I compared Amazon to Boeing but only because they moved HQ out of the area and it was painful to the economy. sigh.

Amazon never asked for tax breaks for Seattle. There's no parallel to Boeing. But way to go, Cary Moon, confirming every stereotype about the business-hostile Seattle left.

@4 Excuse me? They are entertaining bids from cities around North America! I assure they are looking for local property tax exemptions. If all they wanted was a PP on each cities culinary and commuting options, LA and San Diego wouldn't have teams staffing up to make these pitches.

Sure as hell hope Bay Area cities aren't staffing up to woo Amazon. We already have a huge Amazon presence. And it's hard to articulate what benefit, if any, our horribly negotiated deal with Twitter has had for the city.

I think Amazon should put HQ2 in Tucson.

Oh, FFS. Can people please stop imagining that somehow Moon is a decent candidate? Durkan seems like she's the only one that's actually putting together thoughtful policy recommendations, instead of just skating by with generic progressive platitudes.

Durkan is running against a child.

Here's a thought: Maybe Amazon wants to decentralize their management operations because of the potential for natural disasters?

@8

It's a thought, but not a very good one.

Corporations do not have two totally equal CEOs, two totally equal boards of directors, or two totally equal vice presidents in charge of each business unit, and they are not going to have two totally equal headquarters, either.

People are not hot-swappable cloud computing servers.

Amazon does all it can to make the bottom 95% of the company replaceable, but as in any other corporation, the top 5% are doing everything they can to secure or improve their position in the management hierarchy. There is and always will be a single senior management group.

This "HQ2" spin is transparent nonsense. It's a carrot to make bidding cities think that a satellite campus might become a headquarters, and a stick to make Seattle think the big fish might leave the pond if it doesn't get fed.

Apologies for the metaphor mangling, I haven't had all my coffee yet.

Amazon HQ2: Guess Which Mayoral Candidate Compared Amazon to Boeing?

I'd guess it was the unqualified grandstander who's never held a real job. Do I get a prize?

Business tax breaks should never be given without a clause that requires the business to maintain a certain workforce in the area they have the tax break, lest they lose it.

"However, we've seen with Boeing how a bidding war over billions in tax breaks for corporations only helped the wealthy few while doing nothing to keep good paying jobs here."

She's talking about the fact that despite many tax breaks, Boeing IS and DOES continue to move jobs away. Fact.

It's long been my assertion that Boeing will be gone in twenty years. Their departure is about as graceful as it can get: A few engineers every few years. Close a product line down, start passenger service at Paine Field, etc. Much better than the way they used to conduct business, where they'd just lay a bunch of people off without warning on a Friday.

And Amazon is essentially two companies: Retail and cloud services. Maybe they want to spin off retail and are looking for a place to put them? After all, why pay marketing people top dollar to live in Seattle when you can pay them less someplace else?

Comments here sound increasingly like those at the Seattle Times, dominated by reactionaries.