If states all worked together, they could plausibly prevent this race to the bottom by agreeing on a universal sales tax minimum, but there are many obstacles to that as well besides some vague sense of "lobbying". You'd want all states to work cooperate on their minimum tax, but every state has a big incentive to break from the cartel and offer lower taxes in exchange for getting all the datacenters built there. There are lobbyists who are working against this, but it's not just meta and google, it's also local utility companies and construction/trade unions (who all want their state to defect and be the one to get all the new money and jobs)
Because it's their money being handed to a trillion dollar company that has no need for a discount?
If the IRS gives me a 10% tax break, I have more money, and the government has less, right?
Residents aren't paying more for anything and no services are being cut.
The local government is giving a local tax break, which comes out of their local tax revenue.
> If the incentive was not given, the datacenter would not be built there.
Objection, your honor, assuming facts not in evidence!
(Nor are the incentives any sort of guarantee. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/21/foxconn-mostly-abandons-10-b...)
> Residents aren't paying more for anything and no services are being cut.
They are receiving less tax revenue than they would have otherwise had to use on their services.
Yes, and we should ban them from issuing these sorts of race-to-the-bottom sweetheart deal at taxpayer expense to trillion dollar corporations to address that.
Datacenters aren't like that. There's a huge construction phase where billions of dollars get spent followed by dozens of long-term employees. The local benefit is mostly just a flash in a pan while the tax break lasts for decades.
Besides, it seems that datacenters are universally unliked by constituents in areas where they pop up. This makes arguments for tax breaks for datacenters seem illogical, at best.
Unilaterally, these favorable arguments come down to something like: "Well, if they didn't offer the tax break here, then Metazonaigoog will just build their new datacenter somewhere else instead!"
To which I can only retort: "Really? You promise? Don't threaten me with a good time -- go ahead and build it somewhere else."
Combine that with the fact that large corporations constantly find ways to avoid paying taxes and its hard to be positive about this kind of thing.
Several reasons. It distorts the market for one. One tax rate for me, another for thee. That's government picking favorites. Generally regarded as a bad thing.
I have only seen this point being brought up by the exact people that will be owning the data centers with little data to back it up besides temporary construction jobs and few long term jobs, most jobs likely imported and not local.
I think states are offering huge incentives because the politicians approving the construction and tax cuts are easily bought out for pennies on the dollar. I don't know if Louisiana is known for being a paragon of honest politicians doing right by their constituents.
The states, under Trump, are all working together to ensure a race to the bottom happens, both in the U.S. and abroad.
One hundred and thirty five nations worked together to create a minimum corporate tax rate called "Pillar Two". It would have factored in tax breaks for projects like this by calculating an effective tax rate for Meta, and mandated higher taxes if the effective rate was too low. Trump withdrew the U.S. from that effort and created a framework to retaliate if other countries upheld Pillar Two to raise taxes on American megacorps[1] in their jurisdictions.
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[1]https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2025/how-us-mu...
They feel very strongly about a topic, but it’s entirely based on their various personal experiences. They arrive at the conclusion first, and then try to arrange reality around their opinions.
Someone else did provide evidence, though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48153756
Some 16 minutes after he asked the question, so that's not an excuse for criticism of the question.
As to his being answered: somebody responding to him in good faith does not suddenly validate what he was doing.