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Milwaukee Business Journal: 'The Amazon Effect' cost Wisconsin $30 million

Posted at 6:00 PM, Oct 11, 2017
and last updated 2017-10-12 00:13:14-04

MILWAUKEE -- An eye-opening report on Amazon by our partners with the Milwaukee Business Journal reports that the retail delivery giant has gotten billions in incentives to do business across the U.S.

Reporters from dozens of newspaper companies worked together to crunch the numbers in 33 states that have done business with Amazon. They found $1.25 billion in incentives have been awarded to the tech giant.

MBJ reporter Sean Ryan researched the numbers in Wisconsin.

He found more than $30 million in incentives were awarded to lure the monster company to the Badger State. Ryan found it's now part of the game to attract big companies.

"Unless you're going to get a gentleperson's agreement across all government agencies not to do it ever, it's the new reality," Ryan said.

The big takeaway for Wisconsin is that so far we got what we paid for. Amazon has over-performed on their promise to create at least 2,250 jobs in our state.

"They fashioned it in a way where the company has to do some hiring benchmarks in order to get the money that they've been promised from the state," said Ryan.

Click here to read Milwaukee Business Journal's full article, that includes an interactive map showing subsidies given out across our country.