Tax breaks of course represent a way to lure companies into certain geographies, and I think that there can be useful use cases. However, on the balance they're really destructive, and have set up a race to the bottom between states. The Amazon second headquarters is the most obvious right now (and the Foxxcon sweepstakes of a couple years ago), but it happens all the time with companies moving cities and states. The "Texas Miracle" was driven by Rick Perry essentially telling every single company he could that there are few taxes and no additional environmental regulations in his shithole of a state (not exactly sure what their marketing materials said, but I'm sure it was close to that if you read the euphemisms correctly). Detroit just about threw a party last week when Chemical Bank announced it was building a new 20 story building in downtown without asking for any local abatements (they're becoming the city's preferred banker though, so it's still a sweetheart deal). So many of these deal are zero sum in terms of job creation, but they are essentially stealing from the schools, the road commission, the water quality inspectors, etc. I have no idea how you tackle this problem, but it's spiraling to a very shitty place.