Yes it does. It's extremely common for businesses to be offered incentives like this. They are usually bounded in a way to ensure it's beneficial to the city. The ones I've seen are requiring a certain number of headcount be maintained over a specific duration, a certain amount in salary be paid out over a specific period of time, and certain infrastructure be installed within a certain period. If these obligations aren't met, then the company is required to pay back the incentives plus penalties.
Maybe an extreme example of a "bad deal" but these aren't always a slam dunk, and some of the math to justify (especially sports stadiums) can be a bit iffy.
No, because then it's a race to the bottom and all other companies start expecting these same deals (or even better), and eventually you do end up with a situation where the city does not get back more in tax revenue.
It's simple negotiation; you may lose some money on that one deal, but you'll gain more in the end by not decreasing the value of all subsequent deals.
The counter-point to race to the bottom, is this is an important aspect of pressure in a democratic capitalism to prevent government as a leviathan. The government has a natural incentive to want to raise more revenue, and increase power. A strong market that can stifle these, at times potentially inefficient taxes, can provide a natural check on this.
Obviously the truth is that there are bad aspects of a race to the bottom as well as positive attributes. Finding the balance requires nuance and grace by the leaders who navigate these uncertain waters.
I mean, clearly we haven't signed up for the money-losing deal, as the deal has been canceled because of opposition and no give-aways will ever be made to Amazon.
Or, you'll lose out on all the businesses that won't start or expand there because the baseline level of taxation is too unfavorable for the economy (in either sense of the word) that the city offers.
It's almost like taxing easily-moveable economic activity is a bad idea.
And yet there's a huge number of businesses that do have presences in NYC because the tax revenue funds all sorts of things that make NYC attractive to businesses that can't be gotten elsewhere.
A lot of what makes NYC great (like the 24/7 public transit system, the best in the country) costs serious money to operate. You need to get that money from tax revenue.
And businesses aren't actually easily-movable, not at all.
>And yet there's a huge number of businesses that do have presences in NYC because the tax revenue funds all sorts of things that make NYC attractive to businesses that can't be gotten elsewhere.
Most of which were present there because they set up a long time ago. The current environment makes it so that you pretty much have to get a discount to make it worth starting there, per the famous reddit comment:
What's the problem with governments competing? That's not a "race to the bottom" any more than competition is a "race to the bottom" in market economics. It is a forcing function on efficiency and good governance where there would otherwise be no competitive pressure.
^ For anyone doubting this, Planet Money did an excellent podcast on how this phenomenon played out in Kansas City with corporations like Applebee's, and cost the city millions:
You could easily argue it put Kansas City on the map.
Kansas City is at least a well known name in the tech world now, when there's plenty of other midwest cities of similar size that rarely get brought up.
Millions would be a steal for the revenue becoming a tech hub would bring in. Even if it does take a more than a decade to be realized.
Cities of similar size: Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Louisville, Oklahoma City (and more).
Out of these, Kansas City comes up more often tech wise. I waste a good bit of time on sites like this discussing tech related matters, and not once have I read an article involving any of these cities.
This is why I said well known and on the map, not 'popular'.
You're getting downvoted, but it's true. If I recall, the city/state would've broken even not that far into the future, and then everything after that would've been pure profit for them.
It's a matter of principle. NYC (or any municipality) shouldn't be bending over for massive multinationals. It's a form of corruption, one that's depressingly widespread, and it's a race to the bottom that, from a 30,000 foot view, accomplishes nothing but screwing over the taxpayers and smaller competitors lacking the leverage for these antics, and benefiting the corporations that are already enormous and powerful.
I can’t believe you have to explain to people why corporatism is a bad thing. It underlies the largest problems in this country, and we should actively be protesting it.
No. Not "new business". "A" new business. It's a sweetheart deal for one company in particular subsidized by the taxpayers. They're not reducing their citywide tax rate to attract Amazon, they're just giving a handout directly to Amazon.
What you're describing is nothing close to the reality. It's the prisoner's dilemma. Cities that participate in this scheme take turns screwing each other over in an attempt to get a minor benefit themselves, but compared to the scenario where nobody played the game to begin with, they all lose.
They’ll still get subsidies, just somewhere. The system being what it is, you can’t fault them for finding the fair market price of setting up their campus at you location. It’s a mutually beneficial deal, but now Mew York gains nothing at all.
That said the system could be changed and laws written to prevent subsidies all together. Then competition for large workforces would be based on other factors.
New York does gain something, the much more vibrant and robust collection of businesses that will occupy that area instead and pay their fair share of taxes.
You really have no idea what LIC is like, do you? They're completely unable to support small businesses except those that cater to the upper-middle class. There is no dollar slice, only $24 gluten-free artisanal pizza. The only business Amazon was going to displace was Citibank.
Turn it around: these cities had absolutely nothing to do with Amazon’s success. Now they want a cut of the revenues (taxes) simply because they want to hire in a location? If Amazon doesn’t consent to that and no deal is reached: how on earth is that a benefit?
If you stop seeing the tax payments as entitlements, it begins to be a lot easier to reason about.
A shame. As an employee of a Big N company in NYC, this would have provided upward pressure on my salary (even if personally I wouldn't want to go work for Amazon).
But I didn't like the big tax breaks, and as a taxpayer of the city I'm glad my money won't go towards subsidizing the expansion of one of the world's most valuable companies.
It's too bad Amazon wasn't willing to pay their fair share.
Fair enough, thanks for the info. I wonder if this change means they'll simply be expanding those existing offices more rather than (presumably) moving many of them into the new space?
Basically NY will be treated like any satellite campus. It will grow, but slowly as it has for years. The big "deal" with this move was bringing 25k jobs to NY, which has 5k now. That isn't going to happen, at least nowhere near the timeline it was.
The public is so muddled about what an effective job creator yields. They could move a small niche of AWS to Newark, restore some warehouse into office space, and claim they are adding a projected 10k jobs to the area.
Literally the next sentence, the commenter talks about more than just their salary and how it's a shame that Amazon didn't want to be a part of their community and pay their fair share.
I think that there really was likely to be a net benefit to New York for the deal, if not the city than at least for the citizens (and even then probably close to break even based on roundabout increases in city income). Apparently there's often a "local multiplier"[1] for good paying jobs like this that enter an area, in this case approximately 5 more jobs per high-end worker to service the area in general through meal delivery, wiring, elevator repair, etc.
This was all covered in a Planet Money episode[2], so you can listen/read it and make your own decision, but if it's true, it seems a shame that New York was denied what should be a favorable outcome because of FUD, spite for Amazon/Bezos because they are large, or some combination thereof.
Google didn't need any dog and pony show or significant forms of corporate welfare (that we know of) to announce a doubling of their presence in New York.
> Would be interesting to know how many employees Amazon currently has in NY. I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's already in the thousands.
Amazon already has an office in New York City, as well as a sizeable presence in New Jersey just outside the city limits (within commuting distance), split between two New Jersey offices, last I checked.
Uh, the statement itself says: "There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams."
It is in the Amazon statement: "There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams."
Disclaimer, I'm one of those 5k. Currently I work from home 99% of the time because the office spaces Amazon has in NY aren't fantastic. It would have been nice to have a new headquarters building, but I'll still be enjoying working from home now I guess.
Thanks, I missed that (I stopped after a couple paragraphs). I did do a quick Google Search after I searched for how many Googlers are in NYC. (Was verifying there's actually 7K.)
It's pretty amazing how large some of the non-home offices are at these mega tech companies.
> There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island
How many of those are working in tech? When I interviewed at Amazon NYC in 2016, I think there were only around 100 software engineers there. Has it grown a lot since then?
111 8th is a major internet traffic exchange point. It's also gargantuan, it's 2.9 million square feet and occupies a whole city block.
One of the interesting things about 111 8th is that it was designed for much higher than normal pounds per square foot floor loading. Which means that Google could convert the entire thing to datacenter space if they really wanted to. Already a significant portion of it is conditioned datacenter/telecom space run by tenants.
These real estate acquisitions were so large that they explicitly needed to be called out on the quarterly earnings calls to explain why CapEx exploded for that quarter.
I imagine they're getting decent bang for their buck when hiring in NYC. Really the COL adjusted wages in NYC are some of the lowest for all American tech cities.
Why would they care about getting a good bargain in “COL adjusted wages”? Even in NYC there is not a currency exchange Google can go to to turn $100k Florida dollars into $200k New York dollars.
At Google's densities, they would never run a datacenter in Manhattan. POPs, sure, like their peering with https://www.peeringdb.com/fac/16, but that's it.
Internap has never really been relevant as a large scale colo/datacenter provider, if you look at the square footage of their facilities compared to major competition like Equinix and Digital Realty Trust.
I think that 7K is just employees: "employs more than...". That is a deliberate distinction from "workers". I wouldn't be surprised if the count passed 10K once you considered contractors. They're mostly in non-engineering roles: cafe staff, recruiters, marketing, physical security (did those get converted to employees like they were doing in Mountain View?), facilities, etc.
How do actual numbers pale in comparison to a number that was nothing more than projected for some hazy undetermined future date? That 25K number was only ever qualified as "over the next decade."
Google on the other hand bought 111 8th ave 8 years ago(houses 7K employees) and now they are opening a new space in the same area that will house an additional 12K more employees[1]. That will bring their total to 19K employees in a 10 year time frame.
And this was all done without extracting corporate subsidies and without all the pageantry.
Google's expansion doesn't require its employees to live in a part of the city that lacks adequate schools and parks. Whereas if you work in LIC it's not like you can really commute into the city from New Jersey or Stamford.
It has good subway connections to Queens and Manhattan, and that's about it. There's no good LIC LIRR station (the existing one is not located on the line to Penn). Good luck if you're coming from Westchester, New Jersey, Staten Island, or the Bronx, because that's going to be a hell of a commute.
I won't argue that it's appealing but it is the norm if you live in the burbs. Not many people work right next to Penn/Grand Central/Atlantic Terminal/etc. Transferring to the subway is very common, and LIC is one of the best-connected neighborhoods by subway (NRW7EFG).
Out of all those, only the E runs through Penn Station, and only the 7 runs through Grand Central. Nowhere near as nice as being table to take any ACE train or any 456 train to get where you're going.
And god help you the days there are mets games if you're taking the 7.
Maybe you should just permit people to say "what are you talking about" as a form of "you seem to be confused" instead of trying to dictate which colloquialisms people use to express themselves. Your position on this is overbearing and absurd. FYI you have a history of being condescending over nitpicky nonsense to the point of incivility.
LIC has some amazing parks. Stop by Socrates Sculpture Park sometime — really cool art installations, great waterfront views of Manhattan, across the street from a cool museum (Noguchi of the coffee table fame), and you are quick walk down Broadway to some great restaurants in Astoria.
Exactly. The 25k number was just to make a splash and notice they aren't doing that again. Because there aren't really any other areas that could give them 25k skilled employees. They will scale up in Nashville which is expected since it is a growing area, and they will still be in NY due to the talent. The "HQ2" show was primarily to extract large concessions which almost worked. My initial reaction as a NY'er was "well that didn't go well" but now I think it was great that we did not fall for it.
I don't even think they're really gonna scale up in Nashville. At least not in any meaningful way. 10 years from now, both Amazon and Google will have right around 25 thousand workers each in NYC.
The reality is that NYC is not Wisconsin, they don't need to give out money.
EDIT: I'd even go a step further, and predict that both Amazon and Google will also have ludicrously large presences in the DC-NOVA area in 10 years as well. In fact, Amazon's presence in the DC-NOVA area will be even bigger than they initially said it would.
Wisconsin doesn't need to give out money, either. If anything, they need to not give out money.
The story of the Foxconn factory, for example, is one of Wisconsin acting as if you can give a bunch of money to a company that smells of technology, and they will plunk a bunch of jobs for highly educated and skilled people in the middle of a region with relatively few highly educated and skilled workers. Which, it never worked that way. It never will work that way.
Companies go to places that can fill their staffing needs. Wisconsin, which has been systematically defunding its education system in order to re-route that money toward corporate subsidies, is undercutting its own ability to fill those staffing needs. I don't know that everyone in the state realizes it, but Wisconsin is stumbling all over itself to become the darling dumping ground for companies that are founded[1] in cities and states with the kinds of intellectual and entrepreneurial ferments you get around well-run and well-funded university systems to put their call centers, distribution centers, big boxes mostly full of robots, and other things they don't want to waste money putting in a more affluent area.
[1] I think "founded" is a key word, here, too. Supporting local entrepreneurship is the key to prosperity. Which mostly means getting out of the way of your entrepreneurs. If you get into a bidding wars to acquire the office where a company puts all their jobs that didn't merit being located at HQ, not only do you end up overspending - the people deciding what to bid aren't playing with their own money, so what else did you expect? - but you're also draining the talent pool that supports their growth.
If you keep participating in the race to the bottom, you eventually end up on the bottom. The belief that any price in tax cuts will benefit your citizens in the form of "jobs" is a particularly toxic form of economic fundamentalism, and its hollowing whole states out.
Totally agree. In my neck of the woods one county nearly bankrupted a neighboring one by offering an existing business a deal that led them to move a few miles away. The old county was stuck with sewer bonds and other costs while the revenue vaporized.
It’s difficult though as it’s a prisoner’s dilemma type situation.
Yes and no. I believe in this case they had an obligation to provide the sewer, and water/sewer ratepayers are responsible for costs. You can’t make an individual ratepayer responsible for the sewer.
Definitely a bad situation and a story told a thousand times in the US
Kentucky was a perfect example of this. They gave the best corporate welfare money can buy. And everyone left. There were no decent roads, schools, police. So there were no decent workers. The companies were basically given the best deal in a place with no workers.
If anything the workers left even more because there was even less attractiveness to be there.
Its really hard to make a thoughtful reply to a thread like this without seeming like its just ivory tower dumping on red states. My feeling is that they've set up a basically every person for himself sort of society with (usually multinational or national) businesses as the primary benefactor rather than people.
Living in the DC-NOVA area, Amazon coming here seemed rather inevitable. There's a confluence of infrastructure, cheap office/datacenter space, and a stealthily growing engineering talent pool that Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon and the general smorgasbord of government contractors have built up over the years.
Additionally,it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon has seen the obscene amounts of money Microsoft is making pitching cloud security and general technical support to the government, and wants in on it.
I don’t know, cities rise and fall at lot more quickly than it feels like at the time.
New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1975, less than 50 years ago.
Detroit’s population started declining as early as the 1950s as companies moved to the suburbs.
New York has a world-class, diverse economy, and I expect it to continue to be a central engine of the American and world economy for our lifetimes, but it does require good stewardship to nurture the economy.
We may be on the cusp of a reversal of the great urban migration of the last several decades, with populations moving into suburban satellite cities as remote work gains acceptance, driverless cars allow for easier commutes, logistics companies and drones allow for easy delivery of goods to your doorstep, and urban housing prices continue to relentlessly outpace wage growth.
There's absolutely no way they are scaling up NY to the same degree they would have with the subsidies. There's no reason to. The value proposition is gone, so now Amazon will slow-roll growth in NY like they will any other office.
The fact that you (and many others) consider this a win is an attempt to revise history. This tax deal was all about Amazon expanding very quickly. That deal is gone. But feel free to pat yourself on the back for not "falling for it". Maybe it works out great as other companies will lease those buildings and hire a combined ~20k employees averaging $150,000 in compensation, but that's likely not going to happen.
> There's absolutely no way they are scaling up NY to the same degree they would have with the subsidies. There's no reason to.
There's now way to. Campus expansions are blocked by layers and layers of NIMBYs. The big selling point of the deal was the state government ensuring Amazon would have a campus that could hold 25,000 people.
While parent (and others) may be attempting to revise history, I think this outcome is probably for the best.
Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack.
Real growth brings with it real increases in public funding, that can be used to fund real increases in infrastructure demands and demands on other public services.
When a local government has to bribe their way into increasing local business, they tip the scales in favor of one thing (i.e. jobs) while burdening other things (tax base, transit support, etc.)
When companies choose to do business in your area—because it's naturally the best place for them—it functions as a market verification that you're doing something right.
>Real growth brings with it real increases in public funding, that can be used to fund real increases in infrastructure demands and demands on other public services...
This.
That's exactly why what's now going to happen in NYC is what should happen in all cases. Wish we could get this going in Wisconsin.
> Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack.
It's not going to be organic. Instead, these same deals are going to be spread out to a bunch of other companies, most of which will pay less than Amazon on average and the "subsidies" will take longer to be a net positive.
Again, people confuse bribes with standard deals. Any company is eligible to receive the tax breaks that Amazon was going to. So New Yorkers have really "won" here. Same subsidies paid out to lower paying companies at a significant slower scale and significantly less economic upside.
> It's not going to be organic. Instead, these same deals are going to be spread out to a bunch of other companies, most of which will pay less than Amazon on average and the "subsidies" will take longer to be a net positive.
Only if you assume those other companies collectively hold the same bargaining power that Amazon did, which is an assumption I can't agree with
Man... the misinformation is so stunning. They don't NEED bargaining power because these tax deals were done through programs that already existed in New York. The overwhelming majority of the money involved in this requires you only meet the eligibility requirements.
The biggest aspect of this deal for Amazon was reduced regulatory burden. That was Amazon's actual goal here, the tax offsets were just the icing that every company is going to end up getting by making a major move like this.
Then why has Google announced a major expansion in New York City without making a show out of it? Did anyone protest about Google adding more than 7,000 jobs to the area? Amazon has clearly failed here to offer something everyone would be happy about.
> There's no way to turn this into a positive here.
I dunno. It seems like an unambiguous positive to me. The giveaway to Amazon was enormous -- so much so that it seems extremely dubious that New York would ever have been able to recoup that money, let alone increase it.
If they were going to buy the card for $30K anyway if you didn't discount it, yes. Even if they weren't going to buy the car without the discount, but someone else would likely come along and buy it for $30K, then still yes, you would have given away $5K.
Add on to the fact that if you sold that one car for $25K, you end up with other people who would've paid $30K but now want that same discount, so you may have given away a lot more than $5K.
>There's no way to turn this into a positive here.
Well, if you believe Amazon coming to NY was good, it's no more negative or positive than me not winning the lottery today, and I didn't buy a ticket either.
If it was primarily a deal to ease the regulatory burden of building such a big thing, I'd be all for it. Admittedly NY has an issue now with too many layers of bureaucracy. But this isn't entirely what it is about. It was also about large tax concessions when plenty of large companies are hiring tech in NYC without any of them. A skilled employee in NYC does not last very long at all on the job market. The 25k employee campus thing was a sham that was geared to an area like NY from the start. They could never move to a smaller area and still get who they need at that scale.
The commodity these days is skilled workforce. Amazon will still be where they can get that commodity, economic incentives aren't needed. Cash is not the limiting factor it is the people they need. It was a smart business move to try to extract some cash too but they did not need that to expand in NY.
Ugh... any company moving into NY can get these same large tax concessions. Amazon got nothing special outside of reduced regulatory burden. Why is this not understood? This same subsidy is now going to go to 15 companies who all probably pay less on average than Amazon.
There are skilled workforces outside of NY, believe it or not. And they aren't going to go through the regulatory burdens to expand NY to a major campus, since that's really what this was about.
To be clear, since this point is being missed by so many people: This wasn't a special deal outside of the reduced regulatory burden. Any company that meets the eligibility requirements will get these exact same "subsidies".
What happened here is a bunch of local politicians and local people who are absolutely clueless about how corporate tax reductions work pushed against something that's still going to happen just, at least potentially, not with a high paying company like Amazon.
I see what you're saying, but Amazon pretty much did that to themselves by making the whole thing such a public spectacle. Whether or not they were offered a special deal, that's the impression everyone got, and it should have been predictable that they'd provoke a lot more political backlash with this approach.
Not many corporations I know of get a deal brokered by the mayor and governor privately with multibillion dollar cut after a large spectacle. I realize you might think differently as an Amazon employee.
Are you aware that there are existing tax programs in NYC, and that most of the money "given" to Amazon came from those existing programs that are available to anyone who qualify?
> To be clear, since this point is being missed by so many people: This wasn't a special deal outside of the reduced regulatory burden. Any company that meets the eligibility requirements will get these exact same "subsidies".
>"Ugh... any company moving into NY can get these same large tax concessions."
Really? Let look at what was offered:
1 $897 million from the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) and
2 $386 million from the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP)
3 $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits
4 $505 million in a capital grant
Yes the first 3 are existing programs. But the idea that those sums or anything remotely close to them would simply be made available to any company moving to NY is comical at best. Now lets look at number 4, a 505 million dollar capital grant. That's a pure giveaway compliment of the tax payer. And let's remember that both the city and state governments put together dedicated teams to find this money for Amazon. This was in addition to the work the city and state did for give Amazon data, such as "detailed information on the availability of machine-learning specialists, user-experience designers and hardware engineers."[1]
There is no way any of this is available to "any company moving to NY."
> Yes the first 3 are existing programs. But the idea that those sums or anything remotely close to them would simply be made available to any company moving to NY is comical at best.
> $897 million from the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP)
That works out to $35,880 per employee that Amazon promised. Per the REAP program website[1], the credits available are $3000 per employee for 12 years. That actually works out to slightly more per employee ($36,000). So yes, any company not currently in NYC that creates 25,000 jobs in one of the designated areas would get the $897MM in benefits.
> $386 million from the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP)
ICAP is a property tax abatement available to any company willing to redevelop qualifying properties[2]. The value of the abatement is based on the final value of the property and which benefit schedule[3] it qualifies for. Any company willing to put in the same amount of redevelopment in one of the designated areas as Amazon was will get the same abatement value.
> $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits
I don't have the time at the moment to calculate how this was arrived at, but looking at the overview of credits available[4] it appears to follow similar formulas as the NYC programs.
In short, I do not see it as "comical" by any measure that any company offering to create 25,000 new jobs and redevelop hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property in designated areas would get these same values. Amazon didn't get these numbers because they were Amazon, but because of the scale of what they proposed to do. Whether that is a good idea to offer to any company is open for debate.
It looks like you left out the 505 million dollar capital grant part.
>"In short, I do not see it as "comical" by any measure that any company offering to create 25,000 new jobs and redevelop hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property in designated areas "
It sounds like you aren't familiar with NYC. Long Island City has long since been "developed." That building boom started 18 years ago. The volume and velocity of luxury high rises appearing across the East River has been incredible. LIC does not need to be "redeveloped" nor is it some basket case "designated" area that requires incentives and credits to build there.
You seem to have no understanding of local culture or the present state of Manhattan and Brooklyn as already massively gutted by wealthy transplants. Ask the majority of people who grew up in San Francisco and Seattle. This is a win. You also seem to have little understanding of the current situation of the NYC subway system infrastructure. You could argue Amazon’s workforce would have forced improvements, except this hasn’t happened in decades despite the increasing wealth and foreign investors here. Just read about Cuomo using $5mil of MTA to bail upstate ski resorts three years prior.
Amazon is notorious for paying pennies. 25k jobs paying 150k on average is a pipe dream. ask whole foods delivery people for Amazon fresh or whatever its called. they are counting their pay including $5 mandatory tip they collect from customers.
First of all, these jobs were all white collar. Amazon's current new grad SDE's in NY and SF both have more than $150k in comp. New grads.
Second, the food delivery people for Amazon Fresh are employees of Amazon. The Amazon Flex drivers is what you are talking about, and there is no "mandatory" tip for that service. What you're talking about is something Instacart and DoorDash was doing. Those are entirely different companies.
The information in the second and third paragraphs is great, but it's being downvoted because the first sentence is unnecessarily antagonistic. HN has succeeded as a place for productive discussion for as long as it has because it still has an ethos of a joining together in a search for the truth. Prefacing a good comment with an insult (even one that might be true) damages the fragile ecosystem of cooperation. It's not that this particular insult is so bad on its own, but its presence encourages others to reply with escalated levels of confrontation. Downvotes help prevent the incivility from spiraling out of control.
This is nonsense. I can't say that an enormous giveaway of public funds to attempt to buy jobs is categorically a bad idea in every situation, but if every one I can think of, and certainly this one, it is.
It is also amusing that you consider Amazon's assertion about the job count an iron truth of what would have happened. While Amazon does not have Foxconn's long history of scamming municipalities, there is also no reason to weight their words any higher than other companies who have played this game in the past, and the odds look significantly worse than a sure thing viewed that way.
Finally, the way you win these games is not to play, no different than the continual sports stadium scams or other "let's you and him fight" grifts.
New York City has no current shortage of jobs or growth. Incentives aren’t needed. If they wanted to offer incentives for companies to move to Buffalo, it might be worth it. But NYC will be fine without it.
