In 96', when Apatosaurus still roamed the earth and "Atari" was a thing, Israel granted Intel 600MM$ to build FAB18 in the desert. Over a decade later, an official government report concluded that the country lost some 400MM$ on the move. Bottom line, big-corps can extort states or cities and bid for ridiculous tax incentives that never pay off. I feel sorry for the residents of NY and the bad deal imposed on them.
I don't know anything about the Israel-Intel deal and have not decided personally how I feel about HQ2 in NYC. But I upvoted your comment because it emphasizes looking at other historical deals, and not just the projections and analysis on the current deal, and would love to read more of that in this discussion. This is a very large project over long horizons (10yrs) and it's hard to imagine being anything but extremely uncertain about projections; you have to look at history.
I'm also a sports fan, and I've read about the dismal returns to taxpayer-subsidized new stadiums despite rosy promises of economic development, and tend to look askance at this kind of thing.
Trying to understand your position... do you think Israel, a democracy, shouldn't have been able to decide to make that deal?
Who was Israel harming by making that decision?
Is a deal made freely and with complete information between two parties always "extortion", if it turns out with the benefit of hindsight not to have turned out to be in the best interests of one of the parties?
They never said they shouldn't have been able to decide to make that deal - but rather that they shouldn't have made it. Presumably who was harmed was Israelis who could have benefitted from a government with more money to spend elsewhere.
I must be really bad at phrasing thoughts. Isreal was "harming" itself and its taxpayers (normal people like me), same way NY taxpayers would undoubtedly IMO be "harmed" (in the sense of their hard-won money being ill-invested). Is it extortion? I guess not literally, only in spirit. It is just bad investment with negative long-term ROI. NY could have supported thousands of SMBs instead, and that builds more resilient, diverse and sustainable economy long-term.
