Late last year, New Yorkers reacted with outrage to the announcement that Amazon was going to force its empire building on the communities of Queens. Many of us cried out against the displacement of working families; against subsidizing a corporation that enables the Trump deportation machine; and against the predatory practices and monopoly power of Amazon.
But regardless of one’s position on whether Amazon HQ2 would have benefitted or hurt New York, it is clear that the HQ2 roll-out was a fiasco of gigantic proportions. That fiasco laid bare long-standing problems with our state’s approach to economic development.