Amazon was a high-stakes flim-flam. Be glad we didn’t get it.

P.T. Barnum may be dead but his famous dictum – there’s a sucker born every minute – remains a guiding principle of America’s ruling class.

To see how, look no further than the circus atmosphere that surrounded Amazon’s search for a home for its second headquarters.

Amazon provided the snake oil for this charade – offering the economy-restoring elixir of 50,000 high paying tech jobs to whichever community would pay the highest price. We’ve only got one or two bottles of this magical potion, so what do I hear bid?

Political leaders from 238 cities and states, including North Carolina, cast themselves as tireless champions of the people, willing to spend the last dime of the people’s own money to save them. We’ll do whatever it takes, for you.

And much of the media served as carnival barkers, breathlessly covering the bids and counter-bids, the growing piles of tax breaks, incentives and assorted freebies offered to the company run by one of the richest men in the world. Who’s in? Who’s out? Stay tuned. Your children’s future may depend on it.

When Amazon announced the “winners” last week – New York City and Northern Virginia – the scam was revealed in a single fact: The retailer was provided some $5.5 billion in incentives, which was more than the $5 billion it has promised to invest.

Now they tell us.

So, Wake County, it looks like we dodged a bullet. But what did we learn?

One lesson of the Amazon sideshow is that crony capitalism is thriving as the ruling class continues to cut deals that they say are for us but mostly benefit themselves.

This emperor’s new clothes dynamic is exposed in an insightful new book by Nathan M. Jensen of the University of Texas at Austin and Edmund J. Malesky of Duke; their title says it all: “Incentives to Pander: How Politicians Use Corporate Welfare for Political Gain” (Cambridge).

Published before the Amazon deal, the book surveys the vast scholarly literature on the incentive packages governments increasingly offer to lure businesses. The authors write that, “In 1999, 68 percent of localities offered some form of incentive program. This number increased to 95 percent in 2009.”

The News & Observer reported that in 2017 North Carolina “struck deals to potentially grant as much as $185 million in incentives to 54 companies.”

Jensen and Malesky ask a simple question: Are these packages worth it? Their answer is a resounding no. “There is very little evidence,” they write, “that these incentive programs actually retain or attract investment.” Business decisions, instead, are made based on broader fundamentals. “A supermajority of incentive dollars is going to firms that have already made up their minds to invest.” Translation: Most incentives are giveaways.

In addition to being grossly unfair to existing businesses – especially small businesses – which pay full freight, the incentives are often money-losers for communities. As a result, they end up hurting the struggling folks they are supposed to be helping, as government increase regressive sales taxes and cut to programs such as education to finance them.

The book’s most damning argument casts these incentives as a high-stakes flim-flam: Politicians know they are ineffective, but the public does not. Instead of educating the people about these complex, counter-intuitive facts, leaders exploit their ignorance while companies giddily cash the checks.

This doubletalk has a double-benefit: It allows politicians to cast themselves as job creators when incentives attract companies and insulates them against blame if the companies go elsewhere. Hey, I tried.

Then, these same leaders turn around and rail against corporate welfare. Now that’s rich – it’s also deceptive and contemptuous of voters.

We, the people, are not being served; we’re being played.

This story was originally published November 20, 2018 at 8:34 AM.