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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

#271

Post by skh »

mc32 wrote: post #216
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So vote for elected officials who will fight for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

Didn’t citizens united essentially try to overturn a previous BCRA reform which disallowed a non commercial entity from publishing a political film? Basically they were trying to “answer” (a la rap battle) Moore’s 9/11 film, but got knocked down by BCRA regulation because it was considered “electioneering” while Moore’s were okay because they were published by a “bona fide filmmaker”. I think it gets complicated but…

From Wikipedia:

In the case, the conservative non-profit organization Citizens United sought to air a film critical of Hillary Clinton and to advertise the film during television broadcasts shortly before the 2008 Democratic primary election in which Clinton was running for U.S. President.

The federal law, however, prohibited any corporation (or labor union) from making an "electioneering communication" (defined as a broadcast ad reaching over 50,000 people in the electorate) within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of an election, or making any expenditure advocating the election or defeat of a candidate at any time. The court found that these provisions of the law conflicted with the United States Constitution.

They were prohibited from airing ads 30 days before the election. The decision in terms of effects and scope was terrible. It was a broad decision and had a very wide effect.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#272

Post by TimJRobinson »

YeahSureWhyNot wrote: post #245
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…

Amazon is notorious for paying pennies. 25k jobs paying 150k on average is a pipe dream. ask whole foods delivery people for Amazon fresh or whatever its called. they are counting their pay including $5 mandatory tip they collect from customers.

You're on hacker news and don't understand the difference between the salaries of software engineers and whole foods workers?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#273

Post by YeahSureWhyNot »

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.

all people who would qualify to work at Amazon getting 150k per year are already working somewhere making something close to that. this was not going to change employment rate or boost income taxes. this was going to drive housing prices, especially rent thru the roof though.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#274

Post by apendleton »

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.

At least one of the following would have to be true for that to follow: new people would have to move to NYC specifically for Amazon (or to fill vacancies created by people leaving other companies to work at Amazon), or otherwise-unemployed people would have to become employed because of Amazon, or the people taking Amazon jobs would have to be paid more than they otherwise would. None of these would be guaranteed, though. Unemployment in NYC is already low, and there are significant impediments to moving to NYC unrelated to hiring (high cost and limited availability of housing, for instance). It might well be that the same people would end up employed regardless, just at Amazon instead of elsewhere, and other employers would just have higher vacancy rates. These same people would then produce less total revenue for the city/state because more of the taxes they would have been paying regardless would go to subsidizing Amazon.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#276

Post by GVIrish »

berbec wrote: post #7

Not going to miss them. Local governments giving huge tax breaks in exchange for stadiums, businesses relocating never works out.

I'm very much not a fan of using public money to build stadiums for billionaires, but the deal with Amazon is a bit different in that it would actually have positive economic impact for the eventual location.

With a stadium, you only employ a relatively small number of people during the week and off-season. Staff during games and concerts are not really earning a ton of money that will create new economic activity. With Amazon, tech workers actually increase the tax base and they're spending their money at local businesses. At least with the Virginia deal, the tax breaks don't kick in until they actual create jobs at the promised salary levels.

Now I don't really agree with giving a massive private business all of these tax breaks, they can afford to expand without them if it makes business sense. The problem is that each state is competing with each other and FOMO kicks in. Without that powerful motivation companies wouldn't pull these stunts. Although eventually they'd try to pit countries against each other (which they kind of already do).

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#277

Post by schnevets »

josefresco wrote: post #76
slg wrote: post #9

I wonder how many Amazon employees sold their nice new condos in the last couple weeks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18503434

I wonder how many Queens residents sold their apartments/condos before this news broke? Talk about timing. I know of one person who was drooling at this unexpected windfall and will now be very... sad.

Between this and the L train drama impacting Williamsburg, I wonder how much volatility the outer borough housing market can take.

Sure there has been a housing bubble there for a decade, and I'm certain there are some real estate insiders benefiting from this arbitrage, but this kind of dysfunction can't be good for the economy.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#278

Post by sjjshvuiajhz »

pastor_elm wrote: post #117
walrus01 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth noting that Google owns all of 111 8th in NYC. They're slowly not renewing leases for existing tenants and taking over the whole building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Eighth_Avenue 111 8th is a major internet traffic exchange point. It's also gargantuan, it's 2.9 million square feet and occupies a whole city block. One of the interesting things about 111 8th is that it was designed for much higher than no…

I imagine they're getting decent bang for their buck when hiring in NYC. Really the COL adjusted wages in NYC are some of the lowest for all American tech cities.

Why would they care about getting a good bargain in “COL adjusted wages”? Even in NYC there is not a currency exchange Google can go to to turn $100k Florida dollars into $200k New York dollars.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#279

Post by _jal »

jhall1468 wrote: post #164
specialp wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The 25k number was just to make a splash and notice they aren't doing that again. Because there aren't really any other areas that could give them 25k skilled employees. They will scale up in Nashville which is expected since it is a growing area, and they will still be in NY due to the talent. The "HQ2" show was primarily to extract large concessions which almost worked. My initial reaction as a NY'er was "…

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…

This is nonsense. I can't say that an enormous giveaway of public funds to attempt to buy jobs is categorically a bad idea in every situation, but if every one I can think of, and certainly this one, it is.

It is also amusing that you consider Amazon's assertion about the job count an iron truth of what would have happened. While Amazon does not have Foxconn's long history of scamming municipalities, there is also no reason to weight their words any higher than other companies who have played this game in the past, and the odds look significantly worse than a sure thing viewed that way.

Finally, the way you win these games is not to play, no different than the continual sports stadium scams or other "let's you and him fight" grifts.

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