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Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

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Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#661

Post by benwilber0 »

bulldoa wrote: post #648
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. This is exactly what's happened to Seattle. http://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/What-does-it-re...

This is an interesting position that I am quite conflicted about. From the conclusion of the original post it seems like he/she would prefer company that brings in high salary jobs not to relocate to the area if the company itself would not be employing people that originated from the area for those high salary jobs. This is because he/she perceived that there is no benefit to the economy since the local does not get…

> Even if amazon doesn't pay taxes

I think this is being overstated. Amazon may get a very generous tax break for something like twenty years, but they will almost certainly still be paying more net tax yearly than all but the very largest employers in the area.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#662

Post by cthalupa »

ForrestN wrote: post #245

It's interesting how little culture figures in to this conversation. It seems to me that the North and the South (Canada aside) are drastically different in ways that will really matter to a lot of people. I don't work at Amazon, but my family and I would not feel fully safe or comfortable living in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia or North Carolina.

The cities in these states are not that different from cities anywhere else. I would be very surprised if you faced any additional discrimination in Nashville or Dallas than you would wherever you are feeling is a safe place. By the same token, rural New York and California are extremely conservative and have much of the same issues you seem to be worried about with the South.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#663

Post by conanbatt »

ComradeTaco wrote: post #362
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…

I believe that it's completely reasonable for governments to invest massively into public infrastructure to facilitate the success of Amazon HQ. Things like new transit lines, complete streets, public parks etc. It should be a catalyst to invest into parts of the city that have seen substantial urban decay. It irks me however when huge tax credits are handed out to already profitable companies to move in. It's just g…

I'd see it as cities charging more taxes than they are actually willing to collect. I.e. the city is happy collecting less % of taxes already, just that most dont have bargaining power.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#664

Post by wfo »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #611
wfo wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Just to make sure it's clear that this is not a universal opinion: I am a non-Amazon Seattle resident, and I'm thrilled with what the economic growth has done to the area. Some examples: - Converted an un-safe warehouse district into prime, central real estate and a thriving neighborhood (South Lake Union) - Grown a progressive, thriving economy that has in turn supported development of mass transit (ST2, ST3 - cityw…

>Converted an un-safe warehouse district into prime, central real estate and a thriving neighborhood (South Lake Union)

SLU was not un-safe. The idea that there is a seriously unsafe neighborhood in the city of Seattle is laughable. I remember SLU before Amazon. It has become extremely expensive and gentrified, that's it.

>Grown a progressive, thriving economy that has in turn supported development of mass transit (ST2, ST3 - citywide light rail)

Has massively inflated the population with wealthy transplants over a short period of time, pushing non-tech workers into the suburbs and requiring the citizens to pay for the added infrastructure costs due to Amazon-caused overcrowding without chipping in to help the city.

>Pushed the median household income up 13% over the last decade

You don't actually believe this is due to Amazon? I'm sure they helped a little.. mostly by pushing the poors out...

>Seattle ain't perfect, but there is no question in my mind that we'd be worse off without the thriving local tech economy.

Agreed, and Seattle has always been home to a thriving tech sector which is great. But other companies behave better with respect to their local community. Microsoft set up shop across the water, with a big campus so that employees could head into Seattle but didn't invade it and has adopted the culture of the area fairly well. Employees are treated well.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#665

Post by conanbatt »

slg wrote: post #297
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…

>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. It is a classic example of the winner's curse[1]. If Amazon is auctioning off the HQ for tax breaks, the government that wins is likely going to overestimate the value that winning the bid will provide. Those odds greatly increase when you thr…

I agree, and this is a problem of government. Amazon is exploiting it. Good for them. The ones that have to get their act to gether are local govs.

