.

There are plenty of valid reasons why people who live in NY would not want Amazon dropping in - to say that they're removed from reality demonstrates quite a lack of empathy. Rents going up, people being displaced, an area that traditionally has fewer high income people all getting pushed out. People are still reeling from the push of affordability out of Brooklyn; now Bed-Stuy even is getting heavily gentrified. To many people, its a complete net negative for a tech company to move in - those who can't take advantage of it.

Honestly I'm surprised that so many people have come out against this, but no one seems to care about the Excelsior job program in general. I haven't even seen a person suggest that the program should be amended to preclude a company like Amazon from using it.