411–420 of 747 posts
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…
Nice to see Toronto on the list, though game theory suggest that we're only here because having a Canadian Candidate has the potential to have all 3 levels of government involved rather than just state and city. I'm not really sure how to go about handicapping the finalists. Given the current political climate, Toronto is interesting because it's the only city that gives Amazon some escape form the US government. You…
Just visited Pittsburgh. There is indeed a renaissance happing in that town. The restaurant scene alone is phenomenal. And the addition of a FANG level HQ could cement its burgeoning international reputation as a destination. The idea is that CMU spits out about 200+ world class CS grads a year. If even 5% decide to stay in the area to start their own ventures. There would be potential for massive growth. the other d…
If you haven't seen this yet, this gambling site has Atlanta, GA / Boston, MA / Austin, TX as the top three choices for HQ2. http://www.paddypower.com/bet?action=go_type&ev_type_id=2271...
It also has Portland and Cleveland as the next most likely and they have been eliminated. Gambling sites are not useful for decisions like this which are made by a small group of people. Gambling sites are useful for things like elections where you want to sample a small part of the large population.
I'm not sure that's quite true. For example, a Wisdom of the Crowds consensus approach can do really well in picking Academy Awards winners for example.
It's not immediately obvious that you can't take the same approach here. The bigger issue is probably that, while with the Academy Awards experienced pickers can bring a fair amount of historical perspective about the types of things that win, precursor awards, etc. in this case:
- There's no track record to look at
- No one outside of the people involved know what's going on behind the scenes
- No one knows how Bezos & company are really thinking about this, what they really value, etc.
So in the end, the crowd has so little real information to go on, any Wisdom of the crowds is going to be incredibly noisy. The wisdom of the crowds assumes everyone is not just throwing a random dart at a map.
My money is on one of Nashville, Indianapolis or Columbus with Pittsburgh as a dark horse. Amazon is going to be looking to build a major campus (say 5-10 big buildings) right in the center of town (as they've done here in Seattle) and that's just not feasible in expensive cities like LA, Boston, NYC, Chicago or DC. Denver is too far west, Miami, Atlanta and Raleigh too far southeast. Newark and Philadelphia don't ha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
With regards to your first point - it's not really costing taxpayers in Wisconsin $4.5B . At least for the tax credits portion, those are taxes that would not have been paid in Wisconsin otherwise.
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…
I'm all for being active but professional sports these days seems like they are a religion.
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…
With regards to your first point - it's not really costing taxpayers in Wisconsin $4.5B . At least for the tax credits portion, those are taxes that would not have been paid in Wisconsin otherwise.
Plus, the taxes exist for a reason. Companies rely on public goods like roads, schools, etc for their business. So if Foxconn never came to Wisconsin, Wisconsin wouldn't have had to pay those taxes, but they also wouldn't have to pay for whatever extra public goods are consumed by the factory.
Of course, in reality, someone somewhere is going to pay for Wisconsin's schools, police, etc. So what really will happen is that Foxconn shareholders (who presumably don't, generally, live in WI) will have their share price subsidized, while other companies, or Wisconsin workers, or property holders or some combination thereof will make up the difference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Denver appears to be the current favourite (also chosen by the NYT as the winner) but doesn't have any flights to Asia except for Tokyo[1]. But I guess being sufficiently connected within the US is enough, not sure how many flights to China they need. [1] https://www.flightera.net/airport/Denver/KDEN
Except no one in Denver wants them here except the Governor and business council. It would be a huge net loss for the community and people.