Seattle and San Francisco already screwed it up big time. I am hopeful some city will lean heavily towards land value taxes instead of income and prop taxes, and then companies like amazon would go there naturally and economic propserity is relatively assured as rents go up.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#666

Post by bsder »

rayiner wrote: post #559
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…

The fact of the matter is that cities in the U.S., with respect to each other, are in a race to the bottom. There is nothing they can do about it: the Constitution mandates an unrestricted internal market with no barriers to the free flow of goods and capital between states. That means that companies will go wherever they can get the best deal, and there is no way for state and local governments to restrict that move…

> There is nothing they can do about it: the Constitution mandates an unrestricted internal market with no barriers to the free flow of goods and capital between states. That means that companies will go wherever they can get the best deal, and there is no way for state and local governments to restrict that movement.

Sure there is--DON'T GIVE COMPANIES TAX BREAKS.

This isn't that hard. Tax breaks mean that you lose whatever benefits a company would bring to your area--so you're better off not bringing them in anyway.

Lobby to help nurture your local businesses. If you use the same resources and manage to double the employment at all your local small businesses, you've FAR exceeded anything a big company tax credit will do.

Besides, Amazon's HQ2 just isn't going to employ that many people and is going to be the political rejects unless Bezos actually moves there. Anybody with real ambition knows that they're going to have to go to Seattle, anyway.

It's just going to be an outpost of software slaves where they try to suppress the wages they're having to pay on the West Coast.

As such, this thing is going into where software wages are cheapest and they can extract a big tax break. I would posit Pittsburgh/Columbus/Nashville/Indianapolis. Everything else is a smoke screen.

Interestingly, I'm starting to see resistance mounting against tax breaks in Pittsburgh. Good on them.

The idea that Amazon is contemplating anything in a populated East Coast city near the Boston-Washington corridor is laughable.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#667

Post by wfo »

devdas wrote: post #517
lloyd-christmas wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for this? Historically, republican voters are both poorer and less educated (which in and of itself has class implications). However, none of those demographics are relevant if they are all located in solid red states. Given that most people seem to attribute the swing state losses to the 'we need jobs' votes coming from the manufacturing and steel industries, the swing implies it's due to jobles…

Didn't the swing states also demand IDs which democratic supporters would not have?

A lot of the swing states are controlled by Republican state governments who impose draconian racially targeted voter suppression measures yes, but this is true in every election. 2000 was won for Bush first by deep and massive illegal voter suppression in Florida (taking people who had the right to vote off the rolls because they had a black-sounding name, for example) and only second by the Supreme Court.

The Republicans have less support nationally and in states almost every election and it is getting worse for them as time goes on, voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering are the only things keeping them in office.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#668

Post by appstateguy »

scarmig wrote: post #591
appstateguy wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I live here and it's clear you're extremely ignorant on what the culture is actually like in the Raleigh-Durham region.

Question: do you even recognize that the bathroom law is offensive and discriminatory? If you don't, we are simply not going to see eye to eye on this.

Of course I do. I consider myself liberal.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#669

Post by saosebastiao »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #651
saosebastiao wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also need product managers, vendor managers, inventory managers, analysts, planners, forecasters, operations managers, customer service agents, human resources, legal, research scientists, security, marketing, IT, financial operations, as well as the world's most overweight and useless middle management layer ever seen. Even in Seattle, programmers make up well less than half of Amazon's personnel.

You sound like you have absolutely no clue how Amazon is run, but really don't like them so you go threw in some unfriendly, unfounded assumptions on top of your ignorance.

Partially correct; I don't like them, but it is precisely because I know too much about how Amazon is run.

Judging by your recent comments, you've been working there for about a couple of weeks at best. Get back to me when you've been around long enough for your RSUs to vest.

Re: Amazon announces candidate cities for HQ2

#670

Post by JPKab »

wfo wrote: post #402
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 h…

You act like the highly paid people you are whining about dont pay taxes. They do. You are also acting like you and the other "actual Seattleites" have an ancestral claim to the region. Are you a Native American? Doubtful. Your ancestors stole the land and now you act like your entitled to say who gets to live there?

What a hypocritical, provincial attitude to have. And honestly, greedy as well.

My family came to this country in the 1600s. If I had your attitude, I would hate everyone. But I'm not entitled enough to think that my earlier arrival means I earned privileges.

Welcome to America, where effort and talent win over "I was here first"

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