Most companies are eligible for the same incentives. These tax deals will still happen, but they will be for lower paying jobs. Just read the press release at the very least. These are programs that existed before Amazon announced anything.
In this context, they're referring to the actions of NY (not the comment they're replying to), and TBH, there's nothing personally acidic; it's just a saying.
I was referring to feel free to pat yourself on the back for not "falling for it", which was a gratuitous bit of personal sarcasm, just the sort of thing which acidifies online discourse. Also, arguably, the bit about an attempt to revise history is an uncharitable escalation (though not personal).
It erodes discussion by slowly acidifying it. It's not that the remark was so bad in itself—it's that these effects compound, and if we allow them to compound very much, the problem will no longer be fixable. That's why we often ask people not to do this, even when they only did it a little.
I don't see votes as useful signal on Hacker News: for example, during the course of some comments I make, the vote starts out as very negative (from people who skim the comment and think it's insulting) to very positive (from people who read it more carefully and realize it's insightful). So there is a temporal aspect to votes (I'm sure you know more about this than me).A
And often when I get votes, there's no signal whether it's due to tone, or content, or whether it's because I'm expressing something that is true, but makes people feel sad (seems to happen a lot, makes no sense to me).
I agree with Dan, and I wouldn't have commented had I not read this comment. It's easy to underestimate the happy-but-silent majority.
Dan was spot on when saying that this acidity compounds. It leads to a vicious circle of increasingly hostile comments unless someone decides to be the bigger person and break the chain. Having a neutral third party step in to play this role (i.e. a moderator) makes this chain-breaking far more likely and works to all of our benefit.
> This tax deal was all about Amazon expanding very quickly.
Anybody who thinks that through should see why it's such a terrible idea. Not even NY can "very quickly" absorb 25k people in a small area without screwing up quality of life for the people who already live there. That's a great way to make real estate prices sky rocket and screw over the existing residents. And it'll completely screw up infrastructure and transportation, because there's not enough money to pay for them when the company causing the issues is getting a huge tax break and not paying their fair share, and they're not things that can be fixed quickly in any case.
> Maybe it works out great as other companies will lease those buildings and hire a combined ~20k employees averaging $150,000 in compensation, but that's likely not going to happen.
If the current residents are qualified for $150k a year jobs then they presumably already have one - it's not like there are 25k unemployed software devs waiting around for companies to move to NY.
That whole competition was a shameful money grab by Amazon and I'm glad it didn't work out for them.
This was over a 10 year period. New York City would have absorbed this just fine. Population projections for the city over that same time span is an additional 600,000 people.
The "small area" that Amazon was relocating to (Queens) is expected to get 150,000 of those people. And we can ignore the assumption that people making 150k a year all want to live in Queens (or LIC) and not Manhattan.
You're vastly overstating the effects of 25k people in a metro area that's >20M people strong. You're taking for granted that all of those people are going to live in a few blocks radius in LIC, and that's simply not close to what would've actually happened.
>"The value proposition is gone, so now Amazon will slow-roll growth in NY like they will any other office."
So the "value proposition" had nothing to do with access to a talent pool of qualified candidates to fill those 25K jobs? Because that would be odds with the reasons Google, FB et al have set up shop in NYC.
>"This tax deal was all about Amazon expanding very quickly."
Yet there was never any specifics of when Amazon would arrive at that mythical 25K job number. The closest you can find to any time qualification is the phrase "within a decade." I guess you have a very different idea of "quickly."
>"The fact that you (and many others) consider this a win is an attempt to revise history."
No the "win" here is not giving out corporate subsidies, more especially to a company that absolutely does not need it. NYC will be just fine without Amazon. There is no shortage of tech jobs in NYC these days. It been that way for over 10 years now.
What if another state gave the concessions, and then it worked out spectacularly for them, completely reviving a city and building up a new ecosystem that funnels in new wealth and new money. Would NY be kicking itself then?
No because NYC doesn't need Amazon to be a large, thriving city with all the agglomeration benefits large cities have. Because it already has all those things. Amazon arguably needed NYC more than NYC needed Amazon.
On the other hand, smaller, not thriving cities may have indeed benefited from attracting an Amazon. But it's a bigger debate whether they would benefit more than the cost they might've had to pay to attract an Amazon.
Do we even have an example on record of a state or city making huge concessions to attract a company and it "completely reviving a city and building up a new ecosystem that funnels in new wealth and new money"?
That's income per capita, which is a little bit different than wealth.
There is no place, in the US, that rivals the wealth and power of NYC. Now internationally, that's where you start to get your Beijing's, and your London's, and your Tokyo's, and your Monte Carlo's, and your Paris, and Shanghai's etc. But in the US it's NYC at the center of the preponderance of wealth and power. Only place in a position to make a run at NYC is DC, and they'll need a lot more than Amazon to do it.
(There's also LA and Chicago, but those cities are not as "powerful", nowhere near as wealthy, and to be frank, making a run at NYC is not their ambition.)
Take Columbus, one of the other contenders for Amazon's bachelor-like charade, with 850,000 people living there. 25k jobs would have been a bigger deal. If you compare 25k jobs to NYC's population of over 8 million, it would be proportional to adding ~2.5k jobs to Columbus, not all of which are tech workers making 6 figures. It's a drop in the bucket for NYC, especially considering Amazon already has thousands of workers in NY and will likely reach that 25k figure in time without needing billions in concessions.
But as a thought experiment, say they did create 25,000 jobs at an average salary of 100,000. What type of taxes and secondary effects on the economy does this have?
Does the city get back more than the 3 billion in concessions and how long does that take?
Looking at it from a strictly "benefit to government's tax coffers" standpoint (since that's the argument for the tax breaks):
Would those new Amazon jobs cause 25k people to move to NYC? Or is it more likely to just make the local market more competitive? How would other businesses react? Would they move? Embrace remote? If they increase salary across the board and live with unfilled positions, how does that affect tax revenue? Even if those people do move, how does that influx affect people with lower paying jobs? Will they be pushed out? How does that affect tax revenues?
Those are the kinds of questions I saw raised by opponents, and it seems like there weren't clear answers to them.
Google announcing they <WANT> to double their presence in New York is not the same as Amazon signing an agreement of understanding with the city and state.
Google hasn't committed to anything. Once it does, it will most likely seek the same tax benefits that Amazon did from the pre-existing programs if it qualifies
What are we discussing here? Yes, Google wants to hire more people in NYC.
In NYC there are are tax incentive plans for relocating and hiring that companies can apply for if they qualify. Just because Google doesn’t include that portion in their announcement does not mean they won’t pursue it if they can.
A good article would be one where Google states it won’t take any tax incentives even if it qualifies for it.
I don't know if you can say "never". The relationship between Dell and Round Rock, TX was based on such a deal and was a significant boon in the growth of a small town into a reasonable size suburb with a good amount of industry.
I'm very much not a fan of using public money to build stadiums for billionaires, but the deal with Amazon is a bit different in that it would actually have positive economic impact for the eventual location.
With a stadium, you only employ a relatively small number of people during the week and off-season. Staff during games and concerts are not really earning a ton of money that will create new economic activity. With Amazon, tech workers actually increase the tax base and they're spending their money at local businesses. At least with the Virginia deal, the tax breaks don't kick in until they actual create jobs at the promised salary levels.
Now I don't really agree with giving a massive private business all of these tax breaks, they can afford to expand without them if it makes business sense. The problem is that each state is competing with each other and FOMO kicks in. Without that powerful motivation companies wouldn't pull these stunts. Although eventually they'd try to pit countries against each other (which they kind of already do).
I have plenty of examples where it works out. The town I live in gave large tax breaks not too long ago and it's working well. Nearby, sports facilities were financed with balloted measures at the request of the public, sometimes in conjunction with the local ISDs who share the facilities. The vast majority are benefiting from this public/private economic cooperation.
I can offer a counterexample. In the city I live in, there have been several major tech companies that were given enormous tax breaks and other gifts in exchange for moving in. They'd move in, build their buildings and factories, and everything would look rosy for 3-5 years. Then they'd cut and run, leaving the city worse off than if it had never done the deal in the first place.
Yup, goes both ways. Assuming the companies promised more and underdelivered, your city's economic council should have written the contract-break into the contract. Or assuming the companies didn't promise that much, your city seems to either have done a deal aware of the potential of negative outcome (and accepted it) or did not do due diligence. But it doesn't discount the idea of economic incentives as a whole due to poor city planning in this case (or a gamble, whichever it was).
> it doesn't discount the idea of economic incentives as a whole
I never said it did.
However, if you really need to make a contract iron-clad in order to protect yourself (and good luck with that!), that's a very strong indication that the entity you're dealing with is untrustworthy and you shouldn't be getting into bed with them in the first place.
The problem with most major corporations (and particularly major tech companies these days) is that they are not trustworthy actors.
Sports facilities are a shared multi use venue that a city could make use of for decades. Amazon can and would move their staff whenever they want, and all the subsidies given to them just to have their people sit in Queens for 8 hours a day would be pissed away.
I wonder how many Queens residents sold their apartments/condos before this news broke? Talk about timing. I know of one person who was drooling at this unexpected windfall and will now be very... sad.
Between this and the L train drama impacting Williamsburg, I wonder how much volatility the outer borough housing market can take.
Sure there has been a housing bubble there for a decade, and I'm certain there are some real estate insiders benefiting from this arbitrage, but this kind of dysfunction can't be good for the economy.
I think in the long term that condo will have value. Queens is reasonably priced and a decent commute to Manhattan. My suspicion is long term, it will be commute time that dictates housing prices. (Look at cities in Europe, where there's excellent public transit - the "nice" areas are downtown, and the "slums" or "rough" areas are often in the burbs.
>We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.
It's not clear to me how this comment is relevant. Northern Virginia is the DC area, and if this cancellation means that all of the jobs that were previously slated to go to NYC will instead go to the DC area office, then that will have huge effects on DC.
"After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens. For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term. While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City.
We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion — we love New York, its incomparable dynamism, people, and culture — and particularly the community of Long Island City, where we have gotten to know so many optimistic, forward-leaning community leaders, small business owners, and residents. There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams.
We are deeply grateful to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and their staffs, who so enthusiastically and graciously invited us to build in New York City and supported us during the process. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have worked tirelessly on behalf of New Yorkers to encourage local investment and job creation, and we can’t speak positively enough about all their efforts. The steadfast commitment and dedication that these leaders have demonstrated to the communities they represent inspired us from the very beginning and is one of the big reasons our decision was so difficult.
We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.
Thank you again to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and the many other community leaders and residents who welcomed our plans and supported us along the way. We hope to have future chances to collaborate as we continue to build our presence in New York over time."
Stupid as the subsidies were your attitude is vile. We have a technology for increasing housing, they’re called apartments. New York does not lack space, it lacks enough housing. If this kind of crap goes on New York will get as bad as California where every municipality wants to build offices and nowhere wants to build housing.
This delight in pulling up the ladder after you and making it harder for people to get jobs is odious.
So if anything, Amazon will make the market worse for all other companies by sucking up a lot of the talent and causing a rise in wages. It might be good short term for software devs, but like Seattle and The Valley, it hurts absolutely every other industry. The person in your IGA or Starbucks often has to commute via bus or train or (god forbid) car over an hour out just so they can afford to barely make it, while tech people can pay the $2k ~ $4k a month for a 1 bedroom within 15 minutes of work.
Highly-paid professionals need service people, so bringing more of them into your city creates more demand for other careers to support them.
If there isn't enough affordable housing for those lower-paid people, that's a failure by the local politicians. Don't blame the highly-paid professionals; they're not the ones controlling zoning and development.
I think most people on this thread are in agreement. It's not the tech people who are "to blame", it's the companies and politicians for not developing a sustainable growth strategy that includes housing for all the jobs that support those tech workers.
Suddenly bringing in 25k high paid workers without a concrete plan on how to support that growth (including not giving gigantic tax breaks which would impact the necessary schools/police/transportation/etc of the area) is the root cause of the housing and traffic issues in Silicon Valley. I think local politicians are becoming a bit wiser to that kind of thing after seeing how gentrification is causing issues in other cities. NYC local politicians are probably the most aware, given NYC's history.
There's nothing "sudden", however. These housing problems in major metro areas have been going on for a long time, and there hasn't been any action at all to rectify it. No one's building good, affordable housing at a proper density anywhere, as far as I can tell.
What are you talking about? In my area of downtown Brooklyn there's a glut of luxury residential towers recently completed or still going up. As far as I know there's so much supply now that prices are actually decreasing, but again this is a decrease on luxury apartments so whether it's $4400 a month for a two bedroom, or $4000 a month, that's not very helpful to most people. What we need are new non-luxury buildings where normal middle-income earners can afford to live (ex. $2000 for a 2 bedroom). Amazon would've just led to the filling of luxury towers in LIC and encourage developers to build even more luxury towers for the new Amazon transplants.
They didn't. NY State offers a 'package' to all companies that move in. That's all they really got in terms of tax breaks. NYC only allowed it to bypass some building reviews/regulations.
A clarification: NYC didn't offer Amazon subsidies. New York State did. That's really the core of the tension - the whole deal was negotiated in secret then announced to the world as a finished product. That tends not to earn you goodwill with city politicians you deliberately excluded from the process.
As an NYC resident I'm glad my elected officials are "butt hurt" at not being involved in a political process that would affect the city in a large way. If they weren't "butt hurt" they really shouldn't be in their jobs.
NYC by virtue of political clout gets to meddle in all sorts of issues that affect upstate and warp them for it's own benefit. This time the state cut a deal that NYC wasn't in on and NYC didn't like it but at the end of the day it's still getting what it wants.
Having self government on a local level but then getting constantly steamrolled by a state government that is dominated by some other city really sucks. NYC (and Boston, and Chicago, and a whole load of other cities that dominate their state government) should try it sometime.
On one hand I'm annoyed that an opportunity for part of NYC to feel what that's like was missed by this > < much.
On the other hand the deal that NYS cut with Amazon was a boondoggle load of crap that set a terrible precedent so I'm glad it's not happening.
I assure you, we know exactly what that is like when we watch things like MTA funds being reassigned to save upstate ski resorts. And gobs and gobs of money being spent on the East Side Access train tunnel, at the expense of our failing subway system.
New York State has plenty of control over things that matter to the city, and doesn't hesitate to prioritize state concerns.
I am also an NYC resident and followed this story closely. There was an immediate, knee-jerk reaction from local politicians when the announcement was made, often in the form of protests with plenty of photo ops. It was not about how to work with Amazon and the community to create something that works for everyone. Instead, their message was "WE DON'T WANT THIS, GET OUT NOW!"
At the end of the day, this city needs to curb its reliance on finance jobs. Adding 25k tech workers would be a major step forward to making NY more of a tech hub than it is today. Kicking out Amazon sends a message to other large companies who are thinking about NYC -- buyer beware.
as a New Yorker (1.5 hr drive from Manhattan) this makes me sad.
while there is a low chance I would have worked there I was considering the potential reality of trying it out for a few months and see what their telework policy is (I am currently 99.5% remote)
I was excited about this. I think NYC is losing out in the long run on development/income/more transactions of all kinds which in general is good for the economy.
what? I didn't justify it at all. Of course we're not in high school and no it shouldn't be used on this site. just pointing out how it has nothing to do with 4chan and that its just a childish insult.
Thats been common lingo since I was a kid. It implies a specific jealousy based stubbornness, similar to sour grapes, but with an asinine element. I dont see your problem and think it is rude to police language.
Yeah, completely sidestepping your largest municipal government (and country's largest for that matter) and negotiating a secret deal with a private company should be completely fine and doesn't shit all over federalism in the slightest!
My understanding was that Amazon was intending to use existing city programs to fund $1.3B of the $3B in incentives, most of that tied to the number of employees they hire to work in specific zones including LIC [1].
Why do they have to involve the city politicians in the decision-making process if they don't need any special treatment?
[1] "While New York City has not offered Amazon any direct subsidies, the company also plans to take advantage of two city tax breaks that will further sweeten the deal by nearly $1.3 billion.
One is the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, which offers businesses moving to certain parts of the city a tax credit of up to $3,000 per employee for 12 years. The program will benefit Amazon to the tune of $897 million, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
The other is the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program, which provides property tax abatements. It will be worth nearly $400 million to Amazon, Cuomo said."
The subsidies were very contingent on Amazon delivering all of their promised uplift. But I think people scoffed at the top-line best case subsidies.
I forget where, but I remember seeing someone dig into the details of the offer and Amazon was not actually getting that much better of a deal than any other NYC business.
They were getting very near the same deal that any other company can get through a common tax-reduction program in NY. The difference was scale: 25k jobs was vastly, vastly more than any other company had used for this.
The sheer number of people from NY saying they are "proud" of this shows just how far removed people are from reality.
If this is true (I don't know either way, I've only followed this casually), why go through the whole dog and pony show in the first place? In that case, Amazon seems to have shot themselves in the foot here by playing a carnival game with the campus selection process. They gave everyone the _appearance_ that they got a sweetheart deal while basically not getting anything special?
and wasted the time and resources of tons of municipalities across the country who placed a bid on HQ2 with the false impression that they had a shot at winning it.
There are plenty of valid reasons why people who live in NY would not want Amazon dropping in - to say that they're removed from reality demonstrates quite a lack of empathy. Rents going up, people being displaced, an area that traditionally has fewer high income people all getting pushed out. People are still reeling from the push of affordability out of Brooklyn; now Bed-Stuy even is getting heavily gentrified. To many people, its a complete net negative for a tech company to move in - those who can't take advantage of it.
Honestly I'm surprised that so many people have come out against this, but no one seems to care about the Excelsior job program in general. I haven't even seen a person suggest that the program should be amended to preclude a company like Amazon from using it.
As an outsider (to both Amazon and NYC), I always assumed NYC's motivation was wanting to diversify its industry.
Right now it seems heavy in the financial sector to me. Arguably tech is a big part of the economic future, so one view is that it would be smart to have some of that.
It's my understanding that while NYC isn't really a tech hub, the startup / tech scene there has grown stronger in recent years. So I pretty much assumed they were trying to capitalize on this momentum and do a big push to achieve something like critical mass.
Whether that's a worthy goal is very much for debate, but it seemed like that's what they thought they were getting in exchange for the sweet deal they were offering.
I think NYC (or SF or any high cost of living area) is a crazy place to put HQ2. In terms of subsidies, while it's easy to dunk on Amazon, and no business should be getting subsidies IMO, there is a real issue here:
Cost of Living in NY is higher and Amazon will have to pay higher wages if it puts jobs there rather than a place like Nashville. That's higher wages for the same job. Pretty much every company has a cost of living multiplier and pays different wages for the same position based on where you live. So given that Amazon has a choice to locate in the low wage or high wage area, it seems reasonable for the high wage area to offer to offset some of those extra costs. Otherwise why would AMZN even consider a high cost of living area like NYC?
Now to me it's clear that the market signal is that they should open the new office in a lower cost of living area, which is what's going to happen now. A small victory for reason. This means more Amazon workers will be able to afford to buy a house and Amazon will be able to pay them less. Good news.
There's a reason you get superstar hubs, instead of companies and employees equalizing to somewhere else as soon as one metro gets a bit more expensive. Network/ecosystem effects are a real thing.
Google already has some dev offices in cheaper areas, like Pittsburgh, where office space is cheaper and the salaries they pay slightly lower. And yet, they still choose to double their headcount in NYC.
Just saying, "well I guess Google is just being irrational for no reason" would be simplistic, childish thinking. Google doesn't choose sites or increase headcount on a whim. They're going to do it because there are real advantages to the major tech hubs.
Educated guess, as someone who works at Google now and used to work at Amazon: it's easier to attract people to major tech hubs, because they offer more career stability in the form of having lots of other tech companies around. Being in Kansas City making a Google salary might sound great, until you realize that if you lost that job for some reason, there's nothing around in the same tier.
Also, the kind of person who wants to live in a cheaper city, with a big house for their family, is also the kind of person who's going to be reluctant to move from wherever they currently live anyway. That demographic is going to be hard to convince.
There is another aspect of this which some younger people miss. A hub city means a dual professional couple can both find long term career paths in the same place. That’s much harder to do in a non-hub city. Top talent tends to marry top talent as per assortive mating.
> Google already has some dev offices in cheaper areas, like Pittsburgh, where office space is cheaper and the salaries they pay slightly lower. And yet, they still choose to double their headcount in NYC.
Location, Location, Location.
Yes it's cheaper to live and run a business in Kansas but then you're in Kansas.
I don't want to tell you what the right trade offs are between, say, living in Phoenix or Dallas or Charleston and living in NY or SF.
But at some point people want to start families and buy a house and that starts to take precedence over being in a cool area. The only issue is jobs -- can they work remote, can they find a local employer, can they work for themselves?
So there is a huge demand for higher paying jobs in lower cost areas compared to the demand for higher paying jobs in higher cost areas. You personally may think it unbearable to live in Scottsdale, AZ or Minneapolis, MN, but most people find it pleasant enough and will pull the trigger as soon as they can find a job that pays even 2/3 of what they are earning in SF or NY.
>So there is a huge demand for higher paying jobs in lower cost areas compared to the demand for higher paying jobs in higher cost areas
NYC is the most populated and density populated city in the country, which is just another way of saying its the city with the highest demand. If most people rather work and live in Scottsdale than that would be the most populated and density populated city in the country.
Why is that hard to believe? More people may say they want to Malibu than Detroit but until they do it doesn't matter. I would love to have a Tesla but dreams don't count as demand.
Right. So, you see what I'm saying is that "demand" refers to a curve. And at any given price, there is a quantity on this curve.
So, take city A - where house prices cost, $100 and it has 100,000 people. In City B, house prices cost $500 and it only has 10,000 people.
You still don't see the full demand curve for either city. The statement "City A is in more demand than City B" is not a meaningful statement. That's what I was trying to say. I was trying to point out the absurdity of just counting people as a way of inferring the shape of a curve.
Now, how could your statement be changed to make it well defined? You could say "At every price point, City A will have more people than City B". Which means the curve of demand for A is above the curve of demand for B. But is that really true for NY? I doubt it. Maybe, but you'd need to provide some other evidence. And such evidence is hard to find, because NYC is a donor city -- more people move out every year than move in.
The only reason why NYC's total population is growing is because births outpace deaths and it is a port city for new immigrants. But for US-US transfers, it's shrinking by about 2% each year. So at least in the universe of US cities, people tend to choose to live elsewhere.
But that doesn't mean that NYC is a bad city. It most likely means that it's a little out of equilibrium -- most likely because of the influx of immigrants. E.g. you can imagine that existing New Yorkers have some equilibrium price, and then an increase of immigrants raises that a bit, so that some of the non-immigrants leave. This is true in general of port cities: you see an influx from outside the city that pushes a certain number of the people inside out.
Now are these immigrants coming to NY because they prefer it to Phoenix or whatever? No, they are coming to NY because it's a port of entry and because they have relatives there. Immigrants tend to cluster and stay put, which is a shame, because most would be better off living elsewhere, just because they tend to cluster in ghettoes in high cost areas. That's a whole other interesting effect -- why immigrants tend to stop at the first place they land and stay there.
How else could your statement be changed to make it well defined? Well, you can say that real estate prices are really high in New York, meaning that overall it is in great demand compared to other cities where real estate prices are cheaper. This is, I think, your strongest argument. Except there are a lot of factors that affect real estate prices -- including zoning restrictions, prop 13, and most importantly # of high paying jobs, etc. For NY, that would be Wall St jobs or FIRE more generally. Now you could argue that NY has so many Wall St jobs because it's great, but we both know better. There are historical reasons for these types of agglomeration effects that are kinda arbitrary and in the case of NY go way, way back. Even in the period of white flight when NY was dangerous as hell and half empty you had all those Wall St jobs concentrated there.
So, bottom line, it's really hard to infer preferences from the data you are citing and even from the better arguments you could have made but chose not to.
Others want to just stay in an exciting, vibrant area. You're projecting your values here.
> will pull the trigger as soon as they can find a job that pays even 2/3 of what they are earning in SF or NY.
The very fact that such jobs are somewhat uncommon, even though programming ought to be the kind of thing that's easy to distribute/make remote, should tell you something.
Honestly, I think you are not capturing the trade offs here correctly. There is some value to being in a hub, but not infinite value. For example a start up gains a lot more benefit from being in Silicon Valley than a company with 10,000 developers. The startup needs access to VCs, and it needs to hire superstar programmers.
Once a company reaches critical mass, it doesn't need access to VCs, and isn't able to hire superstar programmers at scale, so the quality of the average employee declines compared to what you see in startups. Now you start talking more about repeatable, workman-like code rather than brilliant groundbreaking code. You can still do the latter in a research center that you can keep in the hub and move a lot of the other code to the periphery, which will be most of your employees. After all, we are talking about HQ2 here.
