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Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

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Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#401

Post by justinhj »

hocuspocus wrote: post #139
bryanlarsen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Canadian cities were in serious competition I think there'd be more than one of them on the list. There are a good number of American cities smaller than Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Ottawa/Gatineau on the list, let alone Montreal and Vancouver. I suspect that Toronto is the token Canadian city and won't get serious consideration. I don't blame them, in this era of Trump hyper-nationalism there'd be a huge blow…

Vancouver is de facto their current HQ2, no? Mostly used to funnel hires to Seattle through L-1 visas, but still. Keep in mind Amazon is constantly looking for and hiring tons of tech workers. I live in Europe and I'd have a hard time taking their hiring events seriously if I could end up in Winnipeg (no offense). But the same is true for quite a few US cities on the list, though, and it makes me believe they probabl…

They are probably put off by hiring issues. Even if they pay over market rates it’s hard to convince people to live in Vancouver because of the high cost of living

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#402

Post by wfo »

wyattk wrote: post #126

Something about this just makes my stomach sick... A massive corporation is pitting governments against each other for its own gain, often to no benefit of the local population. I'm scared to see the numbers of "incentives" that local politicians try and hand out to Amazon. There's little evidence that the public money used/lost will ever be recouped. One of the worst cases of this happening so far is the Foxconn dea…

It is terrifying how this power is being wielded. Cities try to compete to see who can be more obsequious and subservient to corporate interests in the hope that they win some "victory" -- the company moving to their town -- which in the end does very little for the actual city or the people in it. It is just an impressive line item on the mayor's resume when they try to move up in politics, "I got Amazon!"

Seattle hates Amazon and what it has done to the city. They provide nothing for the city, do nothing to help ameliorate the problems they create, they overcrowd every area with ultrawealthy out of towners who push actual Seattleites out of the neighborhoods they've lived in for generations, replacing local culture with bland silicon valley tech-ennui. And the jobs they offer aren't even good. They create new white-collar sweatshops in their office buildings to mirror their blue-collar sweatshops in the warehouses.

If they are paying attention, people in all of these cities should be praying to god that Amazon doesn't choose their city. If they can, they should protest, riot, refuse to let it happen.

If you want a left-wing prospective on this general issue (which is called "lotteryism") there's a great podcast that does media analysis on this and issues like it. As it turns out, for example, reporting describing the supposed 'benefits' Amazon could bring to a city are literally copied without attribution or further investigation from Amazon press releases. There is a reason Jeff Bezos bought a huge newspaper, and it's not charity.

https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/lotteryism-part-i-how...

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#403

Post by toastking »

jhall1468 wrote: post #290
prklmn wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't do this after getting bids from numerous American cities. To choose a city in Canada would piss off too much of their customer base, including the president of the country, and would have a long term material impact on sales.

I sincerely doubt the majority of their customer base cares at all, and it would almost certainly have very little impact on sales.

Yeah and they already have offices all over the world so it's a nonissue.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#404

Post by apcragg »

nsnick wrote: post #257
patrickxb wrote: post #240

I think travel between HQ and HQ2 has to be a nonstop flight for it to be viable. The cities sorted by number of nonstops to Seattle per day: Los Angeles 23 Denver 18 Chicago 14 Dallas 12 Washington, D.C. 7 Atlanta 6 Newark 6 New York 6 Boston 5 Austin 3 Nashville 2 Philadelphia 2 Raleigh, N.C. 2 Indianapolis 1 Toronto, Canada 1 Miami 1 Columbus 0 Pittsburgh 0 Montgomery County, Md. ? Northern Virginia ?

Pittsburgh has flights to Seattle. https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/... Also, Northern Virginia is the location of Dulles. Montgomery county would also use Dulles or BWI which has 3 flights per day. Interestingly, with traffic, Washington D.C. is not within 45 minutes of Dulles so Washington D.C. is probably just looking at Reagan which has 1 flight per day to Seattle.

The silver line will to IAD will be open by the time HQ2 is being built. That puts it ~35mins by Metro when leaving the city. IAD is a huge international airport as well and has much smoother infrastructure than National Airport.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#405

Post by sf_rob »

droopybuns wrote: post #314
drumttocs8 wrote: post #249

Amazon would have the greatest impact in Atlanta. You could argue that Atlanta is the economic, cultural, and geographical center of the Southeastern United States. It has the busiest airport in the world and is a major rail hub. There are already dozens of major corporations headquaratered in Atlanta. There is no shortage of talent, with a top-5 engineering school in Georgia Tech. Yet there are things missing which…

When I saw Atlanta on the list, I felt that it's over. The rail system is far superior to what exists in Seattle & should support reasonable suburban commutes. Georgia Tech's talent supply makes it interesting, but I get the impression that Amazon hires people with more experience than just straight out of college.

> The rail system is far superior to what exists in Seattle & should support reasonable suburban commutes

Atlanta has a relatively poor transit system compared to many other cities on the list. The bus system isn't great and MARTA (trains) is quite limited. I left before the beltline was built out, so maybe things are getting better.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#407

Post by prklmn »

s4vi0r wrote: post #371
prklmn wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that would be too incendiary a hedge. They have much more to lose than gain.

I think you're overestimating the trumples. He has an abysmal approval rating, and the types of people who tend appprove of him (e.g. rural poor) aren't exactly big spenders/prime consumers or whatever. Trump will raise a stink about it, but I'd be very surprised if anyone normal/reasonable felt Amazon opening hq2 in Canada to be like a personal attack against America or something.

You also could have never guessed Trump would win the election, right? You and I are not tapped into the minds of plenty of Americans who will absolutely feel the feeling you've described. And your assertion about "trumpies" is just not true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/0...

Forget about normal/reasonable, while trump's approval rating is abysmally low going by historical standards, it's still 30 something percent - a large number in absolute terms.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#408

Post by mozumder »

southphillyman wrote: post #374
ashelmire wrote: post #340

Part of me would love to have a big tech / infrastructure company like Amazon in Philly. But I take serious issue with the idea of the city paying millions or billions to bring them here, promising years of tax breaks (a free ride), and the tightening of an already very tight real estate and rental market. I don't think my fellow Philadelphians should have to pay to bring a company here that's just going to hire peop…

Some context that might further illustrate OP concerns: -Philadelphia already has major funding issues despite several unpopular taxes like the wage tax and soda tax -Recently went through a huge gentrification cycle spurred in part by a 10 year tax abatement given to new construction or rehabs -The city has already given huge tax incentives to another major corporation, Comcast. What you have is a city that recently…

Do you think the city would be better off without Comcast employees there?

This is where more subtle analysis makes all the difference.

Comcast doesn't seem like it would be a high-end workforce. I doubt they do any R&D there.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#410

Post by praneshp »

droopybuns wrote: post #314
drumttocs8 wrote: post #249

Amazon would have the greatest impact in Atlanta. You could argue that Atlanta is the economic, cultural, and geographical center of the Southeastern United States. It has the busiest airport in the world and is a major rail hub. There are already dozens of major corporations headquaratered in Atlanta. There is no shortage of talent, with a top-5 engineering school in Georgia Tech. Yet there are things missing which…

When I saw Atlanta on the list, I felt that it's over. The rail system is far superior to what exists in Seattle & should support reasonable suburban commutes. Georgia Tech's talent supply makes it interesting, but I get the impression that Amazon hires people with more experience than just straight out of college.

Amazon is one of the biggest new-college-grad hirers. This was true when I was one a few years ago, and it's very true now.
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