When Amazon announced last year that it was seeking proposals from North American cities interested in being the base for the company’s second headquarters, politicians across the continent were whipped into a frenzy. It’s not hard to see why. What sane politician wouldn’t want to help deliver 50,000 new high-paying jobs to their city, state or province? There’s nothing new about Amazon’s gambit. Industries such as film, aerospace and the automotive industry have been playing jurisdictions off against each other for years to get the sweetest deal possible. But, given its size, Amazon set off the mother of all bidding wars — and that’s bad news for taxpayers, since the main incentive politicians are using to try and seduce the company is large piles of taxpayer money. (In what must count as a victory of sorts, Toronto, the only Canadian city that made it onto Amazon’s shortlist of 20 finalists, mercifully managed to avoid promising any handouts beyond existing government subsidies.)

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