At the same time, you have housing markets that are so insane that the majority of your developers will not be able to buy a house, which means they are going to leave you or demand really high wages -- wages that a company with 20K devs can't afford.
This is the inexorable logic of the market. Suppose we are not talking about people but some other scarce resource. Very expensive leather. You put that into the exotic cars but when you need to produce in high volume, you look for cheaper substitutes in order to help scale your operations. Everyone likes to think they are rockstar developers, but your typical AMZN HQ2 employee is not a rockstar, they are probably just a decent programmer (Not that there's anything wrong with that :P ). It just doesn't make sense to put HQ2 into a place where you have to pay 200K to win over the marginal employee.
> For example a start up gains a lot more benefit from being in Silicon Valley than a company with 10,000 developers.
No, I'd say they have about equal value. Consider, Google has tens of thousands of tech workers in the bay area. How many other metros could they feasibly relocate their HQ to? Even if you assume that only, say, a third of their employees decline to relocate with them, you're possibly looking at ~10,000 job openings you'd need to staff up on within a year or two to not be absolutely crippling.
> You can still do the latter in a research center that you can keep in the hub and move a lot of the other code to the periphery, which will be most of your employees.
This completely glosses over how companies work. Google doesn't have two tiers of software engineer types, where one gets more exciting stuff and better pay/benefits, while the other languishes on boring things with mediocre pay. Trying to split up the company that way, "we'll just hire crappier engineers in [cheap place] now and treat them worse because they're dumber" would be a total disaster.
> you have housing markets that are so insane that the majority of your developers will not be able to buy a house, which means they are going to leave you or demand really high wages -- wages that a company with 20K devs can't afford.
While this is absolutely a problem, and I applaud efforts to increase affordability either in the areas where tech HQ's already are, or by distributing more offices elsewhere, you're missing the obvious fact that these major tech companies already do this, and it already works. Yes, some people leave. The strongest, and probably most valuable employees largely don't, because they make enough to offset the increased cost of housing: a T6 at Google may make 400-500k/year.
Interesting. I guess they estimated that the battle to retain the tax breaks wasn't worth the fight. I wonder if they'll continue to expand in Seattle, or wait a few years before putting HQ2 elsewhere.
Whatever real estate may have been purchased in or around LIC is still going to be valuable even without this deal, but may take a little longer to recover.
I would have liked to have had Amazon become a bigger presence here in NYC, but I strongly disagreed with their tactics and use of a contest to facilitate a race to the bottom among municipalities.
It has already been rumored that Dallas is working with them, still. The head of the initiative, from the start, has stated, "We have never ended talks with Amazon, they are still ongoing". That was as of earlier this week/last week.
I'm not sure it is. There was always a suspicion that Amazon knew from day one they wanted to open a HQ in NYC—they just put on this show to get cities into a bidding war to provide the biggest tax break. I don't imagine the publicity around having NYC tax-payers subsidize the world's richest man's business dealings is positive.
Amazon also got a lot of free, confidential data on growth prospects from midsize to large cities all across the US, which would be useful for planning other facilities like warehouses and retail outlets like Whole Foods.
God I hope this comment ages well, but my skepticism is very high. We still have cabals of corporate paid lawmakers at every level of government and there's still tons of lobbying money putting a finger on the scale of the fight.
But fewer Foxconn style deals and race to the bottom HQ2 publicity stunts would be great for everyone (except the mega-corps).
It's very different because a large amount of NYC residents rent as opposed to own. To a resident that rents in NYC, Amazon moving in means they will have higher rents and less money on their pocket. It ends up costing many NYC residents actual money in rent to host Amazon, regardless of the subsidy. I think this one is a special case.
I don't see the problem here at all. If you have higher rents, that's because there's more demand for housing, and not enough affordable new housing is being constructed. Who controls that? Your local politicians. Who controls them? The voters who elected them, which is you if you live there. So you have no one to blame but yourself, and no cause to complain. You have the government you deserve.
That is a very shortsighted blame-the-victim mentality. You're conflating the power of the individual voter with that of the entire voting bloc. Besides, even if new affordable housing was constructed (which is getting harder and harder in nyc as people are being pushed further and further out geographically), it's not easy to just up and move, even in nyc.
Sorry, I have no sympathy for "victims" who have all the power, and bring their misery on themselves. The voters have the power over their government, so if they don't like their government, it's their own fault. In the short term, sure, voters can be fleeced, and have to wait for the next election to choose someone else, but this kind of stuff isn't happening within election cycles, it's long-term.
As for "being pushed further and further out", that again is the voter's own fault for not voting better. They don't need to move farther out, they need to build more densely, and they don't do it. This is largely an American problem because for some reason, Americans associate dense residential areas with "slums" and think that only suburbs with McMansions with gigantic and useless lawns can possibly be "nice".
The real data we have shows that incomes of the people who live in an area has more correlation with the cost of rent than the demand. Amazon will bring in workers that will earn higher salary than the average NYC resident. The only way prices could go down would be if developers made a huge error across the industry and oversupplied housing. What you are suggesting is impossible, unless the government steps in and starts to add housing supply with taxpayer dollars. I'm not sure your idea has much reality baked into it. And a resident of NYC is going to vote for real world solutions that benefit them. Not pie in the sky internet ideology.
They don't need to build housing directly; local government controls zoning and development, so all they have to do is insist that higher-density and more affordable housing be built than what is currently happening. They don't do that. SanFran is a better example of this really, but other places in the US have the same problem to some degree. This isn't "pie in the sky internet ideology"; other countries don't seem to have such a problem with development, it all just comes down to having decent government. Here's an article about how housing prices in Japan have been very stable despite similar increases in urban population; largely it's because the national government has taken away local governments' ability to restrict construction the way it happens in places like SanFran.
If Amazon hadn't turned this whole "HQ2" thing into a national drama they could have built a huge presence there without riling up so much backlash. Hopefully this ridiculous stunt is a lesson to them.
Pretty widely speculated that they were going to go to NYC and VA regardless of what the other cities did & the HQ2 gambit was just meant to maximize their bargaining position with these governments
Ok, but those people were wrong, since Amazon ended up pulling out of New York. New Yorkers have an extremely inflated sense of self-important and think Amazon just has to be in New York, when that’s clearly not the case.
<speculation>
Honestly I think they had only a very few locations in mind when starting this "search" anyway, but wanted to frame it as this big, open-ended, national competition in order to wring the highest dollar amount out of their favorite spots. They were never going to take the risk of attracting workers to Tulsa, Detroit, or {insert other city in Middle America} over an existing large pool of talent in an attractive metropolitan area.
</speculation>
While it is conjecture, I think this speculation is accepted relatively widely at this juncture. So given the farcical nature of the HQ2 competition, I think it's all the better that NYC doesn't bend to Amazon and allow them to dictate the terms at which they enter an already competitive labor marketplace.
Definitely Amazon. They ran ads about it and made a very public campaign that lasted years. Nobody forced them to run a secret auction for who was willing to give them the most taxpayer dollars. Apple, Google, and Facebook are all setting up big new offices in New York right now, they didn't need billions of dollars in subsidies to do it.
So massive amounts of corporate welfare and blatant handouts aren't enough? AFTER doing that, we're also supposed to play nice and continue to say good things about the most massive, powerful corporation in the world or else they will just take their ball and go home?
This whole thing is beyond stupid, no aspect of this model works for anyone. Just stop.
1. $3B in "incentives" sounds like a lot, but would this have been a good investment? i.e. would the city and State have gotten a reasonable return in the long run?
2. New York already has a lot to offer in terms of labor market, real estate for employees, and access to capital markets. Did Amazon really need incentives to want to be in NYC?
3. No huge loss for either party. NYC doesn't need Amazon, and Amazon can make the little people dance for them somewhere else.
Concerning 1. I believe that is often overlooked. It would not be hard (I suspect) to figure out the future effective tax revenue a municipality would receive.
Also, being a positive gain doesn't represent a good deal. We don't know what the lowest deal was that Amazon might have accepted (2 Billion? 1 Billion?) so even if NYC winds up in the black, they might have been leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the negotiating table.
It's just like anything, you might benefit from the price you pay but you might have been able to get it cheaper.
The problem with subsidies is that they needlessly cost money in a zero-sum competition between cities. It was always clear that Amazon would build somewhere. A race to the bottom competition over the exact location leaves everyone but them worse off than the alternative, which is coordinating to refuse to engage in it, like any sane economy like the EU does.
Demand and price are not the same thing unless both sides have perfect information. The fact that Amazon ran a secret auction for their HQ2 compelled New York to overspend, for fear of missing out.
As part of Amazon’s new headquarters, New York and Long Island City will benefit from more than 25,000 full-time high-paying jobs; approximately $2.5 billion in Amazon investment; 4 million square feet of energy-efficient office space with an opportunity to expand to 8 million square feet; and an estimated incremental tax revenue of more than $10 billion over the next 20 years as a result of Amazon’s investment and job creation.
Good riddance! NYC is already overcrowded. Let's build some subways to non-hipster neighborhoods first, then we can talk about adding more office space.
Surprise, backroom sweetheart deals between businesses and politicians are wildly unpopular.
And it was dumb for Amazon to seek out subsidies anyway. Amazon only needed one criteria to have a successful HQ2: A willingness to accommodate new housing demand. $3B in subsidies would be dwarfed by the increase in salaries from higher costs of living. If a city can allow housing to be built, and keep up with Amazon's hiring demand to keep housing prices flat, that alone would be worth far more than any city or state could ever hand over to Amazon in subsidies.
> We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.
So this whole HQ2 thing ended up being a grand waste of everybody's time.
Big slap in the face to the other cities filing bids. They also made attractive offers, but Amazon wasn't interested in them, just in wringing tax breaks out of NYC.
The HQ2 search was likely always a facade to try to leverage their real targets. Hopefully all those other cities now realize Amazon was just playing them. Corporations can and will lie for profit. Corporations just don't like it when they get caught.
The big tech giants seem to be A/B testing different ways of opposing and working with the government. Sooner or later these tests are going to start showing they have more power than the government, and they will start ignoring laws because they are irrelevant to increasing whatever metric is important this quarter.
This may have already happened, it's really hard to say.
My current pet idea is that the Electoral College ought to be replaced with the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies. That way we could do away with the facade that presidential elections currently create.
Curious fact: in the City of London, companies vote in the election of the local council, with a number of votes which depends on the number of employees within the City.
There 2014 Princeton study that showed only the top 10% of income earners political opinions are reflected in the political leanings of the elected representatives in the US. I did a short video on this: https://youtu.be/sD8KtaNzI8o
I saw somewhere that the turnout for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's election was somewhere around 4%. The voter turnout for most American elections is really quite low, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were distinct differences in turnout between income percentiles. Perhaps that might go some way towards explaining it.
Edit: I did a bit of research below, and 4% definitely does not seem accurate. I have no idea where the source for that 4% was :/
> With 98 percent of precincts reporting as of Wednesday, the State Board of Elections shows 27,826 registered Democrats cast votes in Tuesday’s primary in New York’s 14th District. With 235,745 registered Democrats as of April, according to the BOE, this comes out to a turnout of around 11.8 percent.
That's approximately 20% of the total population. I can find no info on what percentage of that 691,715 is eligible voters, but the 4% claim appears pretty ridiculous.
What facade? CEOs? I don’t think Dems or Repubs would like to see that. Definitely not independents.
We’d get the most pro-business candidate every time. Not that any candidate has been anti/business, but can you imagine, it’d be pro-business on steroids. Schultz, One of the Waltons, corporate raiders?
I think you take my comment more seriously than I intended. It's a suggestion meant to provoke thought about the nature/reality of U.S. presidential elections. With the suggestion one sees that my belief is that large corporations have far more influence on presidential elections than ordinary people like me have. But we have the facade that its actual humans that elect leaders and not the economic entities that are called persons in U.S. law.
Didn’t citizens united essentially try to overturn a previous BCRA reform which disallowed a non commercial entity from publishing a political film? Basically they were trying to “answer” (a la rap battle) Moore’s 9/11 film, but got knocked down by BCRA regulation because it was considered “electioneering” while Moore’s were okay because they were published by a “bona fide filmmaker”.
I think it gets complicated but the decision had merits, I think. Obvs, the SCOTUS believes it did.
In the case, the conservative non-profit organization Citizens United sought to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton and to advertise the film during television broadcasts shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary election in which Clinton was running for U.S. President.
The federal law, however, prohibited any corporation (or labor union) from making an "electioneering communication" (defined as a broadcast ad reaching over 50,000 people in the electorate) within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of an election, or making any expenditure advocating the election or defeat of a candidate at any time. The court found that these provisions of the law conflicted with the United States Constitution.
They were prohibited from airing ads 30 days before the election. The decision in terms of effects and scope was terrible. It was a broad decision and had a very wide effect.
Yes, but had it been published by a “bona fide filmmaker” they would have been okay.
The repercussions may be wider than anticipated or liked, but the decision to not allow them to advertise and show it because it wasn’t by an established entity seems spurious.
It had nothing to do with whether or not it was by a bona fide film maker. It was the timing of the ad and the fact that the movie was going to be broadcast. Movies in theaters were not covered by the law. Your premise is incorrect. The decision could have been narrow in scope. It wasn't. This is what people like me decry.
>In response, Citizens United produced the documentary Celsius 41.11, which is highly critical of both Fahrenheit 9/11 and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. The FEC, however, held that showing the movie and advertisements for it would violate the Federal Election Campaign Act, because Citizens United was not a bona fide commercial film maker.
Disallowing a film being shown 60 days before an election because the person is not a bona fide film maker is very much different than disallowing a film 60 before an election because the person is not a bona fide commercial film maker. The word commercial is important. Citizen's United was not a commercial enterprise. No one disputes this. No one thinks their film wasn't done by a bona fide film maker.
Exactly. That's why we should just dispense with the facade of elections and have the Fortune 500 companies decide who will be President. The free speech rights are too severely restricted if there is a rule that applies equally to everyone that regulates political ads 60 days before an election. It's just too suffocating to live in such a system. Hopefully we can export of our freedom to Europe and get them to get rid of their electioneering laws. Then they too will be free like us.
That's actually not a bad idea. We've already proven that the American people do a terrible job selecting a president with the current Electoral College system, so letting the F500 CEOs select the President surely can't be any worse.
Whoa. Let's back up a bit. The DNC and the GOP do a terrible job finding qualified candidates that can do the job. The system is designed to elect the electable. We The People don't have much say in who the parties serve up, who is willing to run, etc.
If the relentless (Media) attacks of DJT are an indication, there are few "outsiders" who are going to get involved in the future. And isn't that exactly what status quo'ers like the DNC and GOP want?
If the relentless (Media) attacks of DJT are an indication, there are few "outsiders" who are going to get involved in the future.
Consider the possibility that he isn't being attacked. That his actions/statements are being reported on. That what you call an attack is indicative of the nature of the man. When you cause George Will to leave the party then....
George Will? He's part of the status quo that laid down the foundation on which Trump build his successful candidacy. That George Will? The old white blowhard? That failure is not Trump's fault, it's Will's & Co. But people like Will don't have the integrity to stand up and be counted. Instead, they use diversion and misdirection, and sadly people fall for that. Will left because he was embarrassed, embarrassed by his own incompetence. Trump was a convenient excuse.
My benchmarks are these:
1) The USA went to War in Iraq over over lie. Thousands died, gazillions were spent, etc. as a result of that lie. The Media barely noticed. People who believe Trump is the worst thing ever clearly never understood who and Dick Cheney was. Trump is a pussy cat compared to Cheney.
2) Not only did BHO renew the (so called) Patriot Act but he expanded its depth & breadth. The Snowden revelation also came to light on Obama's watch. Again, the Media barely noticed. Real journalists would find both of these troubling. Instead, BHO was our first BuzzFeed POTUS.
--
I am by no mean a fan of DJT but the truth is nothing he has done to date comes close to either one of those. He's got __a lot__ of work to do to top either one of those. The Media is bending over backwards to discredit DJT because:
1) It's a favor to the DNC. It lets the DNC off the hook because ppl are too distracted to ask the DNC what should be asked. That is: "How negligent and incompetent do to have to be to lose to DJT? And what heads are going to roll for your debacle? We want names!!!"
2) The GOP doesn't like him either. He stepped in on their dance, made all their candidates look like the fools that they are, and made it to the Whitehouse. That's not how it works.
3) Neither party wants to see another outsider do what DJT did, and they will, by any means necessary, make sure it doesn't happen again any time soon.
4) Trump is good for the Media's business. They love the "outrage". They love the "controversy." As long as it draws eyes and clicks - cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-chaig - they're happy. The media finally discovered that giving Bush #2 and Obama free passes didn't help pay their bills. For the Mainstream Media DJT is like printing money.
George Will? He's part of the status quo that laid down the foundation on which Trump build his successful candidacy. That George Will? The old white blowhard? That failure is not Trump's fault, it's Will's & Co. But people like Will don't have the integrity to stand up and be counted.
George Will has been a solid conservative for decades and written numerous books lauded by conservatives. Consider the possibility that it was precisely his integrity that caused him to abandon the party. Perhaps it's possible that Trump represents a part of the party that a reasonable person with some sense of moral and intellectual consistency wants nothing to do with. How far right does the party have to go before you will question the state of affairs? Trump called Ted Cruz a liar. He implied Jeb Bush is a wimp. He implied that Ted Cruz's wife is ugly. He implied that Rand Paul is ugly. He said that McCain is a loser because he was a POW. He was a loser for getting captured. Trump agreed that his own daughter is a nice piece of ass. This was on the Howard Stern Show. How far does the man have to go to lose credibility in your eyes?
To be fair, was he wrong? How many career politicians do you know that aren't liars, especially Republicans?
>He implied that Ted Cruz's wife is ugly.
Again, to be fair, I just did a google search and he's not wrong, IMO. Yes, it's in poor taste to make remarks like that, but Trump is a populist, so he's basically playing the "I call it like I see it" card, which gets votes from his base.
>How far does the man have to go to lose credibility in your eyes?
The things you're complaining about are positives in the eyes of Trump voters. That seems to be the problem you're having with understanding. They don't want another regular politician; this is why populists come to power now and then. It seems to me that the biggest problem that both parties have, and is shown by your post here, is a completely inability to comprehend the appeal of someone like Trump to low-information, low-class voters.
Forget everything else, it's First Past the Post voting that is the cause of many of our problems (e.g., no possibility of third parties).
If we had an alternative voting system (there are several good ones), people could actually vote _for_ someone rather than just _against_ someone, and there would be some criteria for voting other than who can put out the most inflammatory campaign commercials.
But again, the status quo would never go for it, and I suspect most voters wouldn't go for a system that can't be explained on a bumper sticker. I'm not trying to insult the intelligence of the average voter, just their attention spans.
Or maybe we shouldn't be voting for people at all, but instead parties. That's how it works in Europe, and they don't have the two-party system we have because of it.
A version of Trump that was actually smart and competent would probably result in an economic boom rather than stupid government shutdowns and dumb and ineffectual tariffs.
>My current pet idea is that the Electoral College ought to be replaced with the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies. That way we could do away with the facade that presidential elections currently create.
So basically a "house of lords" for America, but instead of bishops and lords it's tech CEOs and celebrities? :)
This is more true than people realize. I'm not sure if it's entirely the case in this situation; as in that wasn't the initial intent but that's the way it turned out.
Things like Uber, AirBNB, even Google Waymo are all examples of this.
I'm not so sure it wasn't the initial intent. What was the "HQ2 search" but an experiment in new ways of dealing with governments and seeing how much you can get from them?
This is already happening. Corporate Lawyers exist solely for this reason. What can we get away with? How much will it cost? What is the opportunity cost of doing this in Location A, B, C. Strategies are employed to save money. Fines are the cost of doing business.
And lest I forget to mention the lobbying that happens everyday.
I never said it was, or that it in itself wasn't a problem. It's far less than $3B though, so anyone talking about billions specifically for Amazon is wrong.
Also, if your problem is large tax breaks for corporations, the focus should be on those programs that make available the other $2.5B available, since any corporation with a similar scale project could get that. Focusing specifically on Amazon distracts from the existence of these programs and whether that existence is a good idea.
As an aside, your snarky tone detracts from your comment and hurts the discourse.
Is it just a coincidence that the Giants and Jets both play in New Jersey. Maybe Amazon should just move across the river and call it the New York office.
This was one of the common critiques of the LIC HQ2 plan - LIC doesn't _need_ Amazon to continue redeveloping well, but a nearby city like Newark gets access to the same talent pool and a big anchor tech campus could do a lot more good there. If you're gonna throw tax incentives around, it seems prudent to do the most good with them.
(Granted, Newark is in NJ... and the proposed tax deal was from NY. Thinking as adjacent states instead of a region bites.)
You haven't seen the perpetual and energetic fights in my part of the nation about public funding for football (and other professional sports) stadiums. Sports businesses trying to get tax money to be spent in order to enhance their profitability is absolutely something that brings out the opposition.
It's more complicated than just St. Louis and San Diego not wanting to put up money. The owners of the respective teams wanted to move to LA pretty much no matter what, and requested particularly absurd things so they could pretend they tried
Hundreds of thousands of people don't turn out for a parade for Amazon. They do when pro teams win championships.
Football stadiums get subsidized because football is extraordinarily, wildly popular with most of the people that pay taxes. Those taxpayers spend massive sums of money on sports every year, across the NFL / MLB / NBA / NHL / MLS / NCAA. Those people pay most of the taxes that fund the government that then pays for the stadium subsidies.
Taxpayers love sports, love spending money on sports, and the majority of taxpayers are clearly fine with subsidizing sports at all levels. They vote with their dollars and... votes, over and over again, year after year, decade after decade, to keep supporting sports subsidization.
See: football attendance and ticket spending on NFL and college games annually, as well as sports packages for television, merchandise sales, etc.
Sports are very popular, and stadium-lovers are vocal with their representatives.
But they are an outspoken minority. The majority of tax-payers do not support subsidizing stadiums.
And stadiums will get built regardless of whether the city gives them free money, because they're profitable. So why subsidize private profits from public coffers?
Other than the fact that stadiums are known to cost cities a lot of money without returns and NYC gets to avoid those costs and benefit from the branding.
Google doubled their occupancy to 7k. Amazon was promising 25k jobs. I'm stunned out how so many people in this thread are pretending thats equivalent.
empty promise is useless. did they sign a contract saying if they hire 1 person less than 25k and their average salary is 1 dollar less than 150k by certain time then they will refund all tax breaks? when bezos signs that contract then I would believe this.
Their entire deal, which was released with the initial announcement, is predicated on them creating those promised jobs and building those promised buildings. There are benchmarks along the way and all the incentives are based on meeting those benchmarks.
In short, yes, they would have signed a contract stating that.
Amazon's spectacle reminds me of Lebron's "The Decision". It's one thing to work out the details and make an announcement, but to purposefully turn it into a show about "What can you do for me?" instead of "Here's what I can do for you" made it not sit well with people.
Also, the pull-out letter also basically dumps the blame on state/local officials for not wanting Amazon, despite not all stakeholders being present at the table when discussions started.
And the company that owns vast swaths of cloud computing space doesn't have talent to back it up? Amazon is way more dominant than LeBron in their respective businesses.
I don’t know about having more talent, but amazon definitely has more ego...At least LeBron didn’t demand special tax deals and non-public data from cities to bring his talents.
No, Lebron just demands the coach be fired, management take on horrible contracts for Lebron's buddies, and all organizational decisions be run by him. Truly, Lebron's lack of ego is staggering.
First, state income tax is exactly that, income tax imposed by the state, and governed by the state. There may be local jurisdictions that impose additional income tax but any savings there would be trivial.
While sports are important to the local economy, my understanding is that they are relatively minor at the state level.
Second, LeBron (and other athletes) earn playing income in every jurisdiction they play in, not based solely on the jurisdiction that the team is based in.
This means they are responsible for filing taxes in each of these jurisdiction.
In addition to playing income, they make money through endorsements and other investments. These are considered income in whatever state they claim is their residence.
It's in a players interest to establish a residence in an area with favorable tax laws.
Cities may try to woo elite players to join them, but tax savings isn't very compelling.
LeBron (and other athletes) earn playing income in every jurisdiction they play in, not based solely on the jurisdiction that the team is based in. ... This means they are responsible for filing taxes in each of these jurisdiction.
Do you have a citation for this? I'm skeptical. I live and work in Texas. When I travel to my company's office in NJ, effectively earning income for a week in that state, I don't pay NJ income tax on that income.
