Or they can hit the "Amazon lottery", bringing in billions of dollars of investment and 50,000 high paid jobs (plus all of the ancillary jobs to support these high paid workers).
So a community could very well face a binary choice.
Er, “as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs” is what Amazon claims HQ2 is planned to grow to over an unspecified time horizon. “As many as...” is marketing weasel words for “for some number definitely not exceeding, and probably much smaller than...”; it sets an upper bound, but counts on people treating it as an expected level.
That's overly hopeful. I doubt Amazon will seriously consider a dying ex-company town that needs the investment. My bet it's going to pick someplace that's already doing pretty well, overall.
