Anthropic and OpenAI don’t have that many employees compared to most big employers. Their employees are highly compensated. The ratio between the housing the occupy and the taxes paid by their employees has to be one of the most favorable ratios of all companies in the area.

Losing those companies and their employees would cost the cities far more than they might gain.

Makes sense financially, but I suspect that the reason this isn’t all that appealing politically is that ordinary people can’t get those jobs. “We have a few, very rich employees” doesn’t seem like much of a selling point. It’s another example of inequality.

Data center finances seem vaguely similar? They could be a good source of tax revenue but don’t provide many jobs.