Assuming your income is over $20,000, you ARE required to file a NJ state tax return.
Also, note that even if you don't file a tax return, doesn't mean you are exempted from doing so.
Example, as a citizen of Texas, you are also required to pay use tax on any items aquired out of state/country and used in the state. My assumption is that you don't also pay that either, even thought you are legally required to do so. It turns out that use Tax is particularly difficult to audit and collect for, especially without a mandatory return like state income tax.
Agreed. I see no exemption there for “I was just attending a conference and just stayed in a hotel for a few days.” Much less spending weeks at a remote company location or job site.
I also am not a tax lawyer. However, at least the NY non-resident form specifies that the tax is only owed on NY sources. Probably, when you are on a work trip, the "source" of your income is still the office you work at in your home state. Also worth noting that if you're only there for a week, you'd have to make a great deal of money annually before you got above the standard deduction cutoff for that state.
I had a paid remote internship for about 6 months for a Texas company while I lived in Missouri. I had to file a Texas state income tax form, or at least my reading of the law indicated that I had to, and Texas gladly took the money.
If you’re doing client work there — and you may not be! —- you’re responsible for the portion of the income earned in that state (you have “nexus,” in the parlance — I’m less sure about merely having presence in a state even if the work isn’t generating company income, but in some cases I think that’s treated as nexus as well). In those cases, your company should send you state W-2s for your income; most decent consulting firms offer tax prep services if you end up working in a lot of state and international jurisdictions with tax consequences.
The original proposal was that star athletes attempt to negotiate tax incentives with cities, in the same vein Amazon did with NYC (and many other large corporations do).
City income taxes add a trivial percent to the total income tax rate when compared to the state income tax level. Thus, if you got incentives from a city, they would amount to trivial amount of savings.
Athletes would need to negotiate at the state level in order to have a material effect on their taxes.
I hope that clarifies my point.
I imagine Athletes pay accountants who are well versed in how to fill out those forms, and, at least in the NFL's case, a lot of players compensation may be in bonuses, and not necessarily game-day checks (which would be subject to local jurisdictional income laws).
>Second, LeBron (and other athletes) earn playing income in every jurisdiction they play in, not based solely on the jurisdiction that the team is based in.
This means they are responsible for filing taxes in each of these jurisdiction.
That’s pretty funny how well settled that area of Law is, and yet again Amazon thinks it’s pretty special in that regard also...historically they haven’t paid those taxes either (state or local) and there was just a Supreme Court case confirming that in fact amazon isn’t special and that all this time they themselves should have been paying taxes where they had been selling/shipping goods.
Merchants don't pay sales taxes, they collect them on behalf of the taxing entity. The tax is owed by the consumer to the entity regardless of whether the merchant collects it or not. Amazon was trying to give itself an advantage over physical retailers, but thus had nothing to do with Amazon trying to get out of taxes.
That’s cute, but not the way the Law works generally. Maybe you can point to a single state where the law is different, until then I’ll just say the general rule is if the merchant makes of $x they are required by law to collect sales tax. Where or not the merchant does, they will be liable to the state for payment of the same, not the individual consumers.
If the law worked the way you represent why would any merchant collect and pay sales tax to the states?
Ironically, wasn't that one of the reasons people speculated during that process as to why he chose Miami, no income tax? Its obviously not some sweetheart deal but he could have formed a super team in any city that was willing to pay a few super max-ish contracts.
I am of the opinion that any and all "Foundations" should be required to put their financials into a common splunk log repo with NLP search tools made available to anyone.
I'm a nonprofit fundraising professional, and I could probably talk about all the reasons why that is a horrible idea for 2-3 hours straight without repeating myself. I mean, at the very least, it's a bad idea for the same reason that exposing all the financials of every individual, or all other organizations, with the added benefit that you'd be opening people up to harassment for supporting certain social causes or belonging to certain religious groups. You might as well start a government mailing list called "hate crime targets."
If you think there are a lot of non-charitable transactions occurring using charities as a front, it would be a way better idea to just have the IRS audit more 501c3 orgs.
If you are trying to decrease fraud, it would almost certainly make more sense to audit wealthy individuals and for-profit corporations far more often.
Publishing total income is way different than publishing all your financial information.
There is information in people's finances that should be 100% private. What if an employer looks at the financials of someone applying for a job and sees they claimed $100k in medical expenses last year because they had cancer? Companies will do that if they have the ability, and people will lose jobs because of it.
It doesn't matter if you make it illegal. I worked a recruiting agency for a while, and illegal hiring practices are incredibly common.
Not just "What can you do for me", but "We'd never consider you for a HQ in a million years, but by all means give us a bunch of business intelligence gathered on your own dime we can use to site fulfillment warehouses..."
A good portion of all of that is stuff Amazon could compile, but they got cities across the country to donate probably tens of thousands of hours of taxpayer salaries to do it instead.
The nature of special incentives each proposal offered - custom ones for Amazon-only, or unusual ones - will also have told them which cities they've got extra leverage over if they come offering a smaller project like a distribution center.
> The most jarring incentive reportedly comes out of Chicago, which, under state law, could redirect between 50 and 100 percent of the income taxes incurred by Amazon employees right back to Amazon.
That article misrepresents what the Illinois tax credit is. It only applies to the portion of the income tax that the employer pays.
Basically the state law allows employers who create new jobs to not have to pay their portion of the employment tax for a few years, and that tax credit applies to every company.
I'm pretty happy with the way Illinois and Chicago played their cards with Amazon, we were basically like "We've got a lot of great shit, and if you come here you can take advantage of this tax credit." We didn't offer Amazon any special treatment.
> > The most jarring incentive reportedly comes out of Chicago, which, under state law, could redirect between 50 and 100 percent of the income taxes incurred by Amazon employees right back to Amazon
Stealing the worker's surplus labor value isn't enough?
A big difference is that contrived drama is at the very core of the entertainment business of professional sports. It makes for much of the entertainment! It's less helpful in the more mundane enterprise of 'building a bunch of offices and warehouses'.
Cough Trump Cough. It does look like Amazon tried to stir the same soup as Trump, and it doesn’t work (Note that I won’t defend that it worked for Trump, it’s just that it may have made it seem ok to pull money from cities using newspapers, because of that precedent).
I don't really see any connection. My point is that for the business LeBron James and the NBA are in, spectacle is part of the product and people burning LeBron jerseys in Akron is business well done.
People in Long Island City calling their political representatives and yelling at them about how they don't want your offices and warehouses is not business well done if you have 'building warehouses and offices' as a goal.
1. Basketball is entertainment, and 'The Decision' was the result of years of speculation by the fans and the media. Furthermore you see similar spectacles for such things as National Signing Day, where top recruits hold press conferences to announce what college they are attending.
2. There is animosity and jealousy towards 'entitled millionaire athletes' that was made worse with players being able to control their own destiny instead of suffering under terrible management. "If they get to choose where to work and do so with their friends, why can't I" yells Joe Six-Pack.
3. The super team. Somehow NBA fans forgot or were ignorant of how absolutely stacked championship teams had been throughout history, featuring multiple hall of fame players and coaches. Elements of #2 play into this as well where it is management, not players, that should build championship teams.
4. A player like LBJ is far, far more likely to deliver (which he did with multiple championships) in the NBA than a company like Amazon is to deliver a value worth the taxpayer dollars they absorb.
It's a fine analogy used in the way they used it. Drawing attention to yourself for a decision you know is going to be controversial only makes it more controversial and draws out even louder criticism.
On top of that he is a big NBA fan so that he might have “stolen” the idea from LeBron. Also, he kind of was mocked for the whole thing, he’s no Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo so the majority of football fans wasn’t that interested in his future club (even though he still is a pretty good player nonetheless).
I am announcing an exploratory committee on whether or not I may or may not Apply for YCS19 - I wont tell you if I will apply or not - or how much money my [stealth] startup-unicorn will attempt to raise for an innovative and world-changing product we have yet to decide on seeking a co-founder for. But I am telling you now that I am planning on letting you know, at the end of this quarter - or maybe next month or who knows when, that I am looking into a potential announcement about this announcement where I tell you if I will make a further announcement about my announcements.
I think what's notable is that they can do that and people care - Lebron and Amazon are both desirable enough that people cared. You (and I) are not desirable enough that people care.
I don't see it as a "what can you do for me". A lot of Amazon's interest were aligned with that of many New Yorkers. Both Amazon and most New Yorkers want to have a strong transportation system and a diverse economy that doesn't just rely on taxing bloated financial bonuses to pay for services. They also want New York to be an in-demand tech hub with a deep labor pool and be a place where people actually want to live. Cities should strive to be places where employers want to invest. We aren't talking about handing over duffle bags of money to Bezos. They agreed to offset some of NYC's exorbitant taxes and regulations that make this city hostile to many businesses. And supposedly the incentives were available to any employer of that size. The fact is that having a large Amazon hub in NYC would greatly benefit the city and its denizens
Their employees still pay tax though. With tech wages as high as they are it is probably non-trivial amounts.
I am not advocating for big businesses evading tax mind you. Just suggesting it would probably still be a boon for the state tax income if a bunch of tech wages migrated to the NY tax base.
New York, the wealthiest, biggest city in the country can have good mass transit by properly spending the money it already collects.
New Yorkers already pay tremendous tax dollars yet we have the mass transit that we do. The idea that there are no tax dollars is a myth. The funds are simply siphoned off to some other who-knows-what, and the remaining is poorly spent. The purported Amazon tax base would have likely been spent the same.
Sure, but Manhattan is not a ghost town either. The usual crop of employers is present, there's certainly no surfeit of supply on the commercial real estate market, etc. There are cities with mostly-empty skyscrapers and overly ambitious commercial centers. NYC isn't one of them.
Given the broken nature of the subway in NYC that money would have gone to the state government and been spent on god only knows what boodongles and not on imporving transport in NYC
Even now the upside people are apparently angry at Albany for being too focused on the city. It makes no sense to me. This is clearly not true and yet everyone panders to those people.
NYC population is 08.6M
NYS population is 19.85M
Just the city is forty percent of the population. If you add the surrounding areas, you'll be a majority (I think they'd want things done in the city). How does the city not have better representation in the state assembly? How does upstate keep getting away with swindling the city?
Would it? Silicon Valley used to be a great place to live for normal people. Now it's hell for anybody who isn't rich.
As James Damore recently tweeted: "Amazon abuses its near-monopoly to bankrupt its competitors by selling at a loss, threaten brands with counterfeits until they sell on Amazon, and use third-party merchants’ data to undercut them. All while being subsidized billions by the government." https://twitter.com/JamesADamore/status/1094985319575969792
Exactly, this was a huge communication error on Amazons and the politicians' side. Offering such huge subsidies to a single company will never go down well in the current political landscape - especially not in a city with a resurgent left.
Subsidies are paid out of tax dollars. Surely you're not arguing that Amazon's 2.5 billion investment will go straight back to the city's coffers?
It would generate property tax (if not abated) and income tax for the workers (both hired after the fact, and hired to complete the construction), but at what percentage of the total investment? 10-20%?
This is only irrational in a narrow accounting sense, and even then only if you believe in the numbers turning out as purported. You are considering a simple one-time game of "give me this and I'll give you that".
What is the long term effect of having government hand out money to every business that creates a hype? What is the effect of the amount of similar deals that will inevitably get hyped?
Should you play the game at all? Is it reasonable for someone to come along with this kind of deal? Is there no sense of fair play - that all corporations should be treated equally - whose logic is outside of the simple arithmetic?
The simple arithmetic that you are suggesting can potentially lead to unpleasant situations. What if the opposite were to happen? Supposed some big firm like Google decided to ask the government for money, or else they leave and sack every employee who doesn't want to go to their new location?
You could have firms queueing up to present you with new math problems.
Yeah, professional protesters are a thing. It is not even NIMBY any more, it is anti whatever development. Especially in a ultra-leftist city like NYC, where in their mainstream political disclosure, business reads as sin.
I think you're misreading Musk's reputation outside of tech circles. If they're aware of him at all, he's more or less viewed as a Bond villain at this point.
The opposition is not because some high tech firm, whether it is Google or Amazon, is expanding in NYC.
The opposition is because of the Massive tax breaks and other $$$ giveaways New York was going to hand over to Amazon. I don't recall Google extorting NYC for $$$ before they decided to expand....
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure any such tax breaks would have to be public data by now, even if they were originally hashed out behind closed doors.
If you're implying that Google got tax breaks, and no one noticed the public data confirming these tax breaks, please provide evidence of the data that has been overlooked.
Show me the public data source where I could conceivably find that out and I'll do "please provide evidence of the data that has been overlooked". Because I don't think that data source exists.
I don't think you realize how opaque tax records are in many places. You seem to be implying that there is a way for the public - or even journalists - to acquire the tax and assessment information of individual companies. Attempting to do so is considered fraud in most jurisdictions (e.g. attempting to use a FOIA request for the personal information - including tax records - of someone else or a business of which you are not an officer).
The assessed property tax values of the property. What does that have to do with the actual amount paid? Tax breaks for an entity don't apply to the assessed value of property owned by them...
Every taxing district I have looked up property in shows the actual amount billed. They always show all applicable credits the property or its owner qualify for. I haven't tried to look up NYS records, but I don't think it's any different.
But again, what portion of the taxes in question are actually property taxes. I pay lots of business taxes and my business owns no property.
You are saying if I bought a piece of property and paid property taxes on it, that all of my business taxes would suddenly show up in the property tax records?
It's basically standard practice for any business to negotiate tax breaks for building in one place rather than another. I'm not going to spend any real amount of time tracking down theoretically publicly available documents on these deals. Sure the records exist, but I have no knowledge of a database I can search, and I'm not putting in a FOIA request.
Here's an article discussing the topic at large[0] (and Google is one of the beneficiaries here).
A "tax break" is just a reduction in taxes that otherwise wouldn't be paid at all. It still means a profit for the city.
It's not like NYC is paying Amazon to come to NYC. NYC would still make huge tax revenues from additional sales, real estate, income taxes, and corporate taxes.
Now they're turning that all away. It's such an irrational decision that if I were Amazon, it would raise a big red flag for me as well.
No need to open in a community that doesn't want your money.
It certainly means revenue for the city but we don't know that it means profit. All of those people are going to generate trash, take the subway and consume city services. Why shouldn't Amazon pay like everyone else?
That's literally paid by those employee taxes? Unless you'd rather more homeless and drug addicts move in, which it seems is what NYC local politicians wanted.
Let me explain it in terms that any New Yorker should be able to understand: If you are a New Yorker you are no doubt familiar with the concept of "one month free rent". Most buildings in NYC will give you one month free when you sign your lease. If a building doesn't give you that offer its probably not as tempting as another nearby building that does. Yet the "one month free" isn't a losing money proposition for the building because they continue to make rent money from you for a long time after the free month.
NYC was basically offering the same thing to Amazon: "hey come live in our city, we will give you a temporary tax reduction, in exchange for a TON of money over the next X years".
Overall the city wouldn't have lost money, it would have gained many billions of dollars of additional money in the future in exchange for an initial 2 billion reduction.
The solution to that is to make the incentives performance based. And that's exactly what was proposed: if Amazon hadn't delivered the promised results the tax breaks wouldn't have taken effect.
That's not really a solution all by itself. Making the incentives performance based merely opens the possibility of being able to sue, nothing more. And when you're talking about companies with the size, power, and lack of scruples as Amazon, suing can be a losing proposition regardless of how correct your position is.
Exactly. I'm not that old, but I've seen this dog and pony show so many times already that it's no longer surprising. The latest example being the Foxconn plant in Wisconsin. The increased tax revenue from that plant may never[1] recoup the investment Wisconsin made to bring it to the state.
What New York City do you live in? I have never been offered, nor do I know anybody who's been offered a month's free rent on signing a lease. Places that do this are overcharging and driving up rents. Your comment may just be emphasizing the fact that there are multiple "New Yorks." And I suspect the New York that Amazon HQ2 would benefit would be the New York that pays too much to live in a glass tower and gets offered a month's free rent.
I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn which is obviously a significantly gentrified area. Not just the "glass towers" but most of the older brownstones I looked at over the past month while searching for a new place also offer one month's free rent. I can't argue with the fact that Amazon would contribute to gentrification because that is true. But I can also say that Amazon pulling out of the plans isn't going to stop gentrification.
What is the point of this comment? It combines some smug self-satisfaction about "Your New York" with your ridiculously insulated anecdata about the first month discount many apartments give.
A 5 second Google search shows hundreds of results for 1 month free rent in apartment listings.
What exactly are you contributing to the discussion?
The point is pretty clear: there are people out there who don’t even know what 1-month free rent is. The contribution to the conversation is an illumination of the divide between some generalized types of people in New York. The relevance to the OP is that there may be some wildly different opinions on Amazon’s perceived actions based on which generalized type of New Yorker you are.
That's a fair criticism, and I regret my tone and making the discussion personal. But as a life-long New Yorker, I do feel a personal stake in all this.
I believe OP is right that the month's free rent offered on an apartment is recouped by the landlord: in the form higher rents, which have become a real problem for many people born and raised in the city and which would likely only be exacerbated by Amazon's setting up shop here, especially under the conditions offered by the city.
Over the past 20 years New York has experienced an influx of wealth without commensurate investment in public services. The MTA is dying, urban blight is spreading and many of the new professional class moving here don't seem bothered by it.
Another piece of "anecdata": walking down Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg a few years back, I heard one wealthy newcomer say to another that she couldn't wait for the local pharmacy across the street from the new Duane Reade to close. Maybe this anecdote doesn't have the force of a "real data" but it may help some people on here understand why New Yorkers aren't thrilled by the prospect of a building a big Amazon campus and welcoming them with a handout.
I agree with you. Just in the last five years of living in Williamsburg I've seen the neighborhood change a lot. I remember that local pharmacy you are referring to before it got turned into an Apple store, and before the Whole Foods got built on the same block.
I'm not gonna lie, I'm part of the gentrification problem over the last five years, but to be fair New York gentrified me at the same time that I helped gentrify the neighborhood. I only made about 30k a year before I moved to New York and I lived in a trailer home back then. After moving to New York I got a few different tech jobs and now I live in one of those over-priced one month free buildings.
I share my story just to say that in my perspective gentrification is a complicated system, and like you I also have a personal stake in all this. In my experience working in tech in New York has been a huge opportunity to improve my life. Amazon would have offered roughly another 25k people such an opportunity, some of them would have been newcomers, and some hopefully long term NYC residents. I can't lie, some people might not have benefited as much as others, but at least those 25k would have been able to get the same opportunity I did when I moved here.
A real New Yorker wowie zowie. Your parents move here? Grandparents? That and a nickel will get you on the subway.New York has always been about the influx. You want people to be impressed with your long bloodlines go to England and be Lord Something Or Other the 19th.
@andosteinmetz I'll offer anecdata also as a born-and-raised New Yorker (FYI - I finally moved out because the job market did not support the living costs given personal constraints.)
NY is a shell of what it was in 2005/2006. Yes, there are more tech firms, but the 500,000 or so jobs lost after the financial collapse in 2008 have not been made up for. I welcome Amazon bringing in well-paid positions, because as a New Yorker, I'd like the city to support a middle class, not just wealthy foreigners parking money into LLCd condos staying empty.
Much of the gentrification could be due to the free money and ZIRP policy in the US -- it is cheap to borrow and thus people, especially wealthy people/corps, borrow heavily and raise prices and rents. There is little correlation between actual income and rents in NYC because of this external booster.
Wouldn't it be better if the source of rent increases in NYC be the presence of lots of well paying jobs?
@TuringNYC I agree that the role real estate investment is playing in driving rent increases is important to address - through regulation - and I’m all for bringing good jobs to the city.
However, I think we can do better than giving massive tax breaks to megacorporations with bad records on labor relations and what has seemed to be an adversarial relationship to government and public services. I have no interest in seeing a replay of what’s happened to SF in NYC.
I think it’s important for cities to stand up for the interests of all their citizens, not just software developers and product managers (etc) in negotiations with increasingly powerful tech companies.
The part where it's mostly overpaid software devs living in a bubble.
I live in that part of Seattle. It's the same part where people want to ban all cars because they never have to go anywhere that isn't walking distance, and their dog loves walking.
Not a landlord, but I imagine there are oodles of benefits to it from their perspective. If I can rent you an apartment for $4000.00 a month but tell you "$3666.67 (net rent w/ first month free)", then:
- Come next year, the default position is "you get a 10% rent hike by just paying the number on the lease."
- if you leave after a year, I've got price history at $4000 a month and can use that as an anchor for negotiations with the next tenant
There's nothing that says I have to start from fair market value and take a month off either. Say I call the apartment price 12/11ths of market value, but then advertise the net number and each month your great deal lets you pay only 11/11ths of FMV.
Bloomberg had something about this today[1] - something like 45% of leases in NYC have similar concessions.
We should be absolutely clear about this: you are not getting "one month free rent." The cost of that "free" month is built into the other 11 months, as well as the difficulty of getting your full deposit back.
"One month free" is one of the oldest tricks in the NY real estate book, along with "preferential" rating.
The flaw is an implicit assumption that no alternative opportunities exist. Or in other words, the well-known concept of pricing.
It is exactly like a pushy customer demanding a discount on their groceries, saying: "Well, if I don't buy them you won't get any money at all!"
If you are confident you can sell enough groceries at the regular price, the economically correct decision is say "I don't need YOUR money" and laugh in their face.
Yep. Definitely. This is exactly what Saudis do to US every time they can, like that 100B defense contract that made current White House into Saudis' faithful servants afraid to even mention Khashoggi or Yemen.
Suppose we change it slightly: a Saudi prince wants to become a US citizen in exchange for some considerable investment into our economy. Do you find it objectionable? Because that's literally one of the available options today.
The point is that we're already selling citizenship for money.
In your original example, the only reason why it would ever make sense is if the Saudi prince in question can somehow produce more wealth for the public than they'd pay in taxes. In that scenario, it's exactly the same in the end, once you balance everything - you have sold them citizenship for money.
And if they don't pledge to earn you more than you'd save, then why would you even consider such a deal?
The opposite is true, 100% of those taxes will be paid by some other business. Maybe you could make your argument about the New York City of the 1970s, but you sure as heck can not make that argument about the New York City of 2019. New York City is not starving for investment, rather, its biggest challenge nowadays is managing its fast growth. Other businesses will move into those buildings, and hire those workers, and they will pay normal taxes, which is a lot more than what Amazon offered.
Amazon being there would mean growth; whether it's greater growth than local businesses is hard to say.
But mostly, it's obvious growth that looks good for politicians who can say, "look, I brought jobs!" People notice it when a high profile company arrives whereas if your local chain expands, that's not even a news story.
Much of the political aspect of economics is due to the relative visibility of various events in the media.
The main driver of politics in NYC is real estate. Long Island City has already been undergoing a gentrification blitzkrieg, but adding Amazon HQ2 to the mix would yield fantastic profits to those of the rich who were in on it -- that is, those who had gotten the memo several years ago and taken up a good real estate position in the area. Plus, the irony of taking the proles' money in taxes to drive them out of their neighborhood homes and businesses must have offered an icing of sadistic pleasure to the mighty cake of profit. What I am wondering is how the deal was stopped. Usually, big real estate projects steamroll all resistance. There's money to be made! (Not by you.)
Turns out there were no special deals from NYC. All Amazon got in terms of tax rebates was standard stuff, available to anyone. It was big for Amazon because the headcount was big.
You're getting downvoted, but I don't think it's an unreasonable theory. Cuomo might run for President at some point; having Bezos happy and throwing a million or two into a PAC wouldn't be a downside for him.
For the same reason that politicians support objectively terrible deals for sports stadiums: their incentives are misaligned. They get all of the positive press when the deal is signed and someone else will have to deal with the long term fallout.
The obvious answer is what is commonly called the inertia of dead ideas. Leaders grow up in one era but take power in the next era and they often bring along with them ideas that are 20 years out of date. Military historians joke “generals are always ready to fight the last war” and political leaders make mistakes of the same category. Offering billions in tax breaks to lure businesses is the kind of thing New York might have sensibly done in the 1980s when they were desperate to replace the loss of the textile industry. Such a strategy makes no sense in 2019, when an abundance of investment has clearly replaced the lost industries.
> Can you explain this some more? Are you suggesting that governments establish a target figure and adjust that year's tax policy to make sure it's met?
They are just suggesting that the site that Amazon would have occupied will be rented by some other business. Probably, that business will not have gotten all the tax-breaks that Amazon did. Therefore, the tax collected by NYC on that space will be larger with Amazon gone.
