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Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#231

Post by kbenson »

CydeWeys wrote: post #5

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.

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.

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...

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#232

Post by hnarn »

lccarrasco wrote: post #184
untog wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would the tax breaks eventually be offset? Amazon paid zero federal tax for the last two years running. They're experts at tax avoidance. I don't see any reason to assume they wouldn't do the same in NY.

All new employees would've paid income and sales taxes.

But it's also not the case that the increase of "income and sales tax payers" for NY would be zero without Amazon, so the benefit would have to take that baseline into account. It's not an easy calculation, and there are reasons beyond pure money as to why you wouldn't want an Amazon HQ.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#233

Post by boron1006 »

legitster wrote: post #132
forkandwait wrote: post #14

Of all the places, why did NYC offer Amazon subsidies? NYC actually has too many good jobs for the amount of space... I am also proud of my cantankerous fellow New Yorkers who fought this.

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.

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.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#234

Post by magduf »

loudmax wrote: post #227
magduf wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I understand your sentiment, but I have to disagree. No matter how bad things are, we can always do worse.

It's hard to imagine getting a worse Pres than the one we have now...

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#235

Post by jhall1468 »

specialp wrote: post #195
jhall1468 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 emplo…

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.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#236

Post by skh »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #199
magduf wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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....

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#237

Post by dontbenebby »

skh wrote: post #71
endofcapital wrote: post #46

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.

>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? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#238

Post by rsj_hn »

forkandwait wrote: post #14

Of all the places, why did NYC offer Amazon subsidies? NYC actually has too many good jobs for the amount of space... I am also proud of my cantankerous fellow New Yorkers who fought this.

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.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#240

Post by dontbenebby »

zdragnar wrote: post #215
djsumdog wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>I saw somewhere that the turnout for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's election was somewhere around 4%

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.

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