Unlikely alliance of free-market libertarians and union-backed activists argue $100m-plus in subsidies handed to retailer are a bad investment f

Their hope is that it will serve as a warning to others looking to hand public money to profitable companies in return for the promise of new jobs.

“This is one area where libertarians and socialists can agree on something: this is a bad idea,” said John Mozena, president of the Center for Economic Accountability, a free market advocacy group and a self described libertarian.

Local activist Odessa Kelly agrees. A parks and recreations employee and member of the union-backed Stand Up Nashville coalition she says the deal is symptomatic of an approach that is failing the city while handing millions to a company that doesn’t need it.

“We are being moved around like pawns on a chess board for the rich,” she says. “I hate to say it but we have become a playground for the rich.”

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“That’s the way jobs and the economy are moving,” said Mozena. “It’s not the old model that a city or state lures in a factory and then people move to where the jobs are. These companies are so much more dependent on knowledge, on skilled labour, that they are going to where the people are. That’s the mistake cities are still making. They are acting like Amazon is a car factory in the 1950s.”

The academic research suggests Mozena is right. A 2018 study by Timothy Bartik, an economist who specializes in regional economics at the W E Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Michigan, found 75% of companies would have moved to a city or state even without incentives.

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