The alternate businesses may not provide the same density of profit as Amazon, so their total tax outlay might be much lower over time. (One must factor in the other taxes paid by the Amazon employees as well.)
Also, pretty crappy to get downvoted for an honest question.
How long would it be before other businesses would fully occupy the particular block of Long Island City Amazon was prepared to invest in?
And would the employees of these businesses earn on average equal to or greater than the average NYC Amazon employee?
These aren't rhetorical questions, and I don't know enough about Long Island City to have a confident guess at the answers but when evaluating whether Amazon HQ is economically a net positive, these are important to know.
> And would the employees of these businesses earn on average equal to or greater than the average NYC Amazon employee?
Does it matter? If they earn enough to live and spend locally then isn't that good enough?
Some Amazon employee giving a developer an extra 1000 bucks a month for a luxury apartment and getting their food delivered instead of going to the store isn't exactly an amazing economic benefit.
Are you sure? 25,000 employees * 12 months * 1000 = 300 million in economic activity.
Obviously not all 25000 employees would get an extra 1k, but the point being...these things can scale significantly when you're talking about Amazon. It's not a trivial thing for SMBs to fill the void that Amazon is leaving.
It's like Amazon will occupy and populate all of the buildings from day 1. They will also eventually hire people or transfer people over, I remember reading that they plan to bring 25,000 jobs over the next 3 years.
This was the proposed location of the Long Island City campus along Vernon Boulevard bordered by 44th Road, 46th Avenue and East River: https://goo.gl/maps/6G43qfpqLws . Whether provided by Amazon or otherwise, tech employees would at least ostensibly be a net positive in terms of tax revenue.
No, they won't. Any other business will get similar tax breaks to Amazon (excluding the $505MM special construction deal) relative to the size if the operations they want to put there.
This is absurd. Some other businesses might marginally offset the losses, but only marginally.
That being said, businesses, like people, should have equal protection under the law. I amazon gets a sweetheart deal, every other business should too.
Sure but the fact is when your mom and pop business is going to pay a higher effective tax rate than Amazon you're effectively subsidizing one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. You're not attracting amazon by slashing taxes across the board you're giving one company a sweetheart deal.
Which is simultaniously at odds ideologically with both libertarian and progressive thought. From a Libertarian perspective you can see the state as shaking down all of Amazons competitors to pay for building Amazon's infrastructure, training Amazons employees, and enforcement of Amazon's monopolies on IP. This is perverse.
The US and NYC specifically is approaching historic levels of inequality. If you want to reverse that you have to say no to giving one of the most powerful companies in the world a sweetheart tax deal. If NYC doesn't say no then who will? The scuttling of this plan doesn't reflect a lack of rationality. It reflects different priorities than you have. The more powerful Amazon gets thanks to these sweetheart deals the more leverage they will have and that can mean negative consequences for the populace.
Google is expanding to create 25,000 GOOD JOBS! But since it didn't extort $$$ out of politicians, the politicians can't as easily take advantage of it.
If you can get high-tech companies who are willing massively expand to create lots of GOOD JOBS without have to short $3 billion from the state budget, that might mean that the $3 billion dollars was a total waste and boondoogle....
Eh, sadly I think if Amazon had shut up about the process and just silently negotiated for tax breaks this probably would have gone through without issue. These sorts of stupid tax breaks get offered to large companies all the time and it's always a race to the bottom (and, with our broken campaign finance laws and legality of post-service employment, often times deals that are just clear losses get passed so some politician can get a sweet 5mil/year when they retire onto that same company's board of directors)
I guess time will tell. We can track how long it takes for another company or companies to develop the same properties. Hopefully it will be less time than the length of the tax breaks
A sheriff of a small town told me how they ended up spending thousands of dollars to SWAT team which he thinks he will never use. The reason ? After some school shooting in another end of USA the folks of his county wanted to know how their LEAs plan to defend the local schools. The correct response here was that they do not expect such law probability even and even if it happens there is very little they can actually do.
But public does not like it and hence they had to put together a fake plan and waste money. Which could have otherwise gone into preventing real crimes.
A doctor giving someone a sugar pill and telling them it’s an active ingredient is definitely illegal. Placebos are used in medical studies where the patients know that they might be receiving a placebo.
Majority of the incentives are from Amazon’s taxes. 27B in economic activity for 3B in tax breaks for just 10 years is wayyy better than almost every other corporate deal. Better than Tesla for sure. That 3B will no longer be generated. You want a net 24B or a net 0B? New Yorkers chose 0
Other businesses can move into those spaces and will end up paying more in taxes. Property values will go up slower. Having one company move in sounds great but diversity might be a better longterm strategy.
> Other businesses can move into those spaces and will end up paying more in taxes
The first is likely, the second is very unlikely. For the simple reason that Amazon would not plan such project in a market that is so hot that is able to generate tax income at the same rate as concentrated investment project of the Amazon HQ size. Surely, it won't turn into a barren wasteland, but I would not expect it to produce more in tax revenue than big development like Amazon HQ would.
The waterfront is slowly getting nicer, but as soon as you go even a few blocks inwards it's still sketchy and/or industrial. An anchor like Amazon HQ would have had a ripple effect of improving the whole area (like maybe we could finally get a decent grocery store? It's cheaper to take the train into Manhattan and go to Whole Foods than visiting the local LIC Food Cellar and Key Food markets!), especially the more eastern neighborhoods within walking distance, which really aren't seeing much of any development today.
I guess the huge Citigroup office does not count? Also when last I looked a bunch of high rises were going up near Sunnyside Yard which is pretty far from the waterfront.
When I was 16 LIC was a pretty sketchy place, but as of a few years ago when I lived there it was completely different. There is still some light industry related to food trucks and taxi cabs, but you have to walk pretty far to get to anything more significant. The only sketchy area I can think of is the Queensbridge projects but that is north of the 59th st. bridge and pretty far from the rest of the neighborhood.
I know the Key Foods you are talking about - I used to live nearby it roughly 10 years ago. I can’t believe that it’s still really the only choice. Something is holding back LIC’s development to where it doesn’t seem to be keeping pace with surrounding areas. I think amazon could have been a big boon to getting things like a Whole Foods or other, better grocery stores into the area.
It's New York City, we don't need to give the largest company in the world a huge discount to do business here. It's not like the economic development of NYC is dependent on Amazon. It's a central hub to so many industries because of its infrastructure, talent, connection to capital markets etc, not because of handing out discounts.
> we don't need to give the largest company in the world a huge discount to do business here
Looks like you do, because now we have - no discount, no business.
> It's not like the economic development of NYC is dependent on Amazon
Of course, losing several billions of added value and 25K jobs won't kill the economy of the size of New York. Just as shooting oneself in the foot won't kill most healthy people. But keep at it, and sooner or later there would be a surprising development that the health is not what it once was...
Amazon is already in New York and their own statement today says they will continue expanding those teams despite not moving forward with HQ2. No discount, still business.
"There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams."
NYC generates about 10% of US GDP, already houses Amazon, Google, and every other global player. We have our fingers in everything already. We don’t need to play this kind of needy urban development three-card monty nonsense to continue kicking ass economically all day and night long.
Again, shooting oneself in the foot by losing 25K jobs won't kill New York. It just would make it a little poorer than it otherwise could be (some people a real lot poorer - talk to some RE developers that bought properly expecting Amazon to move in nearby...) New York doesn't need HQ2, it doesn't need any one particular development at all. But if it starts approaching all of them with this attitude, it gradually will start losing them, one by one, becoming poorer and poorer as they go. Would it kill it? Probably not, Detroit still exists. Is it a smart way to conduct affairs? I guess that's for New Yorkers to decide, if they think losing 25K jobs and billions in future tax income worth sticking it to Bezos - well, they can rejoice.
Amazon’s loss is another company’s gain. There will be more deals and more jobs, you’re acting like this is a recoverable loss when this is not a loss at all but an opportunity for someone else to fill the void, without drastic tax breaks.
New York City wasn't going to give Amazon a special discount. The company qualified for existing incentive programs that are already available to everyone: the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, and the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program.
It doesn't make a lot of sense for a city to offer incentive programs and then complain when companies attempt to use them. The city should make up its political mind about what incentive programs are available, and who qualifies for them, as part of the decision about whether to offer such programs. Programs should then be implemented neutrally, in a way that does not play favorites or pick winners and losers. Many other companies have benefited from these programs - the entire point of these programs is to achieve some kind of policy objective by being used.
The uproar in this case seems more like political brinkmanship, not any kind of sound economic policy designed to benefit the constituents of the city. These incentive programs were presumably passed in the first place to benefit constituents - that's why they're there, to attract additional investment to areas of the city that otherwise would not receive it. ("The Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) provides a refundable business tax credit for commercial and industrial businesses relocating to designated areas of New York City and making capital improvements to their space")
If people in NYC think that these incentive programs are a bad idea, harmful, inappropriate, or whatever else, then they should direct their anger at their political representatives, and cancel those incentive programs - not direct anger at the companies who take up the offer that the city put forward.
There was no "giving away" anything. There was "not taxing Amazon as harshly as others". It's like I tell you "I want to rent space on your frontyard for my sign" and you say "ok, $100 per day would do nicely" and I say "I need it for the whole month and $3K it too much, maybe $1.5K would do it?" and you say "I am not giving you away fifteen hundred bucks!". Then I say "OK, was nice talking to you" and you got $0 now instead of $1.5K you could have. But you're somehow happy you didn't "give away $1.5K", which you never had.
But that economic activity will go _somewhere_, and allowing businesses to pressure them into tax breaks is collectively gutting the ability of many city governments to function.
NYC is not exactly desperate. NYC is the anchor of an enormous economy that houses dozens upon dozens of large corporate offices and a vast number of jobs at all pay levels. NYC can afford to not deal with a corporation that is known for its poor working conditions and that did not even conduct its search in good faith.
Other cities are not so fortunate, but Amazon has no interest in truly desperate cities (or even cities that are not so desperate but could use the boost, like Newark and Baltimore).
NYC as a whole not being desperate still makes throwing billions in income for residents, not all of whom make as much as Amazon would bring, a dumb move.
Amazon’s role is not charity. It is to be as productive as possible. NYC does have the role in being a good steward of resources for its citizens. It threw out a lot of money and job for them due to a vocal minority.
It is always vocal minoirities who do things, even with very popular topics.
Animal cruelty? There is only a vocal minority who takes a public stance, despite this beeing a very clear cut issue in terms of public opinion. Migration is the other way round: most people don't give a fuck, but have a loud vocal base that will even hurt themselves to make a point and you will be heard.
anti-nimby housing activism is a better analogy. The case against more housing construction is very weak at a objective and public policy level, but the only opposition is arguably a minority of people because selling it to the public is difficult. Urban charter schools are another one.
I see the same thing with the Amazon HQ. It's easy for Amazon to spin it in a positive PR direction by talking about jobs and increased revenue, but the policy case for giving in to Amazon's demand is actually weak.
Animal cruelty is a great analogy because the people who oppose it, which are the minority, are more vocal than those who are proponents of it, which make up the majority.
Do you really think only a minority oppose animal cruelty? How many people are proponents of animal cruelty? Neither of us have data to back it up but if you polled people I think the majority would be against animal cruelty, they just wouldn't spend their time opposing it, that's the difference.
I do too, but animal cruelty still bothers me and I try to buy products where I believe that the cruelty has been minimized. Animal cruelty is a spectrum and a lot of people care where on the spectrum they lie.
Except when it's the animals that have been killed for their food, then suddenly the conditions those animals are in are not concerning enough to take action. At the moment it's the minority taking any sort of effective change. Boycotts are too much effort for people these days.
If they know how most food animals are treated, which seems likely, then most people who eat meat are OK with severe, sometimes grotesque cruelty. It goes beyond opinion: they put their money down for it.
People make compromises with their social circumstances.
They're not "ok" with the level of cruelty but in a pervasive environment of limited culinary and social choices, they're okay with living with that knowledge.
Personally, I think you get further raising better people than trying to impose a moral standard in a population that (for the most part) eats diets that hamper cognition and volition ala high sugar and ultra processed crap. Intermittent fasting and a decent diet would do much more for the quality of moral calculation of people than telling them that their entire culture is morally bad. Because we're humans who utilize different strata of values, not mere moral robots.
To paraphrase Nietzsche, the moralists and priesthoods of the world devalue the very small things which give arise to moral judgment: Diet, climate, and habit.
Knowing how many food animals are treated and having the option to choose differently are two different things.
Not everyone has the money to choose differently.
At times there is no choice. This is especially true if you are a 15 year old. At 15, you basically eat what your parents eat. You can't generally afford food. You can't always just get a job if your parents won't provide education and/or if your school decides your grades aren't up to working. Oh, and you can't work all that often due to child labor laws.
At times, the actual choice is a bad one. Take eggs, for example. When I have the choice, I choose eggs from hens with larger cages. I realize these are hardly large, but they are better than the alternative. I've only lived one place that I could buy eggs directly from the source (during summer time) - but I'm literally an ocean plus some away from that now.
People honestly need a little bit of animal proteins lest they must take supplements. (Truth: I take vitamin D, as I can't make enough at my northerly location). I'm also mostly vegetarian. I eat fish once a week and I eat eggs and cheese.
I can only speak from my personal experience from living in Perú and the US. So I'd say that the majority of Peruvians and Americans support animal cruelty with the decisions that they make every week at the grocery store.
Being a financial supporter does not make one a proponent. There is nobody out there that I know of (maybe lobbyists) who actively argue that there should be more animal cruelty.
Most people are quite happy to keeping buying cheap factory-farmed meat and dairy, despite vague awareness of the generally horrific conditions of the animals (and humans) producing it.
This is true, but the bulk of this hyperbolic criticism comes from vegans, and they're going to use terms like "animal cruelty" no matter what livestock welfare standards you set.
Do you dispute that current lifestock welfare standards in the meat/dairy/egg/etc. industries permit what most would agree is animal cruelty if the same things were done to, say, the family dog?
My point is, it would have been clearer and more honest to use the term “factory farming” if you’re talking about factory farming. I don’t know or care much about factory farming itself.
I'm pretty unconvinced. I don't see any reason to believe your line of reasoning; that the original poster is a hyperbolic vegan. Do you have anything beyond your assertion?
Who else would derail comments on an article about Amazon cancelling their NYC expansion with tangential and disingenuous discussions about factory farms?
Also, the way different accounts seem to seamlessly continue a deep and tangential discussion thread is also kind of suspicious. Almost like it’s one person who keeps switching alt accounts.
Well, either it's a sockpuppet conspiracy (go ahead, check out my post history), or multiple people agree that your hyperbolic snark was not constructive. I'll freely admit we've come a pretty long from Amazon's HQ though!
This off-topic debate started because of the assertion that it's the vocal minority that have rejected Amazon. The discussion on industrial animal cruelty for cheap produce is an example of how the wants of the majority doesn't always produce the best outcome for the well-being of other people, creatures, and the environment.
Regardless of peoples eating lifestyles it's undeniable that factory farms which produce most of the economically accessible meat are little concerned about animal welfare or the environment. The public on this matter also are least concerned about these matters related to the meat they buy off supermarket shelves, only when it's a video of a 'cute' animal being abused. It is only the minority of people in this instance that take a principled stance, if the silent majority did care we wouldn't be producing so much factory farmed meat after years of publicizing the abuse in the media.
I'm not a vegan but the way you characterize anyone who has a 'minority view' as some radical that only wants to cause problems is the attitude that allows corporations to operate it's abuse of worker standards and public funding to no one else's gain but themselves.
> The discussion on industrial animal cruelty for cheap produce is an example of how the wants of the majority doesn't always produce the best outcome for the well-being of other people, creatures, and the environment.
The discussion would have been clearer if the unambiguous term "factory farming" was used instead. The use of these ambiguous and disingenuous tactics of argumentation is reminiscent of PETA in particular. If you don't want to be characterized as a nutjob, don't act like one. That's my point.
This is the second time you've claimed that this thread is some sort of conspiracy.
For myself (and maybe the others), your responses jumped one step beyond reasonable. Because someone used animal cruelty to describe factory farming, that poster is a hyperbolic vegan? I think the fact that you were being hyperbolic incited a few extra replies due to the... irony?
Yes, I dispute that, if we are talking about Australia. As a farmer (both meat and crop), the better you look after your stock, the more you make from them. There is no incentive for cruelty and it will cost you money. Admittedly, we don't have feedlots on the same scale as the US and the majority of beasts go pasture to plate fairly quickly.
I've been thinking a lot about trying to purchase pasture raised and sustainable meat products lately and part of that has been buying pasture raised eggs.
My last incredibly priced carton actually included a little slip inside with pictures of the hens in their pasture, and I believe even an offer to visit their farm.
Was really nice to go the other way. Instead of thinking about or ignoring the cruelty, to think about these happy hens.
Migration meaning what? Immigration within the US? That's been a hot button topic since the first Bush nationally, and has been the source of propositions in California since the my first memories of the early 80s. Interestingly, the more the internet was adopted, the more high profile the immigration debate became, nationally. Clinton talked quite a bit (even after his presidency), Bush Jr ignored it, and so on.
> Almost everything in your comment is factually wrong
That is, in itself, incorrect.
> Reagan passed landmark immigration liberalization in 1986
Yes, bringing it to the forefront, but without a way to communicate effectively, the party in power passed landmark legislation without a national consensus. Most people were unaware, until it passed and had no recourse after.
> Clinton was an immigration hawk.
I'm not sure what you believe, but that's incorrect, imo. He gave strong lip service in "securing borders" but was instrumental in toothless legislation that paved the way for the current passive acceptance alongside the tripling (ish) of the illegal immigration. The insistence that legal immigration continued to outpace illegal immigration year-over-year before and after his presidency is classic Clinton doublespeak meant to push an agenda by interpretation, which he maintained after his presidency. See his last John Stewart Daily Show appearance. Winners write the stories, so this will likely just be forgotten by the future.
> Migration is the other way round: most people don't give a fuck, but have a loud vocal base that will even hurt themselves to make a point and you will be heard.
GWB's reforms were not well supported, so the initial point I made stands, regardless of what was reported. The idea that GWB was doing anything but appealing to a wider base. What he did, was speed up deportations (ending catch and release) and stopped talking about it after his election. So you can interpret that how you will, but it certainly wasn't "fighting hard".
"Vocal" is maybe not the most accurate word for this. The reason why things don't happen despite polls showing majority support for them happening (or vice versa), is because the polls don't show how much people care one way or the other. People who care more will also do more - being vocal is one of the things, but another one is e.g. fundraising for campaigns and voting in primaries.
An unrelated example: polls show large supermajorities in favor of many gun control proposals (universal background checks poll at ~90%, for example). But most people who say that they want it, don't consider the opposite stance on that a deal-breaker for their vote - there are many other issues that are more important to them. On the other hand, the 10% that is opposed, is very firmly opposed, and that issue is close to the top for many of them, to the point of single issue voting. And when those people all turn up in the Republican primaries and vote as a bloc, those votes are enough to prevent candidates that displease that crowd from even getting to the general. And so you have all those party line votes, with every single Republican voting against, even though the majority of their constituents - and even the majority of their supporters - would prefer them to vote differently.
I think the numbers in these pools are moderate enough to cast doubt on your claim. Would need to know about methodology, who paid for the survey, etc.
Even after reading this, I think the claim “most New Yorkers supported the project” is extremely dubious.
Big ticket? Of the abatements, only $500M (the portion related to construction) wasn't available to any business that met the state's requirements. Giveaway? These are tax incentives that are part of the state's tax code -- taking less in taxes to incentivize a particular action is not the same as giving away money that could be spent elsewhere (to illustrate why it isn't the same, that money is not currently available to be spent elsewhere). NYC won HQ2 originally in spite of not giving nearly as much as other jurisdictions were willing to. The polling is much higher than 56% when the question is asked generally, and the polling is highest in Queens which stood to gain the most. The city may or may not "need" 25,000 new jobs but LIC certainly "wanted" those jobs. The proposal was most popular among Black and Hispanic Queens residents and least popular among White Manhattan residents -- suggesting that those who stood to benefit from local economic activity were most excited.
> NYC won HQ2 originally in spite of not giving nearly as much as other jurisdictions were willing to.
Because the entire "competition" was a sham. Amazon was never going to park the future of the company into a place lacking talent.
> The proposal was most popular among Black and Hispanic Queens residents and least popular among White Manhattan residents
That's a good point, but the counter is that the Black and Hispanic residents are the ones who would end up pushed out by Amazon's white and asian workers.
Of all the crummy talking points defending Amazon in this situation, the most odious is the idea that regular working New Yorkers lost an opportunity to get good jobs and upgrade their livelihoods. Amazon has an established record of being terrible to its workforce, and any fool knows that the workers in Amazon HQ2 aren’t going to be regular joes in Queens. At best, ordinary New Yorkers had a shot at serving HQ2 executives their coffee or delivering their food. Even then, their rents would be spiking due to gentrification and their businesses would be threatened by Amazon’s unique flair for vertical integration. And don’t even start with the tax-positive arguments. Amazon doesn’t pay taxes. Have a look at their federal returns.
LIC and the rest of the broader NYC region has been undergoing gentrification for many years now, and Amazon probably would not have had much impact on that. Amazon's vertical integration will impact local businesses regardless of where they place their offices. The reason New Yorkers are not going to suffer is that there are tons of jobs in NYC and numerous big corporate offices. This is probably one of the most overblown issues in NYC politics that I can remember.
True about LIC already undergoing gentrification. But it’s still kind of affordable, at least to young white collar workers who are priced out of Manhattan or the expensive parts of Brooklyn. Amazon execs are paid big bucks. My friends who work there left behind multi-million dollar salaries without missing a beat. Having that kind of money fall into a developing area would ensure that even the baby bankers and lawyers were sent packing to the Bronx or Newark or wherever.
I’d be pretty surprised if a large percentage of those 25,000 jobs were going to have million dollar salaries. And who is to say that the handful that might have income that high would live in LIC, as opposed to a neighboring area.
And they still will, with different employers that hopefully have a better reputation for the treatment of their employees (and hopefully pay a fair tax contribution).
The "regular joe in Queens" may not get the SWE job in Amazon, but they most certainly can understand that with 25,000 well paid workers comes lots of other economic activity. Do you think that retail owners, restaurant owners, construction workers, etc. etc. etc. are too stupid to understand that they're not going to get hired as a UX designer? Maybe the people who run coffee and catering businesses would LOVE to serve execs their food, because they like new customers? I also find it remarkeble that your argument seems to be: "amazon treats their workers poorly, but also they're too well paid and they'll gentrify the place, but also regular Queens residents won't get the jobs anyway" -- so they're going to gentrify the area with their terrible jobs? Why would the Queens workers want to work there if it's so terrible?
Amazon treats even highly-paid workers poorly. It’s a grinder from the warehouse to the boardroom. As for local businesses, do you think Amazon will hire some local catering company? They own Whole Foods. Go visit the campus in Seattle. Amazon has its own bars, restaurants, stores, etc. Their entire business model is undercutting and assimilating small business owners on terms that only get worse.
It's not a thin skin so much as it is submitting on an ongoing narrative. They probably hoped they could do this and end up with the tax breaks, the NYC offices they want, more favorable conditions, and the public would laud them for it.
Instead they got a pretty massive backlash that adds more fuel to the already burning story about Amazon's mistreatment of workers, Amazon's 0% tax rate, Amazon lobbying defeating taxes in Seattle, etc... They have a PR problem already. They are bringing a whole lot of negative attention to themselves. They will have it worse in the future when they try to do the same sort of thing in Washington state.
For some reason, it doesnt surprise me that Amazon is not very committed to hiring the kind of people that want to live in New York. While they're probably not enjoying their PR, I can't believe this is their biggest lost.
"The kind of people that want to live in New York" includes Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon employees (Amazon has about 5000 employees in NYC already). There is also the financial sector with all those quants and risk managers and whatnot. I am pretty sure Amazon wants to hire people like that but convincing them to move to Nashville won't be easy.
Most New Yorkers don't live in LIC and won't be directly impacted. If you asked me about a proposal in a borough I never go to I'd probably say "yeah sure no problem"!
That's silly. Most of the people working there weren't going to live in LIC. It's not like that was going to be a requirement to work at the Amazon campus.
Besides this sniffs of the "yea build shelters everywhere but my block" attitude.
There are a vanishingly small number of long time LIC residents. Up until ten years ago it was mostly industrial, one commercial tower, and a smattering of low rise residential.
So who makes up this supposed groundswell of local opposition? People that moved in to one of those shiny new towers last week and are already looking to slam the door behind themselves?
