411–420 of 1001 posts
Good, Amazon shouldn't be getting any subsidies just for having their offices in a city.
If you stop seeing the tax payments as entitlements, it begins to be a lot easier to reason about.
I guess I didn't realize how many commentators here were New Yorkers. XD Everyone's moving to more comfortable places with lower costs of living. NYC is not an attractive place for job candidates unless those candidates are already in NYC. Even companies with a strong presence in NYC are expanding in places like Nashville, Omaha, Dallas, Denver, etc. rather than in NYC. At some point, New Yorkers ought to ask themsel…
If Amazon had just quietly announced plans to expand to LIC without the "HQ2 Search" dog and pony show they almost certainly would still be here. Google buys entire city blocks and nobody bats an eye. Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition. More publicity = more scrutiny = more angry opponents of your business decision
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thats a very common phrase, used in high schools across America. Don't know what 4chan has to do with anything.
This is a very weak justification. Are we in high school in America on this site?
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I rather the money go to bringing tech jobs to NYC and making it a true technology hub then leave it in the hands of the city to spend billions on useless subway lines that are 3x the construction cost of anywhere else in the world: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
People want to live and work in NYC in part because of those useless subway lines. There is no need for NYC to hand out taxpayer money to any company. Companies will come regardless. Increasing density isn’t going to make subway lines cheaper by the way.
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You're getting downvoted, but it's true. If I recall, the city/state would've broken even not that far into the future, and then everything after that would've been pure profit for them.
It's a matter of principle. NYC (or any municipality) shouldn't be bending over for massive multinationals. It's a form of corruption, one that's depressingly widespread, and it's a race to the bottom that, from a 30,000 foot view, accomplishes nothing but screwing over the taxpayers and smaller competitors lacking the leverage for these antics, and benefiting the corporations that are already enormous and powerful.
The alternative, as is being demonstrated, is that you simply don’t get that business, and you lose out. x% of $0 is $0.
After being a resident of NYC for 30 years and seeing the city change and become a technology hub and just a financial center I think this is a real loss for NYC. It would also be in Long island City which would provide a huge influx of new workers and move that neighborhood forward in development rapidly. The down side would be that it would push some residents and business owners out but this is simply a fact of li…
If you're talking about the 2nd Ave stub, yeah, it was crazy expensive but it's serving 200K passengers a day, alleviating crowding on the Lex (entire Lex is like 1.3m), and UES to Times Square is hella faster. Anyway, for me it hinges on how much special treatment Amazon got, $100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard, would have been a huge anchor tenant for NYC tech and…
It's possible to be both at the same time.
Come to the Twin cities, plenty of land, lots of tech already, highly educated work force. Lots of lake houses and downtown is booming. Winter isn't that bad.
Winter isn't that bad. Have you been there this year? It was -26F without the wind chill a couple of weeks ago. Come for the cold weather and stay for the high taxes and high housing prices on the St. Paul side. Also, traffic is going to be fun on the west side for a couple of years.
If Amazon had just quietly announced plans to expand to LIC without the "HQ2 Search" dog and pony show they almost certainly would still be here. Google buys entire city blocks and nobody bats an eye. Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition. More publicity = more scrutiny = more angry opponents of your business decision
>Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition. Unless it's for a football stadium.
Football stadiums get subsidized because football is extraordinarily, wildly popular with most of the people that pay taxes. Those taxpayers spend massive sums of money on sports every year, across the NFL / MLB / NBA / NHL / MLS / NCAA. Those people pay most of the taxes that fund the government that then pays for the stadium subsidies.
Taxpayers love sports, love spending money on sports, and the majority of taxpayers are clearly fine with subsidizing sports at all levels. They vote with their dollars and... votes, over and over again, year after year, decade after decade, to keep supporting sports subsidization.
See: football attendance and ticket spending on NFL and college games annually, as well as sports packages for television, merchandise sales, etc.