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Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

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Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#261

Post by snowwrestler »

alehul wrote: post #140

Why do we give Amazon subsidies but not small businesses, who altogether provide over 50% of the jobs in America? The reason, as I understand it, is because Amazon as a single corporate entity provides far more jobs and holds more power. Following that: Wouldn't the small businesses, due to our anti-trust regulations, actually be considered a cartel if they tried to negotiate as a group and gain the same tax advantag…

Small businesses receive a number of subsidies in the form of tax breaks and exemptions based on size. For example Section 179 allows small businesses to deduct capital expenses below a certain amount instead of depreciating them, and Obamacare exempts business with less than 50 employees from providing health care. Federal regulatory flexibility and paperwork reduction laws release small businesses from a lot of expensive compliance work that a big company like Amazon has to do.

Any individual small business obviously doesn’t transact enough dollars to get the personal attention that Amazon does. But small businesses do come together to lobby for these things via chambers of commerce, trade associations, coalitions, regional development authorities, etc. And they tend to be pretty successful since small business is popular with both parties.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#262

Post by dang »

gayandproud wrote: post #110

Hope all you want, but a good half+ of the HQ2 hires will be minorities. Not a lot of minorities want to live in a deep south or Texas region due to racism, stand-your-ground, etc. Same thing for gays. If you want to hope for diverse knowledge businesses opening in Dallas, perhaps start with pushing for equality. I can think of a thousand examples, but here is the latest: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/us/dallas-…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442486 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#263

Post by bsanr »

matchbok wrote: post #115
bsanr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do the developer incentives that have driven urban redevelopment for the last 2 decades. Hence, in part, the glut of luxury apartments and the ever-tightening affordable housing market.

Nothing wrong with luxury apartments. Today's luxury is tomorrow's regular housing.

If I may be glib in kind:

Narrator: He immediately found something wrong with luxury apartments.

http://fortune.com/2016/08/16/recession-risk-luxury-apartmen...

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#264

Post by bsanr »

matchbok wrote: post #113
bsanr wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving is a substantial expense. Should people be forced to consider the likelihood that housing costs that are currently within their means might rise outside of them at some unknown point in the future, and to some unknown degree, when choosing housing? How exactly should that be considered? It seems regressive, socially, to force this consideration on the people least able to afford it. After all, people who "choo…

...Yes? This has been happening for hundreds of years. Part of being a responsible adult is managing your finances and being prepared. It is crazy to me that so much attention these days is basically advocating for the babysitting of adults. It is not as if this will happen overnight, either. If we allow people to stay in subsidized housing we remove the biggest carrot for self-motivation.

In a society where each individual plays an increasingly specialized role, socially-responsible institutions that step in and cover common needs sounds less like babysitting and more like welcome encapsulation of complex functions. This is also a society where class stratification is rooted heavily in educational disparities. It doesn't seem... rational?... to expect people with little savvy or control over their circumstances to exhibit more savvy or exert more control than those with access to more of both.

Approaching gentrification as some sort of just-world force of nature, and those thrown up in the turmoil of it as willing-by-way-of-neglect, is backwards.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#265

Post by joegahona »

eesaitcho wrote: post #230
jcampbell1 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> housing projects I have spent a ton of time in LiC and as far as I can tell, there are none. Chelsea where Google is, has more housing projects. Housing projects aren't really an issue, but clearly you are trolling or clueless.

It's home to Queensbridge the largest housing project in the city.

It's actually the largest housing project in the western hemisphere.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#266

Post by taohansen »

Why didn’t anyone ask the residents if they wanted a megacorporation to move into their neighborhoods? Amazon insisted on absolute secrecy moving forward and elected officials went right along with it.

Queens residents are outraged by this news. No one asked them. How is this democracy at work?

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#267

Post by infinite8s »

mo1ok wrote: post #137
nickdandakis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, where do you think young well-paid techies live in the city? Because I'm a young well-paid techie, and I live off of the G line in Brooklyn, which this move would definitely affect.

Greenpoint, bushwick, wburg, bed-study, park slope, Clinton hill, LES.

Greenpoint is directly south of LIC. You can walk there in 30 minutes.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#268

Post by infinite8s »

matchbok wrote: post #100
bsanr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drives up rent. Breaks up existing, stable (if often impoverished) communities. Increased, concentrated development can have a negative environmental impact.

Nobody is entitled to live in a certain area for a certain price. Such things lead to distorted markets and tons of other issues.

That's the justification for indigenous genocide everywhere.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#269

Post by ctvo »

The easiest way to think about these HQs for me:

- Seattle - retail, logistics

- Crystal City - AWS

- New York City - Amazon services for advertising, publishing, media

I would bet Seattle sees those roles slowly pull towards their respective HQs. It's already happening with advertising and NYC as far as I can tell from their job listings.

And if in the future, for some reason, Amazon is required to break up, this would make it a little less messy.

Re: Amazon Selects New York City and Northern Virginia for New Headquarters

#270

Post by raiflip »

sinker wrote: post #156
raiflip wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's partially true. Not sure where you are from, but as opposed to places like San Francisco, NYC has a functioning real estate private sector that reacts rationally to increases in demand by increasing supply. This is not to say gentrification is not a thing, but it's not like in San Francisco where there's basically a set housing stock and new people completely displace the old people. Instead new people displac…

And yet NYC still has some of the highest rent in the country. For someone making 60k or less it doesn't matter much if the rent is 2k or 3k a month, it's all totally unaffordable anyway and those people are either pushed further out from where they work, or if they're young they split the rent amongst 2-4 people.

Those are Manhattan prices. If you travel more than 10 minutes outside Manhattan the rent drops. This normally means long commutes, but with the new HQ in queens, workers could commute from the cheaper parts of queens.
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