Amazon could have easily ignored them for all eternity if they wanted. A vocal minority can't influence a random housing development, you think they had any say over Amazon? That's a STRETCH
The politician that grants approval to the developments was just selected. He is the most anti Amazon person, he grants approval or not with a small committee. He refused to even meet with Amazon executives. 3 times they asked for an audience, he rejected all 3 and chose to grandstand. He built a name for himself, saw him on the news this morning and he looked like a complete fool.
But because the dog and pony show draws more public scrutiny, is that not a better, more transparent process for the tax payers vs the norm of corporations "quietly" making deals with city governments?
If Amazon required all bids and contracts be made public AND brought in the media circus to invite scrutiny that would seem to be the most in the public interest.
LIC and Queens was more resistant to hipster techbros than say, Chelsea. Manhattan is already a playground for the rich, lower manhattan even more so. LIC was justifiably worried about tax payer subsidized gentrification.
It worked out for Amazon. The biggest goals of HQ2 were to get around barriers to further growth and development in Seattle and to hedge against the risk of further populist backlash in Seattle. The fact that a populist backlash in New York happened so suddenly demonstrated that NY suffers the same afflictions as Seattle.
Pretty on point. Amazon is pretty decided to step aside those toxic politics, that is why I am surprised they choose NYC in the first place, because the climate there isn't that different from Seattle. Well, it turns out to be rather quick running into its conclusions. Fun ride.
From what I heard, Google also doesn't get the kind of deals with tax breaks that Amazon did. Amazon wanted to leverage their added value (which is clearly existing) into some benefits. That did not work in this case, but it wasn't at all obvious it won't. Majority of New Yorkers supported the deal, as it was.
Also, "nobody bats an eye" is not right either - there are tons of protests against Google, which has been widely reported. They just didn't have a focus point like Amazon did, but if any city had a wide contingent of young socialist politicians caring about PR much more than for the jobs for the city population - the same could happen to Google too.
I mean, they're still doing that. Amazon is still planning on staffing up their existing NY offices, just to the tune of 5k new jobs instead of 25k.
The big dog and pony show was about asking for major tax benefits. They're still welcome to open a giant LIC office, they just won't get showered with a tax windfall for it. That's Amazon's decision that it wasn't worth it.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 407 ms ] threadMaybe an extreme example of a "bad deal" but these aren't always a slam dunk, and some of the math to justify (especially sports stadiums) can be a bit iffy.
But what about.....just kidding couldn't help it
It's simple negotiation; you may lose some money on that one deal, but you'll gain more in the end by not decreasing the value of all subsequent deals.
Obviously the truth is that there are bad aspects of a race to the bottom as well as positive attributes. Finding the balance requires nuance and grace by the leaders who navigate these uncertain waters.
It's almost like taxing easily-moveable economic activity is a bad idea.
A lot of what makes NYC great (like the 24/7 public transit system, the best in the country) costs serious money to operate. You need to get that money from tax revenue.
And businesses aren't actually easily-movable, not at all.
Most of which were present there because they set up a long time ago. The current environment makes it so that you pretty much have to get a discount to make it worth starting there, per the famous reddit comment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/9wploz/ocasiocortez_bl...
>And businesses aren't actually easily-movable, not at all.
"Where they decide to locate new offices" is.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/11/16/668769284/epis...
Kansas City is at least a well known name in the tech world now, when there's plenty of other midwest cities of similar size that rarely get brought up.
Millions would be a steal for the revenue becoming a tech hub would bring in. Even if it does take a more than a decade to be realized.
Cities of similar size: Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Louisville, Oklahoma City (and more).
Out of these, Kansas City comes up more often tech wise. I waste a good bit of time on sites like this discussing tech related matters, and not once have I read an article involving any of these cities.
This is why I said well known and on the map, not 'popular'.
1. $2.988 billion in state/city subsidies (so ~$48,000 per job)
2. The state estimated that Amazon will generate $27.5 billion in state and city revenue over 25 years, a 9:1 ratio of revenue to subsidies.
Using the numbers above, we can calculate that the state would break even in roughly 3 years if they're correct.
[0]https://ny.curbed.com/2018/11/16/18098589/amazon-hq2-nyc-que...
The alternative, as is being demonstrated, is that you simply don’t get that business, and you lose out. x% of $0 is $0.
No. Not "new business". "A" new business. It's a sweetheart deal for one company in particular subsidized by the taxpayers. They're not reducing their citywide tax rate to attract Amazon, they're just giving a handout directly to Amazon.
What you're describing is nothing close to the reality. It's the prisoner's dilemma. Cities that participate in this scheme take turns screwing each other over in an attempt to get a minor benefit themselves, but compared to the scenario where nobody played the game to begin with, they all lose.
That said the system could be changed and laws written to prevent subsidies all together. Then competition for large workforces would be based on other factors.
If you're tired of $24 pizza consider the cabbie serving south asian places along 21st street, they're fantastic, and yes they're still there.
If you stop seeing the tax payments as entitlements, it begins to be a lot easier to reason about.
But I didn't like the big tax breaks, and as a taxpayer of the city I'm glad my money won't go towards subsidizing the expansion of one of the world's most valuable companies.
It's too bad Amazon wasn't willing to pay their fair share.
This isn't internal information, you can look it up on the career page.
https://www.amazon.jobs/en/search?offset=0&result_limit=10&s...
Why should something that vaguely amounts to an arbitrage situation be free?
The fact that that's all you can think about ...
is exactly why people are starting to lose their love for Big Tech in general.
It is when you're not considering the adverse effects on others. And when you're already doing quite well enough, as it is.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This was all covered in a Planet Money episode[2], so you can listen/read it and make your own decision, but if it's true, it seems a shame that New York was denied what should be a favorable outcome because of FUD, spite for Amazon/Bezos because they are large, or some combination thereof.
1: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~moretti/multipliers.pdf (Note: I haven't read this, but I tracked down the most likely source for the reference as I got it from [2])
2: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/17/google-...
Amazon already has a presence in NYC.
Amazon already has an office in New York City, as well as a sizeable presence in New Jersey just outside the city limits (within commuting distance), split between two New Jersey offices, last I checked.
Disclaimer, I'm one of those 5k. Currently I work from home 99% of the time because the office spaces Amazon has in NY aren't fantastic. It would have been nice to have a new headquarters building, but I'll still be enjoying working from home now I guess.
It's pretty amazing how large some of the non-home offices are at these mega tech companies.
How many of those are working in tech? When I interviewed at Amazon NYC in 2016, I think there were only around 100 software engineers there. Has it grown a lot since then?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Eighth_Avenue
111 8th is a major internet traffic exchange point. It's also gargantuan, it's 2.9 million square feet and occupies a whole city block.
One of the interesting things about 111 8th is that it was designed for much higher than normal pounds per square foot floor loading. Which means that Google could convert the entire thing to datacenter space if they really wanted to. Already a significant portion of it is conditioned datacenter/telecom space run by tenants.
These real estate acquisitions were so large that they explicitly needed to be called out on the quarterly earnings calls to explain why CapEx exploded for that quarter.
At Google's densities, they would never run a datacenter in Manhattan. POPs, sure, like their peering with https://www.peeringdb.com/fac/16, but that's it.
They're more of a managed services provider.
"The Internap expansion represents approximately 1.3MW of additional critical power in a severely constrained downtown NY market.”
https://www.inap.com/press-release/internap-continues-green-...
That was 34000 sqft. Equinix has 36000.
Edit: they had 75K by the time they left. DRT says they have 110K.
Google on the other hand bought 111 8th ave 8 years ago(houses 7K employees) and now they are opening a new space in the same area that will house an additional 12K more employees[1]. That will bring their total to 19K employees in a 10 year time frame.
And this was all done without extracting corporate subsidies and without all the pageantry.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-plans-large-new-york-cit...
> Whereas if you work in LIC it's not like you can really commute into the city from New Jersey or Stamford.
Why not? Take the Path to the E or the metro north to the 7.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yeah, this isn't Tinder!
LIC will never become a second Midtown because its transport connections are so poor.
In what sense? I used to work in LIC and it was pretty easy to get to. Lots of lines go though Queensboro Plaza.
And god help you the days there are mets games if you're taking the 7.
Could you please edit swipes like that out of your comments here? They acidify discussion. Your comment would be fine without that bit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The reality is that NYC is not Wisconsin, they don't need to give out money.
EDIT: I'd even go a step further, and predict that both Amazon and Google will also have ludicrously large presences in the DC-NOVA area in 10 years as well. In fact, Amazon's presence in the DC-NOVA area will be even bigger than they initially said it would.
The story of the Foxconn factory, for example, is one of Wisconsin acting as if you can give a bunch of money to a company that smells of technology, and they will plunk a bunch of jobs for highly educated and skilled people in the middle of a region with relatively few highly educated and skilled workers. Which, it never worked that way. It never will work that way.
Companies go to places that can fill their staffing needs. Wisconsin, which has been systematically defunding its education system in order to re-route that money toward corporate subsidies, is undercutting its own ability to fill those staffing needs. I don't know that everyone in the state realizes it, but Wisconsin is stumbling all over itself to become the darling dumping ground for companies that are founded[1] in cities and states with the kinds of intellectual and entrepreneurial ferments you get around well-run and well-funded university systems to put their call centers, distribution centers, big boxes mostly full of robots, and other things they don't want to waste money putting in a more affluent area.
[1] I think "founded" is a key word, here, too. Supporting local entrepreneurship is the key to prosperity. Which mostly means getting out of the way of your entrepreneurs. If you get into a bidding wars to acquire the office where a company puts all their jobs that didn't merit being located at HQ, not only do you end up overspending - the people deciding what to bid aren't playing with their own money, so what else did you expect? - but you're also draining the talent pool that supports their growth.
tl;dr: The cart goes behind the horse.
As long as some places in strategic areas do the incentive thing, it’s hard not to.
It’s difficult though as it’s a prisoner’s dilemma type situation.
Definitely a bad situation and a story told a thousand times in the US
If anything the workers left even more because there was even less attractiveness to be there.
If dumping on ostensible conservatives for wantonly doling out government largesse is wrong, I don't want to be right.
That said, FWIW, the greater context here is an article about New York getting in on the game, too.
Additionally,it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon has seen the obscene amounts of money Microsoft is making pitching cloud security and general technical support to the government, and wants in on it.
Agree with all that, I suspect DC-NOVA will be a whole lot bigger than 25k workers now for Amazon.
I really have no interest in them though. Primarily remote work is the best.
I'm just saying that the smart money is clearly on DC-NOVA in the long term with NYC as the next big winner there.
New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1975, less than 50 years ago.
Detroit’s population started declining as early as the 1950s as companies moved to the suburbs.
New York has a world-class, diverse economy, and I expect it to continue to be a central engine of the American and world economy for our lifetimes, but it does require good stewardship to nurture the economy.
We may be on the cusp of a reversal of the great urban migration of the last several decades, with populations moving into suburban satellite cities as remote work gains acceptance, driverless cars allow for easier commutes, logistics companies and drones allow for easy delivery of goods to your doorstep, and urban housing prices continue to relentlessly outpace wage growth.
The fact that you (and many others) consider this a win is an attempt to revise history. This tax deal was all about Amazon expanding very quickly. That deal is gone. But feel free to pat yourself on the back for not "falling for it". Maybe it works out great as other companies will lease those buildings and hire a combined ~20k employees averaging $150,000 in compensation, but that's likely not going to happen.
Cut off your nose to spite your face.
There's now way to. Campus expansions are blocked by layers and layers of NIMBYs. The big selling point of the deal was the state government ensuring Amazon would have a campus that could hold 25,000 people.
Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack.
Real growth brings with it real increases in public funding, that can be used to fund real increases in infrastructure demands and demands on other public services.
When a local government has to bribe their way into increasing local business, they tip the scales in favor of one thing (i.e. jobs) while burdening other things (tax base, transit support, etc.)
When companies choose to do business in your area—because it's naturally the best place for them—it functions as a market verification that you're doing something right.
This.
That's exactly why what's now going to happen in NYC is what should happen in all cases. Wish we could get this going in Wisconsin.
It's not going to be organic. Instead, these same deals are going to be spread out to a bunch of other companies, most of which will pay less than Amazon on average and the "subsidies" will take longer to be a net positive.
Again, people confuse bribes with standard deals. Any company is eligible to receive the tax breaks that Amazon was going to. So New Yorkers have really "won" here. Same subsidies paid out to lower paying companies at a significant slower scale and significantly less economic upside.
There's no way to turn this into a positive here.
Only if you assume those other companies collectively hold the same bargaining power that Amazon did, which is an assumption I can't agree with
The biggest aspect of this deal for Amazon was reduced regulatory burden. That was Amazon's actual goal here, the tax offsets were just the icing that every company is going to end up getting by making a major move like this.
I dunno. It seems like an unambiguous positive to me. The giveaway to Amazon was enormous -- so much so that it seems extremely dubious that New York would ever have been able to recoup that money, let alone increase it.
Add on to the fact that if you sold that one car for $25K, you end up with other people who would've paid $30K but now want that same discount, so you may have given away a lot more than $5K.
Well, if you believe Amazon coming to NY was good, it's no more negative or positive than me not winning the lottery today, and I didn't buy a ticket either.
Predicting the future is hard and counterfactuals are tricky, so we may never know which choice was better.
The commodity these days is skilled workforce. Amazon will still be where they can get that commodity, economic incentives aren't needed. Cash is not the limiting factor it is the people they need. It was a smart business move to try to extract some cash too but they did not need that to expand in NY.
There are skilled workforces outside of NY, believe it or not. And they aren't going to go through the regulatory burdens to expand NY to a major campus, since that's really what this was about.
To be clear, since this point is being missed by so many people: This wasn't a special deal outside of the reduced regulatory burden. Any company that meets the eligibility requirements will get these exact same "subsidies".
What happened here is a bunch of local politicians and local people who are absolutely clueless about how corporate tax reductions work pushed against something that's still going to happen just, at least potentially, not with a high paying company like Amazon.
I'm not so sure that people are actually missing this point.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19165374
The grants are all based on the size of the deal, and the reason this one was so large is because the number of employees was so large.
Interesting if true, but I don't think people are going to accept it on your say-so. I recommend digging up a citation.
Is there an article the explains this?
They did a vastly superior job than I could do.
Really? Let look at what was offered:
1 $897 million from the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) and
2 $386 million from the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP)
3 $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits
4 $505 million in a capital grant
Yes the first 3 are existing programs. But the idea that those sums or anything remotely close to them would simply be made available to any company moving to NY is comical at best. Now lets look at number 4, a 505 million dollar capital grant. That's a pure giveaway compliment of the tax payer. And let's remember that both the city and state governments put together dedicated teams to find this money for Amazon. This was in addition to the work the city and state did for give Amazon data, such as "detailed information on the availability of machine-learning specialists, user-experience designers and hardware engineers."[1]
There is no way any of this is available to "any company moving to NY."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/technology/amazon-new-yor...
> $897 million from the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP)
That works out to $35,880 per employee that Amazon promised. Per the REAP program website[1], the credits available are $3000 per employee for 12 years. That actually works out to slightly more per employee ($36,000). So yes, any company not currently in NYC that creates 25,000 jobs in one of the designated areas would get the $897MM in benefits.
> $386 million from the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP)
ICAP is a property tax abatement available to any company willing to redevelop qualifying properties[2]. The value of the abatement is based on the final value of the property and which benefit schedule[3] it qualifies for. Any company willing to put in the same amount of redevelopment in one of the designated areas as Amazon was will get the same abatement value.
> $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits
I don't have the time at the moment to calculate how this was arrived at, but looking at the overview of credits available[4] it appears to follow similar formulas as the NYC programs.
In short, I do not see it as "comical" by any measure that any company offering to create 25,000 new jobs and redevelop hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property in designated areas would get these same values. Amazon didn't get these numbers because they were Amazon, but because of the scale of what they proposed to do. Whether that is a good idea to offer to any company is open for debate.
[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/finance/benefits/business-reap.pag...
[2] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/finance/benefits/benefits-industri...
[3] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/finance/downloads/pdf/icap/icap_...
[4] https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program
>"In short, I do not see it as "comical" by any measure that any company offering to create 25,000 new jobs and redevelop hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property in designated areas "
It sounds like you aren't familiar with NYC. Long Island City has long since been "developed." That building boom started 18 years ago. The volume and velocity of luxury high rises appearing across the East River has been incredible. LIC does not need to be "redeveloped" nor is it some basket case "designated" area that requires incentives and credits to build there.
First of all, these jobs were all white collar. Amazon's current new grad SDE's in NY and SF both have more than $150k in comp. New grads.
Second, the food delivery people for Amazon Fresh are employees of Amazon. The Amazon Flex drivers is what you are talking about, and there is no "mandatory" tip for that service. What you're talking about is something Instacart and DoorDash was doing. Those are entirely different companies.
Down voting because you dislike Amazon isn't a valid reason.
It is also amusing that you consider Amazon's assertion about the job count an iron truth of what would have happened. While Amazon does not have Foxconn's long history of scamming municipalities, there is also no reason to weight their words any higher than other companies who have played this game in the past, and the odds look significantly worse than a sure thing viewed that way.
Finally, the way you win these games is not to play, no different than the continual sports stadium scams or other "let's you and him fight" grifts.
It corrodes discussion badly, and we're trying to stave off that decline here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In this context, they're referring to the actions of NY (not the comment they're replying to), and TBH, there's nothing personally acidic; it's just a saying.
Moderators have to make these calls. From my perspective this is no different from what we've done thousands of times.
And often when I get votes, there's no signal whether it's due to tone, or content, or whether it's because I'm expressing something that is true, but makes people feel sad (seems to happen a lot, makes no sense to me).
Dan was spot on when saying that this acidity compounds. It leads to a vicious circle of increasingly hostile comments unless someone decides to be the bigger person and break the chain. Having a neutral third party step in to play this role (i.e. a moderator) makes this chain-breaking far more likely and works to all of our benefit.
> feel free to pat yourself on the back for not "falling for it"
is condescending?
Because to me it sounds super condescending, flippant, and dismissive.
And that's the fundamental issue with moderating rhetorical devices. You're assuming you know how the other person intended to say something.
Moderating personal attacks is easy. Because that's not a rhetorical device and it's intent is quite clear.
Anybody who thinks that through should see why it's such a terrible idea. Not even NY can "very quickly" absorb 25k people in a small area without screwing up quality of life for the people who already live there. That's a great way to make real estate prices sky rocket and screw over the existing residents. And it'll completely screw up infrastructure and transportation, because there's not enough money to pay for them when the company causing the issues is getting a huge tax break and not paying their fair share, and they're not things that can be fixed quickly in any case.
> Maybe it works out great as other companies will lease those buildings and hire a combined ~20k employees averaging $150,000 in compensation, but that's likely not going to happen.
If the current residents are qualified for $150k a year jobs then they presumably already have one - it's not like there are 25k unemployed software devs waiting around for companies to move to NY.
That whole competition was a shameful money grab by Amazon and I'm glad it didn't work out for them.
This was over a 10 year period. New York City would have absorbed this just fine. Population projections for the city over that same time span is an additional 600,000 people.
The "small area" that Amazon was relocating to (Queens) is expected to get 150,000 of those people. And we can ignore the assumption that people making 150k a year all want to live in Queens (or LIC) and not Manhattan.
Of course it can. This is New York fucking City, there are literally single buildings with that many jobs in them here.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-amazon-invasion-in-new-...
So the "value proposition" had nothing to do with access to a talent pool of qualified candidates to fill those 25K jobs? Because that would be odds with the reasons Google, FB et al have set up shop in NYC.
>"This tax deal was all about Amazon expanding very quickly."
Yet there was never any specifics of when Amazon would arrive at that mythical 25K job number. The closest you can find to any time qualification is the phrase "within a decade." I guess you have a very different idea of "quickly."
>"The fact that you (and many others) consider this a win is an attempt to revise history."
No the "win" here is not giving out corporate subsidies, more especially to a company that absolutely does not need it. NYC will be just fine without Amazon. There is no shortage of tech jobs in NYC these days. It been that way for over 10 years now.
On the other hand, smaller, not thriving cities may have indeed benefited from attracting an Amazon. But it's a bigger debate whether they would benefit more than the cost they might've had to pay to attract an Amazon.
Do we even have an example on record of a state or city making huge concessions to attract a company and it "completely reviving a city and building up a new ecosystem that funnels in new wealth and new money"?
You're suggesting that another city will generate money and wealth to rival NYC by getting a few Amazon jobs?
Frankly, that would not happen. Maybe if that other city was DC? But, yeah, probably not even then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_countie...
There is no place, in the US, that rivals the wealth and power of NYC. Now internationally, that's where you start to get your Beijing's, and your London's, and your Tokyo's, and your Monte Carlo's, and your Paris, and Shanghai's etc. But in the US it's NYC at the center of the preponderance of wealth and power. Only place in a position to make a run at NYC is DC, and they'll need a lot more than Amazon to do it.
(There's also LA and Chicago, but those cities are not as "powerful", nowhere near as wealthy, and to be frank, making a run at NYC is not their ambition.)
Does the city get back more than the 3 billion in concessions and how long does that take?
Would those new Amazon jobs cause 25k people to move to NYC? Or is it more likely to just make the local market more competitive? How would other businesses react? Would they move? Embrace remote? If they increase salary across the board and live with unfilled positions, how does that affect tax revenue? Even if those people do move, how does that influx affect people with lower paying jobs? Will they be pushed out? How does that affect tax revenues?
Those are the kinds of questions I saw raised by opponents, and it seems like there weren't clear answers to them.
Google hasn't committed to anything. Once it does, it will most likely seek the same tax benefits that Amazon did from the pre-existing programs if it qualifies
?
In NYC there are are tax incentive plans for relocating and hiring that companies can apply for if they qualify. Just because Google doesn’t include that portion in their announcement does not mean they won’t pursue it if they can.
A good article would be one where Google states it won’t take any tax incentives even if it qualifies for it.
https://www.statesman.com/news/20161125/this-day-in-tech-his...
With a stadium, you only employ a relatively small number of people during the week and off-season. Staff during games and concerts are not really earning a ton of money that will create new economic activity. With Amazon, tech workers actually increase the tax base and they're spending their money at local businesses. At least with the Virginia deal, the tax breaks don't kick in until they actual create jobs at the promised salary levels.
Now I don't really agree with giving a massive private business all of these tax breaks, they can afford to expand without them if it makes business sense. The problem is that each state is competing with each other and FOMO kicks in. Without that powerful motivation companies wouldn't pull these stunts. Although eventually they'd try to pit countries against each other (which they kind of already do).
I never said it did.
However, if you really need to make a contract iron-clad in order to protect yourself (and good luck with that!), that's a very strong indication that the entity you're dealing with is untrustworthy and you shouldn't be getting into bed with them in the first place.
The problem with most major corporations (and particularly major tech companies these days) is that they are not trustworthy actors.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18503434
Sure there has been a housing bubble there for a decade, and I'm certain there are some real estate insiders benefiting from this arbitrage, but this kind of dysfunction can't be good for the economy.
"After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens. For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term. While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City.
We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion — we love New York, its incomparable dynamism, people, and culture — and particularly the community of Long Island City, where we have gotten to know so many optimistic, forward-leaning community leaders, small business owners, and residents. There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams.
We are deeply grateful to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and their staffs, who so enthusiastically and graciously invited us to build in New York City and supported us during the process. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have worked tirelessly on behalf of New Yorkers to encourage local investment and job creation, and we can’t speak positively enough about all their efforts. The steadfast commitment and dedication that these leaders have demonstrated to the communities they represent inspired us from the very beginning and is one of the big reasons our decision was so difficult.
We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.
Thank you again to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and the many other community leaders and residents who welcomed our plans and supported us along the way. We hope to have future chances to collaborate as we continue to build our presence in New York over time."
I am also proud of my cantankerous fellow New Yorkers who fought this.
How about a little more? The planet is sad because 25,000 people won't be taking the subway to work.
Your math is way off.
This delight in pulling up the ladder after you and making it harder for people to get jobs is odious.
New York doesn't need that too.
If there isn't enough affordable housing for those lower-paid people, that's a failure by the local politicians. Don't blame the highly-paid professionals; they're not the ones controlling zoning and development.
Suddenly bringing in 25k high paid workers without a concrete plan on how to support that growth (including not giving gigantic tax breaks which would impact the necessary schools/police/transportation/etc of the area) is the root cause of the housing and traffic issues in Silicon Valley. I think local politicians are becoming a bit wiser to that kind of thing after seeing how gentrification is causing issues in other cities. NYC local politicians are probably the most aware, given NYC's history.
