The US needs to do something about lobbying. It seems too late already, but maybe you can get things to improve a bit.
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)
But I don't see what other options are available for states to compete with each other if not through tax breaks.
Protagorist•1h ago
repelsteeltje•58m ago