Having self government on a local level but then getting constantly steamrolled by a state government that is dominated by some other city really sucks. NYC (and Boston, and Chicago, and a whole load of other cities that dominate their state government) should try it sometime.
On one hand I'm annoyed that an opportunity for part of NYC to feel what that's like was missed by this > < much.
On the other hand the deal that NYS cut with Amazon was a boondoggle load of crap that set a terrible precedent so I'm glad it's not happening.
New York State has plenty of control over things that matter to the city, and doesn't hesitate to prioritize state concerns.
At the end of the day, this city needs to curb its reliance on finance jobs. Adding 25k tech workers would be a major step forward to making NY more of a tech hub than it is today. Kicking out Amazon sends a message to other large companies who are thinking about NYC -- buyer beware.
while there is a low chance I would have worked there I was considering the potential reality of trying it out for a few months and see what their telework policy is (I am currently 99.5% remote)
I was excited about this. I think NYC is losing out in the long run on development/income/more transactions of all kinds which in general is good for the economy.
Is this 4chan now?
It's good when local politicians weigh in on local issues. Your comment is completely off the mark.
Why is NYC governed by Albany? Seems like it would explain a lot of the failings of NYC (eg. failing subway).
Why do they have to involve the city politicians in the decision-making process if they don't need any special treatment?
[1] "While New York City has not offered Amazon any direct subsidies, the company also plans to take advantage of two city tax breaks that will further sweeten the deal by nearly $1.3 billion.
One is the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, which offers businesses moving to certain parts of the city a tax credit of up to $3,000 per employee for 12 years. The program will benefit Amazon to the tune of $897 million, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
The other is the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program, which provides property tax abatements. It will be worth nearly $400 million to Amazon, Cuomo said."
(https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/nys-amazon-deal-wha...)
I forget where, but I remember seeing someone dig into the details of the offer and Amazon was not actually getting that much better of a deal than any other NYC business.
The sheer number of people from NY saying they are "proud" of this shows just how far removed people are from reality.
Right now it seems heavy in the financial sector to me. Arguably tech is a big part of the economic future, so one view is that it would be smart to have some of that.
It's my understanding that while NYC isn't really a tech hub, the startup / tech scene there has grown stronger in recent years. So I pretty much assumed they were trying to capitalize on this momentum and do a big push to achieve something like critical mass.
Whether that's a worthy goal is very much for debate, but it seemed like that's what they thought they were getting in exchange for the sweet deal they were offering.
Cost of Living in NY is higher and Amazon will have to pay higher wages if it puts jobs there rather than a place like Nashville. That's higher wages for the same job. Pretty much every company has a cost of living multiplier and pays different wages for the same position based on where you live. So given that Amazon has a choice to locate in the low wage or high wage area, it seems reasonable for the high wage area to offer to offset some of those extra costs. Otherwise why would AMZN even consider a high cost of living area like NYC?
Now to me it's clear that the market signal is that they should open the new office in a lower cost of living area, which is what's going to happen now. A small victory for reason. This means more Amazon workers will be able to afford to buy a house and Amazon will be able to pay them less. Good news.
Junior devs and low performing seniors.
Amazon claimed my city didn't have enough talent.
What they meant is that 6 figures is too much to pay per programmer.
Google already has some dev offices in cheaper areas, like Pittsburgh, where office space is cheaper and the salaries they pay slightly lower. And yet, they still choose to double their headcount in NYC.
Just saying, "well I guess Google is just being irrational for no reason" would be simplistic, childish thinking. Google doesn't choose sites or increase headcount on a whim. They're going to do it because there are real advantages to the major tech hubs.
Educated guess, as someone who works at Google now and used to work at Amazon: it's easier to attract people to major tech hubs, because they offer more career stability in the form of having lots of other tech companies around. Being in Kansas City making a Google salary might sound great, until you realize that if you lost that job for some reason, there's nothing around in the same tier.
Also, the kind of person who wants to live in a cheaper city, with a big house for their family, is also the kind of person who's going to be reluctant to move from wherever they currently live anyway. That demographic is going to be hard to convince.
people want to live and work there. especially young people
as you said, couple's can more likely both find jobs, even if they work in vastly different sectors
talent pool is larger
many other businesses (potential customers) are there
Location, Location, Location.
Yes it's cheaper to live and run a business in Kansas but then you're in Kansas.
But at some point people want to start families and buy a house and that starts to take precedence over being in a cool area. The only issue is jobs -- can they work remote, can they find a local employer, can they work for themselves?
So there is a huge demand for higher paying jobs in lower cost areas compared to the demand for higher paying jobs in higher cost areas. You personally may think it unbearable to live in Scottsdale, AZ or Minneapolis, MN, but most people find it pleasant enough and will pull the trigger as soon as they can find a job that pays even 2/3 of what they are earning in SF or NY.
Another data point is the taxes.
This might be also interesting (pdf warning): https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2019-0...
NYC is the most populated and density populated city in the country, which is just another way of saying its the city with the highest demand. If most people rather work and live in Scottsdale than that would be the most populated and density populated city in the country.
So, take city A - where house prices cost, $100 and it has 100,000 people. In City B, house prices cost $500 and it only has 10,000 people.
You still don't see the full demand curve for either city. The statement "City A is in more demand than City B" is not a meaningful statement. That's what I was trying to say. I was trying to point out the absurdity of just counting people as a way of inferring the shape of a curve.
Now, how could your statement be changed to make it well defined? You could say "At every price point, City A will have more people than City B". Which means the curve of demand for A is above the curve of demand for B. But is that really true for NY? I doubt it. Maybe, but you'd need to provide some other evidence. And such evidence is hard to find, because NYC is a donor city -- more people move out every year than move in.
https://www.nycedc.com/blog-entry/coming-or-going-nyc-migrat...
The only reason why NYC's total population is growing is because births outpace deaths and it is a port city for new immigrants. But for US-US transfers, it's shrinking by about 2% each year. So at least in the universe of US cities, people tend to choose to live elsewhere.
But that doesn't mean that NYC is a bad city. It most likely means that it's a little out of equilibrium -- most likely because of the influx of immigrants. E.g. you can imagine that existing New Yorkers have some equilibrium price, and then an increase of immigrants raises that a bit, so that some of the non-immigrants leave. This is true in general of port cities: you see an influx from outside the city that pushes a certain number of the people inside out.
Now are these immigrants coming to NY because they prefer it to Phoenix or whatever? No, they are coming to NY because it's a port of entry and because they have relatives there. Immigrants tend to cluster and stay put, which is a shame, because most would be better off living elsewhere, just because they tend to cluster in ghettoes in high cost areas. That's a whole other interesting effect -- why immigrants tend to stop at the first place they land and stay there.
How else could your statement be changed to make it well defined? Well, you can say that real estate prices are really high in New York, meaning that overall it is in great demand compared to other cities where real estate prices are cheaper. This is, I think, your strongest argument. Except there are a lot of factors that affect real estate prices -- including zoning restrictions, prop 13, and most importantly # of high paying jobs, etc. For NY, that would be Wall St jobs or FIRE more generally. Now you could argue that NY has so many Wall St jobs because it's great, but we both know better. There are historical reasons for these types of agglomeration effects that are kinda arbitrary and in the case of NY go way, way back. Even in the period of white flight when NY was dangerous as hell and half empty you had all those Wall St jobs concentrated there.
So, bottom line, it's really hard to infer preferences from the data you are citing and even from the better arguments you could have made but chose not to.
Some people do, yes.
> and buy a house
Some people do, yes.
Others want to just stay in an exciting, vibrant area. You're projecting your values here.
> will pull the trigger as soon as they can find a job that pays even 2/3 of what they are earning in SF or NY.
The very fact that such jobs are somewhat uncommon, even though programming ought to be the kind of thing that's easy to distribute/make remote, should tell you something.
Once a company reaches critical mass, it doesn't need access to VCs, and isn't able to hire superstar programmers at scale, so the quality of the average employee declines compared to what you see in startups. Now you start talking more about repeatable, workman-like code rather than brilliant groundbreaking code. You can still do the latter in a research center that you can keep in the hub and move a lot of the other code to the periphery, which will be most of your employees. After all, we are talking about HQ2 here.
At the same time, you have housing markets that are so insane that the majority of your developers will not be able to buy a house, which means they are going to leave you or demand really high wages -- wages that a company with 20K devs can't afford.
This is the inexorable logic of the market. Suppose we are not talking about people but some other scarce resource. Very expensive leather. You put that into the exotic cars but when you need to produce in high volume, you look for cheaper substitutes in order to help scale your operations. Everyone likes to think they are rockstar developers, but your typical AMZN HQ2 employee is not a rockstar, they are probably just a decent programmer (Not that there's anything wrong with that :P ). It just doesn't make sense to put HQ2 into a place where you have to pay 200K to win over the marginal employee.
No, I'd say they have about equal value. Consider, Google has tens of thousands of tech workers in the bay area. How many other metros could they feasibly relocate their HQ to? Even if you assume that only, say, a third of their employees decline to relocate with them, you're possibly looking at ~10,000 job openings you'd need to staff up on within a year or two to not be absolutely crippling.
> You can still do the latter in a research center that you can keep in the hub and move a lot of the other code to the periphery, which will be most of your employees.
This completely glosses over how companies work. Google doesn't have two tiers of software engineer types, where one gets more exciting stuff and better pay/benefits, while the other languishes on boring things with mediocre pay. Trying to split up the company that way, "we'll just hire crappier engineers in [cheap place] now and treat them worse because they're dumber" would be a total disaster.
> you have housing markets that are so insane that the majority of your developers will not be able to buy a house, which means they are going to leave you or demand really high wages -- wages that a company with 20K devs can't afford.
While this is absolutely a problem, and I applaud efforts to increase affordability either in the areas where tech HQ's already are, or by distributing more offices elsewhere, you're missing the obvious fact that these major tech companies already do this, and it already works. Yes, some people leave. The strongest, and probably most valuable employees largely don't, because they make enough to offset the increased cost of housing: a T6 at Google may make 400-500k/year.
I wonder if this is to let some of the news cool, work behind the scenes with some of the previous offers, then surprise announcement down the road.
Weird.
Looks like we’ve reached our “Gettysburg” moment against corporate welfare. Terrible years of war still left, but the tide has turned.
But fewer Foxconn style deals and race to the bottom HQ2 publicity stunts would be great for everyone (except the mega-corps).
As for "being pushed further and further out", that again is the voter's own fault for not voting better. They don't need to move farther out, they need to build more densely, and they don't do it. This is largely an American problem because for some reason, Americans associate dense residential areas with "slums" and think that only suburbs with McMansions with gigantic and useless lawns can possibly be "nice".
https://www.ft.com/content/023562e2-54a6-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3...
Pretty widely speculated that they were going to go to NYC and VA regardless of what the other cities did & the HQ2 gambit was just meant to maximize their bargaining position with these governments
This whole thing is beyond stupid, no aspect of this model works for anyone. Just stop.
2. New York already has a lot to offer in terms of labor market, real estate for employees, and access to capital markets. Did Amazon really need incentives to want to be in NYC?
3. No huge loss for either party. NYC doesn't need Amazon, and Amazon can make the little people dance for them somewhere else.
It's just like anything, you might benefit from the price you pay but you might have been able to get it cheaper.
The problem with subsidies is that they needlessly cost money in a zero-sum competition between cities. It was always clear that Amazon would build somewhere. A race to the bottom competition over the exact location leaves everyone but them worse off than the alternative, which is coordinating to refuse to engage in it, like any sane economy like the EU does.
As part of Amazon’s new headquarters, New York and Long Island City will benefit from more than 25,000 full-time high-paying jobs; approximately $2.5 billion in Amazon investment; 4 million square feet of energy-efficient office space with an opportunity to expand to 8 million square feet; and an estimated incremental tax revenue of more than $10 billion over the next 20 years as a result of Amazon’s investment and job creation.
And it was dumb for Amazon to seek out subsidies anyway. Amazon only needed one criteria to have a successful HQ2: A willingness to accommodate new housing demand. $3B in subsidies would be dwarfed by the increase in salaries from higher costs of living. If a city can allow housing to be built, and keep up with Amazon's hiring demand to keep housing prices flat, that alone would be worth far more than any city or state could ever hand over to Amazon in subsidies.
So this whole HQ2 thing ended up being a grand waste of everybody's time.
This may have already happened, it's really hard to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc
Jay Foreman does another great video on the very weird situation with the House of Lords:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrQBTvRj0s8
Edit: I did a bit of research below, and 4% definitely does not seem accurate. I have no idea where the source for that 4% was :/
That's extremely common for local elections. For all the talk of money in politics, neither party could afford to fund opponents in every district.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkuxZsylioX/
> With 98 percent of precincts reporting as of Wednesday, the State Board of Elections shows 27,826 registered Democrats cast votes in Tuesday’s primary in New York’s 14th District. With 235,745 registered Democrats as of April, according to the BOE, this comes out to a turnout of around 11.8 percent.
NYT shows roughly 150,000 votes in the 14th precinct for the actual election: https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-york-house-dis...
The population of the district is around 712,000 https://ballotpedia.org/New_York%27s_14th_Congressional_Dist...
So, the actual percentage is indeed higher than 4%. Even still, it's quite low.
The number of votes cast in New York's 14th Congressional District election, 2018 was 141,122: https://ballotpedia.org/New_York%27s_14th_Congressional_Dist...
That's approximately 20% of the total population. I can find no info on what percentage of that 691,715 is eligible voters, but the 4% claim appears pretty ridiculous.
We’d get the most pro-business candidate every time. Not that any candidate has been anti/business, but can you imagine, it’d be pro-business on steroids. Schultz, One of the Waltons, corporate raiders?
I think it gets complicated but the decision had merits, I think. Obvs, the SCOTUS believes it did.
In the case, the conservative non-profit organization Citizens United sought to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton and to advertise the film during television broadcasts shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary election in which Clinton was running for U.S. President.
The federal law, however, prohibited any corporation (or labor union) from making an "electioneering communication" (defined as a broadcast ad reaching over 50,000 people in the electorate) within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of an election, or making any expenditure advocating the election or defeat of a candidate at any time. The court found that these provisions of the law conflicted with the United States Constitution.
They were prohibited from airing ads 30 days before the election. The decision in terms of effects and scope was terrible. It was a broad decision and had a very wide effect.
The repercussions may be wider than anticipated or liked, but the decision to not allow them to advertise and show it because it wasn’t by an established entity seems spurious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeGlzEavpTM
>In response, Citizens United produced the documentary Celsius 41.11, which is highly critical of both Fahrenheit 9/11 and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. The FEC, however, held that showing the movie and advertisements for it would violate the Federal Election Campaign Act, because Citizens United was not a bona fide commercial film maker.
If the relentless (Media) attacks of DJT are an indication, there are few "outsiders" who are going to get involved in the future. And isn't that exactly what status quo'ers like the DNC and GOP want?
Consider the possibility that he isn't being attacked. That his actions/statements are being reported on. That what you call an attack is indicative of the nature of the man. When you cause George Will to leave the party then....
My benchmarks are these:
1) The USA went to War in Iraq over over lie. Thousands died, gazillions were spent, etc. as a result of that lie. The Media barely noticed. People who believe Trump is the worst thing ever clearly never understood who and Dick Cheney was. Trump is a pussy cat compared to Cheney.
2) Not only did BHO renew the (so called) Patriot Act but he expanded its depth & breadth. The Snowden revelation also came to light on Obama's watch. Again, the Media barely noticed. Real journalists would find both of these troubling. Instead, BHO was our first BuzzFeed POTUS.
--
I am by no mean a fan of DJT but the truth is nothing he has done to date comes close to either one of those. He's got __a lot__ of work to do to top either one of those. The Media is bending over backwards to discredit DJT because:
1) It's a favor to the DNC. It lets the DNC off the hook because ppl are too distracted to ask the DNC what should be asked. That is: "How negligent and incompetent do to have to be to lose to DJT? And what heads are going to roll for your debacle? We want names!!!"
2) The GOP doesn't like him either. He stepped in on their dance, made all their candidates look like the fools that they are, and made it to the Whitehouse. That's not how it works.
3) Neither party wants to see another outsider do what DJT did, and they will, by any means necessary, make sure it doesn't happen again any time soon.
4) Trump is good for the Media's business. They love the "outrage". They love the "controversy." As long as it draws eyes and clicks - cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-chaig - they're happy. The media finally discovered that giving Bush #2 and Obama free passes didn't help pay their bills. For the Mainstream Media DJT is like printing money.
That is the context. That's how W.DC operates.
George Will has been a solid conservative for decades and written numerous books lauded by conservatives. Consider the possibility that it was precisely his integrity that caused him to abandon the party. Perhaps it's possible that Trump represents a part of the party that a reasonable person with some sense of moral and intellectual consistency wants nothing to do with. How far right does the party have to go before you will question the state of affairs? Trump called Ted Cruz a liar. He implied Jeb Bush is a wimp. He implied that Ted Cruz's wife is ugly. He implied that Rand Paul is ugly. He said that McCain is a loser because he was a POW. He was a loser for getting captured. Trump agreed that his own daughter is a nice piece of ass. This was on the Howard Stern Show. How far does the man have to go to lose credibility in your eyes?
To be fair, was he wrong? How many career politicians do you know that aren't liars, especially Republicans?
>He implied that Ted Cruz's wife is ugly.
Again, to be fair, I just did a google search and he's not wrong, IMO. Yes, it's in poor taste to make remarks like that, but Trump is a populist, so he's basically playing the "I call it like I see it" card, which gets votes from his base.
>How far does the man have to go to lose credibility in your eyes?
The things you're complaining about are positives in the eyes of Trump voters. That seems to be the problem you're having with understanding. They don't want another regular politician; this is why populists come to power now and then. It seems to me that the biggest problem that both parties have, and is shown by your post here, is a completely inability to comprehend the appeal of someone like Trump to low-information, low-class voters.
If we had an alternative voting system (there are several good ones), people could actually vote _for_ someone rather than just _against_ someone, and there would be some criteria for voting other than who can put out the most inflammatory campaign commercials.
But again, the status quo would never go for it, and I suspect most voters wouldn't go for a system that can't be explained on a bumper sticker. I'm not trying to insult the intelligence of the average voter, just their attention spans.
Oh, I really think it could.
So basically a "house of lords" for America, but instead of bishops and lords it's tech CEOs and celebrities? :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords
Things like Uber, AirBNB, even Google Waymo are all examples of this.
And lest I forget to mention the lobbying that happens everyday.
Google buys entire city blocks and nobody bats an eye. Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition.
More publicity = more scrutiny = more angry opponents of your business decision
That type of payday might be worth a bit of scrutiny.
That's not peanuts.
Also, if your problem is large tax breaks for corporations, the focus should be on those programs that make available the other $2.5B available, since any corporation with a similar scale project could get that. Focusing specifically on Amazon distracts from the existence of these programs and whether that existence is a good idea.
As an aside, your snarky tone detracts from your comment and hurts the discourse.
Unless it's for a football stadium.
(Granted, Newark is in NJ... and the proposed tax deal was from NY. Thinking as adjacent states instead of a region bites.)
You haven't seen the perpetual and energetic fights in my part of the nation about public funding for football (and other professional sports) stadiums. Sports businesses trying to get tax money to be spent in order to enhance their profitability is absolutely something that brings out the opposition.
So Las Vegas gave them a lot of money.
Football stadiums get subsidized because football is extraordinarily, wildly popular with most of the people that pay taxes. Those taxpayers spend massive sums of money on sports every year, across the NFL / MLB / NBA / NHL / MLS / NCAA. Those people pay most of the taxes that fund the government that then pays for the stadium subsidies.
Taxpayers love sports, love spending money on sports, and the majority of taxpayers are clearly fine with subsidizing sports at all levels. They vote with their dollars and... votes, over and over again, year after year, decade after decade, to keep supporting sports subsidization.
See: football attendance and ticket spending on NFL and college games annually, as well as sports packages for television, merchandise sales, etc.
Sports are very popular, and stadium-lovers are vocal with their representatives.
But they are an outspoken minority. The majority of tax-payers do not support subsidizing stadiums.
And stadiums will get built regardless of whether the city gives them free money, because they're profitable. So why subsidize private profits from public coffers?
Stop Padding Billionaires’ Profits by Paying for Sports Stadiums
https://ritholtz.com/2018/07/stop-padding-billionaires-profi...
So it's absolutely an expansion of a similar scope.
In short, yes, they would have signed a contract stating that.
Also, the pull-out letter also basically dumps the blame on state/local officials for not wanting Amazon, despite not all stakeholders being present at the table when discussions started.
As is common with other, bigger ego, basketball players
Obviously NBA rules relate to tampering would come into play, but it would be a compelling story for the 24 hour sports new cycle.
I've read about athletes at least considering the income tax of a state in their decision, but I'm not sure it's ever been a deciding factor.
Getting reelected will be an issue.
First, state income tax is exactly that, income tax imposed by the state, and governed by the state. There may be local jurisdictions that impose additional income tax but any savings there would be trivial.
While sports are important to the local economy, my understanding is that they are relatively minor at the state level.
Second, LeBron (and other athletes) earn playing income in every jurisdiction they play in, not based solely on the jurisdiction that the team is based in.
This means they are responsible for filing taxes in each of these jurisdiction.
In addition to playing income, they make money through endorsements and other investments. These are considered income in whatever state they claim is their residence.
It's in a players interest to establish a residence in an area with favorable tax laws.
Cities may try to woo elite players to join them, but tax savings isn't very compelling.
Do you have a citation for this? I'm skeptical. I live and work in Texas. When I travel to my company's office in NJ, effectively earning income for a week in that state, I don't pay NJ income tax on that income.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_tax
Edit to add: According to my interpretation of this: https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/pdf/current/1040nr...
Assuming your income is over $20,000, you ARE required to file a NJ state tax return.
Also, note that even if you don't file a tax return, doesn't mean you are exempted from doing so.
Example, as a citizen of Texas, you are also required to pay use tax on any items aquired out of state/country and used in the state. My assumption is that you don't also pay that either, even thought you are legally required to do so. It turns out that use Tax is particularly difficult to audit and collect for, especially without a mandatory return like state income tax.
Uh, state income taxes can approach 10%. This is not “trivial”.
http://www.tax-rates.org/taxtables/income-tax-by-state
The original proposal was that star athletes attempt to negotiate tax incentives with cities, in the same vein Amazon did with NYC (and many other large corporations do).
City income taxes add a trivial percent to the total income tax rate when compared to the state income tax level. Thus, if you got incentives from a city, they would amount to trivial amount of savings.
Athletes would need to negotiate at the state level in order to have a material effect on their taxes.
I hope that clarifies my point.
I imagine Athletes pay accountants who are well versed in how to fill out those forms, and, at least in the NFL's case, a lot of players compensation may be in bonuses, and not necessarily game-day checks (which would be subject to local jurisdictional income laws).
That’s pretty funny how well settled that area of Law is, and yet again Amazon thinks it’s pretty special in that regard also...historically they haven’t paid those taxes either (state or local) and there was just a Supreme Court case confirming that in fact amazon isn’t special and that all this time they themselves should have been paying taxes where they had been selling/shipping goods.
That’s cute, but not the way the Law works generally. Maybe you can point to a single state where the law is different, until then I’ll just say the general rule is if the merchant makes of $x they are required by law to collect sales tax. Where or not the merchant does, they will be liable to the state for payment of the same, not the individual consumers.
If the law worked the way you represent why would any merchant collect and pay sales tax to the states?
https://www.open990.com/org/020716277/the-lebron-james-famil...
I'm a nonprofit fundraising professional, and I could probably talk about all the reasons why that is a horrible idea for 2-3 hours straight without repeating myself. I mean, at the very least, it's a bad idea for the same reason that exposing all the financials of every individual, or all other organizations, with the added benefit that you'd be opening people up to harassment for supporting certain social causes or belonging to certain religious groups. You might as well start a government mailing list called "hate crime targets."
If you think there are a lot of non-charitable transactions occurring using charities as a front, it would be a way better idea to just have the IRS audit more 501c3 orgs.
If you are trying to decrease fraud, it would almost certainly make more sense to audit wealthy individuals and for-profit corporations far more often.
There is information in people's finances that should be 100% private. What if an employer looks at the financials of someone applying for a job and sees they claimed $100k in medical expenses last year because they had cancer? Companies will do that if they have the ability, and people will lose jobs because of it.
It doesn't matter if you make it illegal. I worked a recruiting agency for a while, and illegal hiring practices are incredibly common.
A good portion of all of that is stuff Amazon could compile, but they got cities across the country to donate probably tens of thousands of hours of taxpayer salaries to do it instead.
The nature of special incentives each proposal offered - custom ones for Amazon-only, or unusual ones - will also have told them which cities they've got extra leverage over if they come offering a smaller project like a distribution center.
https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/11/the-extreme-amazon-bidd...
> The most jarring incentive reportedly comes out of Chicago, which, under state law, could redirect between 50 and 100 percent of the income taxes incurred by Amazon employees right back to Amazon.
Basically the state law allows employers who create new jobs to not have to pay their portion of the employment tax for a few years, and that tax credit applies to every company.
I'm pretty happy with the way Illinois and Chicago played their cards with Amazon, we were basically like "We've got a lot of great shit, and if you come here you can take advantage of this tax credit." We didn't offer Amazon any special treatment.
Stealing the worker's surplus labor value isn't enough?
A big difference is that contrived drama is at the very core of the entertainment business of professional sports. It makes for much of the entertainment! It's less helpful in the more mundane enterprise of 'building a bunch of offices and warehouses'.
People in Long Island City calling their political representatives and yelling at them about how they don't want your offices and warehouses is not business well done if you have 'building warehouses and offices' as a goal.
1. Basketball is entertainment, and 'The Decision' was the result of years of speculation by the fans and the media. Furthermore you see similar spectacles for such things as National Signing Day, where top recruits hold press conferences to announce what college they are attending.
2. There is animosity and jealousy towards 'entitled millionaire athletes' that was made worse with players being able to control their own destiny instead of suffering under terrible management. "If they get to choose where to work and do so with their friends, why can't I" yells Joe Six-Pack.
3. The super team. Somehow NBA fans forgot or were ignorant of how absolutely stacked championship teams had been throughout history, featuring multiple hall of fame players and coaches. Elements of #2 play into this as well where it is management, not players, that should build championship teams.
4. A player like LBJ is far, far more likely to deliver (which he did with multiple championships) in the NBA than a company like Amazon is to deliver a value worth the taxpayer dollars they absorb.
#YCFundMeToo
YC Fund "Me Too" -- I think you might want to let PR and HR take a look at this before you move forward with this name.
Honestly, why is this so hard when so much of the rest of the developed world manages to do it so well?
I am not advocating for big businesses evading tax mind you. Just suggesting it would probably still be a boon for the state tax income if a bunch of tech wages migrated to the NY tax base.
[1]: https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/amzn/financials
New Yorkers already pay tremendous tax dollars yet we have the mass transit that we do. The idea that there are no tax dollars is a myth. The funds are simply siphoned off to some other who-knows-what, and the remaining is poorly spent. The purported Amazon tax base would have likely been spent the same.
If Amazon wanted a strong transportation system they could have demanded some of their tax break went towards that. They did not.
NYC is already the second largest tech hub in the nation, as well as a global leader in a wide variety of industries.
If anything, Amazon moving in, and this I doubt, would have made it less affordable than it already was to live here.
NYC population is 08.6M
NYS population is 19.85M
Just the city is forty percent of the population. If you add the surrounding areas, you'll be a majority (I think they'd want things done in the city). How does the city not have better representation in the state assembly? How does upstate keep getting away with swindling the city?
As James Damore recently tweeted: "Amazon abuses its near-monopoly to bankrupt its competitors by selling at a loss, threaten brands with counterfeits until they sell on Amazon, and use third-party merchants’ data to undercut them. All while being subsidized billions by the government." https://twitter.com/JamesADamore/status/1094985319575969792
IRRATIONAL left. This investment on the part of Amazon gave way way way more to the city than it got back in subsidies.
It's kind of ridiculous. If I were Amazon, I would drop NYC in a heartbeat if they didn't appreciate that degree of investment.
The subsidies were 1.525 billion. Amazon's investment was expected to be around 2.5 billion. Only an irrational fool cannot do that math.
It would generate property tax (if not abated) and income tax for the workers (both hired after the fact, and hired to complete the construction), but at what percentage of the total investment? 10-20%?
What is the long term effect of having government hand out money to every business that creates a hype? What is the effect of the amount of similar deals that will inevitably get hyped?
Should you play the game at all? Is it reasonable for someone to come along with this kind of deal? Is there no sense of fair play - that all corporations should be treated equally - whose logic is outside of the simple arithmetic?
The simple arithmetic that you are suggesting can potentially lead to unpleasant situations. What if the opposite were to happen? Supposed some big firm like Google decided to ask the government for money, or else they leave and sack every employee who doesn't want to go to their new location?
You could have firms queueing up to present you with new math problems.
Unless you're Elon, then it's celebrated.
The opposition is because of the Massive tax breaks and other $$$ giveaways New York was going to hand over to Amazon. I don't recall Google extorting NYC for $$$ before they decided to expand....
If you're implying that Google got tax breaks, and no one noticed the public data confirming these tax breaks, please provide evidence of the data that has been overlooked.
Show me the public data source where I could conceivably find that out and I'll do "please provide evidence of the data that has been overlooked". Because I don't think that data source exists.
I don't think you realize how opaque tax records are in many places. You seem to be implying that there is a way for the public - or even journalists - to acquire the tax and assessment information of individual companies. Attempting to do so is considered fraud in most jurisdictions (e.g. attempting to use a FOIA request for the personal information - including tax records - of someone else or a business of which you are not an officer).
You are saying if I bought a piece of property and paid property taxes on it, that all of my business taxes would suddenly show up in the property tax records?
Here's an article discussing the topic at large[0] (and Google is one of the beneficiaries here).
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/02/us-cities-and...
Yes, this is common. But just because it's common doesn't mean it's right or should be allowed.
It's not like NYC is paying Amazon to come to NYC. NYC would still make huge tax revenues from additional sales, real estate, income taxes, and corporate taxes.
Now they're turning that all away. It's such an irrational decision that if I were Amazon, it would raise a big red flag for me as well.
No need to open in a community that doesn't want your money.
NYC was basically offering the same thing to Amazon: "hey come live in our city, we will give you a temporary tax reduction, in exchange for a TON of money over the next X years".
Overall the city wouldn't have lost money, it would have gained many billions of dollars of additional money in the future in exchange for an initial 2 billion reduction.
[1] https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/business/technology/430953... (The estimated recoup time is 25 years, which means the plant will be obsolete before the state sees a dime of net revenue.)
A 5 second Google search shows hundreds of results for 1 month free rent in apartment listings.
What exactly are you contributing to the discussion?
I believe OP is right that the month's free rent offered on an apartment is recouped by the landlord: in the form higher rents, which have become a real problem for many people born and raised in the city and which would likely only be exacerbated by Amazon's setting up shop here, especially under the conditions offered by the city.
Over the past 20 years New York has experienced an influx of wealth without commensurate investment in public services. The MTA is dying, urban blight is spreading and many of the new professional class moving here don't seem bothered by it.
Another piece of "anecdata": walking down Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg a few years back, I heard one wealthy newcomer say to another that she couldn't wait for the local pharmacy across the street from the new Duane Reade to close. Maybe this anecdote doesn't have the force of a "real data" but it may help some people on here understand why New Yorkers aren't thrilled by the prospect of a building a big Amazon campus and welcoming them with a handout.
https://harpers.org/archive/2018/07/the-death-of-new-york-ci... Unlike the author of this article, I'm not averse to my city changing, but I'd like to imagine something other than the change we've been seeing...
I'm not gonna lie, I'm part of the gentrification problem over the last five years, but to be fair New York gentrified me at the same time that I helped gentrify the neighborhood. I only made about 30k a year before I moved to New York and I lived in a trailer home back then. After moving to New York I got a few different tech jobs and now I live in one of those over-priced one month free buildings.
I share my story just to say that in my perspective gentrification is a complicated system, and like you I also have a personal stake in all this. In my experience working in tech in New York has been a huge opportunity to improve my life. Amazon would have offered roughly another 25k people such an opportunity, some of them would have been newcomers, and some hopefully long term NYC residents. I can't lie, some people might not have benefited as much as others, but at least those 25k would have been able to get the same opportunity I did when I moved here.
You should also recognize that many people would be actively harmed by it, not just "not benefiting as much as others".
Whether the benefits outweigh the harm is a question I can't answer, but even if they do, it's still true that people are hurt.
None of these issues are easy or clear.
NY is a shell of what it was in 2005/2006. Yes, there are more tech firms, but the 500,000 or so jobs lost after the financial collapse in 2008 have not been made up for. I welcome Amazon bringing in well-paid positions, because as a New Yorker, I'd like the city to support a middle class, not just wealthy foreigners parking money into LLCd condos staying empty.
Much of the gentrification could be due to the free money and ZIRP policy in the US -- it is cheap to borrow and thus people, especially wealthy people/corps, borrow heavily and raise prices and rents. There is little correlation between actual income and rents in NYC because of this external booster.
Wouldn't it be better if the source of rent increases in NYC be the presence of lots of well paying jobs?
However, I think we can do better than giving massive tax breaks to megacorporations with bad records on labor relations and what has seemed to be an adversarial relationship to government and public services. I have no interest in seeing a replay of what’s happened to SF in NYC.
I think it’s important for cities to stand up for the interests of all their citizens, not just software developers and product managers (etc) in negotiations with increasingly powerful tech companies.
I live in that part of Seattle. It's the same part where people want to ban all cars because they never have to go anywhere that isn't walking distance, and their dog loves walking.
- Come next year, the default position is "you get a 10% rent hike by just paying the number on the lease."
- if you leave after a year, I've got price history at $4000 a month and can use that as an anchor for negotiations with the next tenant
There's nothing that says I have to start from fair market value and take a month off either. Say I call the apartment price 12/11ths of market value, but then advertise the net number and each month your great deal lets you pay only 11/11ths of FMV.
Bloomberg had something about this today[1] - something like 45% of leases in NYC have similar concessions.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-14/manhattan...
"One month free" is one of the oldest tricks in the NY real estate book, along with "preferential" rating.
That is fallacy of excluded other possibilities. Especially for a place like NYC.
I generally like AMZN, nevertheless I'm happy just on sheer principle that the bullying behavior by the 800lb gorilla didnt succeed this time.
It is exactly like a pushy customer demanding a discount on their groceries, saying: "Well, if I don't buy them you won't get any money at all!"
If you are confident you can sell enough groceries at the regular price, the economically correct decision is say "I don't need YOUR money" and laugh in their face.
https://www.uscis.gov/eb-5
And schemes like these exist in most countries out there, it's not just a US thing.
In your original example, the only reason why it would ever make sense is if the Saudi prince in question can somehow produce more wealth for the public than they'd pay in taxes. In that scenario, it's exactly the same in the end, once you balance everything - you have sold them citizenship for money.
And if they don't pledge to earn you more than you'd save, then why would you even consider such a deal?
Guaranteed sale is nice, but if I think I can clear out those cars pretty easily without a discount I'm gonna be a lot less inclined to do it.
"that otherwise wouldn't be paid at all"
The opposite is true, 100% of those taxes will be paid by some other business. Maybe you could make your argument about the New York City of the 1970s, but you sure as heck can not make that argument about the New York City of 2019. New York City is not starving for investment, rather, its biggest challenge nowadays is managing its fast growth. Other businesses will move into those buildings, and hire those workers, and they will pay normal taxes, which is a lot more than what Amazon offered.
But mostly, it's obvious growth that looks good for politicians who can say, "look, I brought jobs!" People notice it when a high profile company arrives whereas if your local chain expands, that's not even a news story.
Much of the political aspect of economics is due to the relative visibility of various events in the media.
This is New York City. There will be other businesses—ones that don't need to be lured by special deals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/business/economy/amazon-h...
Can you explain this some more? Are you suggesting that governments establish a target figure and adjust that year's tax policy to make sure it's met?
The existence of budget deficits suggests otherwise.
They are just suggesting that the site that Amazon would have occupied will be rented by some other business. Probably, that business will not have gotten all the tax-breaks that Amazon did. Therefore, the tax collected by NYC on that space will be larger with Amazon gone.
Also, pretty crappy to get downvoted for an honest question.
And would the employees of these businesses earn on average equal to or greater than the average NYC Amazon employee?
These aren't rhetorical questions, and I don't know enough about Long Island City to have a confident guess at the answers but when evaluating whether Amazon HQ is economically a net positive, these are important to know.
Does it matter? If they earn enough to live and spend locally then isn't that good enough?
Some Amazon employee giving a developer an extra 1000 bucks a month for a luxury apartment and getting their food delivered instead of going to the store isn't exactly an amazing economic benefit.
Obviously not all 25000 employees would get an extra 1k, but the point being...these things can scale significantly when you're talking about Amazon. It's not a trivial thing for SMBs to fill the void that Amazon is leaving.
That being said, businesses, like people, should have equal protection under the law. I amazon gets a sweetheart deal, every other business should too.
The US and NYC specifically is approaching historic levels of inequality. If you want to reverse that you have to say no to giving one of the most powerful companies in the world a sweetheart tax deal. If NYC doesn't say no then who will? The scuttling of this plan doesn't reflect a lack of rationality. It reflects different priorities than you have. The more powerful Amazon gets thanks to these sweetheart deals the more leverage they will have and that can mean negative consequences for the populace.
Why even pick NYC in first place ? That place, and other 1st tier cities, are red tape hell. Amazon should have known this.
What's irrational is not following up by banning every single deal of this type. Every single one.
If you can get high-tech companies who are willing massively expand to create lots of GOOD JOBS without have to short $3 billion from the state budget, that might mean that the $3 billion dollars was a total waste and boondoogle....
No they aren't. They're expanding by about 7000.
Was it highly subsidized by taxpayers like Amazon's purchase would have been?
It's not like Amazon was getting CASH to move to NYC.
But public does not like it and hence they had to put together a fake plan and waste money. Which could have otherwise gone into preventing real crimes.
More like it's a sugary pill that gives you diarrhea that also does nothing useful.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/majority-of-new-yorkers-support...
No wonder Gianaris, who represents our district in the NY Senate, was such a strong opponent.
The first is likely, the second is very unlikely. For the simple reason that Amazon would not plan such project in a market that is so hot that is able to generate tax income at the same rate as concentrated investment project of the Amazon HQ size. Surely, it won't turn into a barren wasteland, but I would not expect it to produce more in tax revenue than big development like Amazon HQ would.
When I was 16 LIC was a pretty sketchy place, but as of a few years ago when I lived there it was completely different. There is still some light industry related to food trucks and taxi cabs, but you have to walk pretty far to get to anything more significant. The only sketchy area I can think of is the Queensbridge projects but that is north of the 59th st. bridge and pretty far from the rest of the neighborhood.
Looks like you do, because now we have - no discount, no business.
> It's not like the economic development of NYC is dependent on Amazon
Of course, losing several billions of added value and 25K jobs won't kill the economy of the size of New York. Just as shooting oneself in the foot won't kill most healthy people. But keep at it, and sooner or later there would be a surprising development that the health is not what it once was...
Not the business that was conditional on the discount.
https://www.nycedc.com/program/relocation-and-employment-ass...
https://www.nycedc.com/program/industrial-commercial-abateme...
It doesn't make a lot of sense for a city to offer incentive programs and then complain when companies attempt to use them. The city should make up its political mind about what incentive programs are available, and who qualifies for them, as part of the decision about whether to offer such programs. Programs should then be implemented neutrally, in a way that does not play favorites or pick winners and losers. Many other companies have benefited from these programs - the entire point of these programs is to achieve some kind of policy objective by being used.
The uproar in this case seems more like political brinkmanship, not any kind of sound economic policy designed to benefit the constituents of the city. These incentive programs were presumably passed in the first place to benefit constituents - that's why they're there, to attract additional investment to areas of the city that otherwise would not receive it. ("The Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) provides a refundable business tax credit for commercial and industrial businesses relocating to designated areas of New York City and making capital improvements to their space")
If people in NYC think that these incentive programs are a bad idea, harmful, inappropriate, or whatever else, then they should direct their anger at their political representatives, and cancel those incentive programs - not direct anger at the companies who take up the offer that the city put forward.
A business choosing a location is a business transaction, as is city taxation choices. Both can freely choose how to woo the other.
NYC chose to lose possible decades of high paying jobs over their unwillingness to deal.
Other cities are not so fortunate, but Amazon has no interest in truly desperate cities (or even cities that are not so desperate but could use the boost, like Newark and Baltimore).
Amazon’s role is not charity. It is to be as productive as possible. NYC does have the role in being a good steward of resources for its citizens. It threw out a lot of money and job for them due to a vocal minority.
https://hotair.com/archives/2019/02/14/amazon-kills-plan-bui...
Animal cruelty? There is only a vocal minority who takes a public stance, despite this beeing a very clear cut issue in terms of public opinion. Migration is the other way round: most people don't give a fuck, but have a loud vocal base that will even hurt themselves to make a point and you will be heard.
It's not a vocal minority, it's a vocal subset of the majority.
A vocal minority is when the opponents of a popular viewpoint are louder than its proponents.
The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16454645
I see the same thing with the Amazon HQ. It's easy for Amazon to spin it in a positive PR direction by talking about jobs and increased revenue, but the policy case for giving in to Amazon's demand is actually weak.
https://hbr.org/2018/07/landing-amazon-hq2-isnt-the-right-wa...
> Definition of proponent: one who argues in favor of something
Even if people are enabling something doesn't mean that they are proponents. Let's stop with the newspeak and use the correct words for things please.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proponent
They're not "ok" with the level of cruelty but in a pervasive environment of limited culinary and social choices, they're okay with living with that knowledge.
Personally, I think you get further raising better people than trying to impose a moral standard in a population that (for the most part) eats diets that hamper cognition and volition ala high sugar and ultra processed crap. Intermittent fasting and a decent diet would do much more for the quality of moral calculation of people than telling them that their entire culture is morally bad. Because we're humans who utilize different strata of values, not mere moral robots.
To paraphrase Nietzsche, the moralists and priesthoods of the world devalue the very small things which give arise to moral judgment: Diet, climate, and habit.
Not everyone has the money to choose differently.
At times there is no choice. This is especially true if you are a 15 year old. At 15, you basically eat what your parents eat. You can't generally afford food. You can't always just get a job if your parents won't provide education and/or if your school decides your grades aren't up to working. Oh, and you can't work all that often due to child labor laws.
At times, the actual choice is a bad one. Take eggs, for example. When I have the choice, I choose eggs from hens with larger cages. I realize these are hardly large, but they are better than the alternative. I've only lived one place that I could buy eggs directly from the source (during summer time) - but I'm literally an ocean plus some away from that now.
People honestly need a little bit of animal proteins lest they must take supplements. (Truth: I take vitamin D, as I can't make enough at my northerly location). I'm also mostly vegetarian. I eat fish once a week and I eat eggs and cheese.
Also, the way different accounts seem to seamlessly continue a deep and tangential discussion thread is also kind of suspicious. Almost like it’s one person who keeps switching alt accounts.
Regardless of peoples eating lifestyles it's undeniable that factory farms which produce most of the economically accessible meat are little concerned about animal welfare or the environment. The public on this matter also are least concerned about these matters related to the meat they buy off supermarket shelves, only when it's a video of a 'cute' animal being abused. It is only the minority of people in this instance that take a principled stance, if the silent majority did care we wouldn't be producing so much factory farmed meat after years of publicizing the abuse in the media.
I'm not a vegan but the way you characterize anyone who has a 'minority view' as some radical that only wants to cause problems is the attitude that allows corporations to operate it's abuse of worker standards and public funding to no one else's gain but themselves.
The discussion would have been clearer if the unambiguous term "factory farming" was used instead. The use of these ambiguous and disingenuous tactics of argumentation is reminiscent of PETA in particular. If you don't want to be characterized as a nutjob, don't act like one. That's my point.
Either someone shared with you an out-of-context link to this subthread for brigading purposes or you’re being totally disingenuous right now.
For myself (and maybe the others), your responses jumped one step beyond reasonable. Because someone used animal cruelty to describe factory farming, that poster is a hyperbolic vegan? I think the fact that you were being hyperbolic incited a few extra replies due to the... irony?
Edit: Cats are obligate carnivores and can't physically remain healthy without eating meat.
When people think animal cruelity they think beating your family dog vs the state of factory farming or organic farming.
I've been thinking a lot about trying to purchase pasture raised and sustainable meat products lately and part of that has been buying pasture raised eggs.
My last incredibly priced carton actually included a little slip inside with pictures of the hens in their pasture, and I believe even an offer to visit their farm.
Was really nice to go the other way. Instead of thinking about or ignoring the cruelty, to think about these happy hens.
But damn is it expensive!
Migration meaning what? Immigration within the US? That's been a hot button topic since the first Bush nationally, and has been the source of propositions in California since the my first memories of the early 80s. Interestingly, the more the internet was adopted, the more high profile the immigration debate became, nationally. Clinton talked quite a bit (even after his presidency), Bush Jr ignored it, and so on.
Reagan passed landmark immigration liberalization in 1986.
Clinton was an immigration hawk.
https://hackinglawpractice.com/blog/20-year-law-signed-conti...
GWB fought hard against his own party for immigration reform and liberalization.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/senate-ki...
That is, in itself, incorrect.
> Reagan passed landmark immigration liberalization in 1986
Yes, bringing it to the forefront, but without a way to communicate effectively, the party in power passed landmark legislation without a national consensus. Most people were unaware, until it passed and had no recourse after.
> Clinton was an immigration hawk.
I'm not sure what you believe, but that's incorrect, imo. He gave strong lip service in "securing borders" but was instrumental in toothless legislation that paved the way for the current passive acceptance alongside the tripling (ish) of the illegal immigration. The insistence that legal immigration continued to outpace illegal immigration year-over-year before and after his presidency is classic Clinton doublespeak meant to push an agenda by interpretation, which he maintained after his presidency. See his last John Stewart Daily Show appearance. Winners write the stories, so this will likely just be forgotten by the future.
> Migration is the other way round: most people don't give a fuck, but have a loud vocal base that will even hurt themselves to make a point and you will be heard.
GWB's reforms were not well supported, so the initial point I made stands, regardless of what was reported. The idea that GWB was doing anything but appealing to a wider base. What he did, was speed up deportations (ending catch and release) and stopped talking about it after his election. So you can interpret that how you will, but it certainly wasn't "fighting hard".
An unrelated example: polls show large supermajorities in favor of many gun control proposals (universal background checks poll at ~90%, for example). But most people who say that they want it, don't consider the opposite stance on that a deal-breaker for their vote - there are many other issues that are more important to them. On the other hand, the 10% that is opposed, is very firmly opposed, and that issue is close to the top for many of them, to the point of single issue voting. And when those people all turn up in the Republican primaries and vote as a bloc, those votes are enough to prevent candidates that displease that crowd from even getting to the general. And so you have all those party line votes, with every single Republican voting against, even though the majority of their constituents - and even the majority of their supporters - would prefer them to vote differently.
Even after reading this, I think the claim “most New Yorkers supported the project” is extremely dubious.
Because the entire "competition" was a sham. Amazon was never going to park the future of the company into a place lacking talent.
> The proposal was most popular among Black and Hispanic Queens residents and least popular among White Manhattan residents
That's a good point, but the counter is that the Black and Hispanic residents are the ones who would end up pushed out by Amazon's white and asian workers.
Surprised AMZN had such a thin skin.
And after all this, they are going to move into vacant office buildings in DC near the airport, and in Nashville.
Instead they got a pretty massive backlash that adds more fuel to the already burning story about Amazon's mistreatment of workers, Amazon's 0% tax rate, Amazon lobbying defeating taxes in Seattle, etc... They have a PR problem already. They are bringing a whole lot of negative attention to themselves. They will have it worse in the future when they try to do the same sort of thing in Washington state.
They folded because staying in wasn't worth it.
Besides this sniffs of the "yea build shelters everywhere but my block" attitude.
So who makes up this supposed groundswell of local opposition? People that moved in to one of those shiny new towers last week and are already looking to slam the door behind themselves?
Amazon could have easily ignored them for all eternity if they wanted. A vocal minority can't influence a random housing development, you think they had any say over Amazon? That's a STRETCH
If Amazon required all bids and contracts be made public AND brought in the media circus to invite scrutiny that would seem to be the most in the public interest.
Shaking down someone for money is done by threatening them, i.e. extortion. Amazon did not threaten NYC, and therefore it is not a shakedown.
Im not sure what the point of any of this was.
Also, "nobody bats an eye" is not right either - there are tons of protests against Google, which has been widely reported. They just didn't have a focus point like Amazon did, but if any city had a wide contingent of young socialist politicians caring about PR much more than for the jobs for the city population - the same could happen to Google too.
The big dog and pony show was about asking for major tax benefits. They're still welcome to open a giant LIC office, they just won't get showered with a tax windfall for it. That's Amazon's decision that it wasn't worth it.