481–490 of 1001 posts
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It's not mainly Bezos. It's mainly investment/index funds - entities that that hold people's saving and retirement accounts.
The point stands — it's taking money out of the pockets of NYC residents, and delivering it to AMZN shareholders.
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…
I just don't understand the logic of politicians such as Ocasio-Cortez. Amazon HQ was going to bring 25,000 high paying jobs to the area, providing growth and opportunities for her constituents. Her argument against is that the Amazon HQ would further gentrification and she was appalled by the government subsidies. So she'd rather limit new growth, prevent new jobs, and stifle wealth to prevent luxury condos and Star…
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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 "…
What if another state gave the concessions, and then it worked out spectacularly for them, completely reviving a city and building up a new ecosystem that funnels in new wealth and new money. Would NY be kicking itself then?
You're suggesting that another city will generate money and wealth to rival NYC by getting a few Amazon jobs?
Frankly, that would not happen. Maybe if that other city was DC? But, yeah, probably not even then.
> We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada. So this whole HQ2 thing ended up being a grand waste of everybody's time.
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…
The USA already has a tax structure in place. Amazon could afford to pay the existing taxes if they wanted to. Heck, they're paying their tax accountants to figure out how not to pay those taxes. Why doesn't Amazon just buy, say, Nebraska, and set up shop there?
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Isn't this exactly the opposite? Amazon would have destroyed the general economy in NYC like they did in Seattle. This is the city ignoring the big corporation and listening to their people. NYC doesn't need Amazon. It needs to fix it's rail system.
How is the Seattle economy destroyed?
When someone says it's destroyed, they mean it's gentrifried or exclusionary, not benefiting everyone equally. That's certainly true. Economically the fact is Seattle has been an epic boom city for two decades now.
Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway also don't benefit everyone equally. 99.9% of the world can't live there, few of the planet's 7.5 billion people are welcome. It turns out that all nice, affluent places are aggressively exclusionary, without exception.
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I think you misinterpreted his statement. "Cut off your nose to spite your face" is referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_the_nose_to_spite_... In this context, they're referring to the actions of NY (not the comment they're replying to), and TBH, there's nothing personally acidic; it's just a saying.
I was referring to feel free to pat yourself on the back for not "falling for it" , which was a gratuitous bit of personal sarcasm, just the sort of thing which acidifies online discourse. Also, arguably, the bit about an attempt to revise history is an uncharitable escalation (though not personal).
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
The opposition is not because some high tech firm, whether it is Google or Amazon, is expanding in NYC. The opposition is because of the Massive tax breaks and other $$$ giveaways New York was going to hand over to Amazon. I don't recall Google extorting NYC for $$$ before they decided to expand....
It's not like NYC is paying Amazon to come to NYC. NYC would still make huge tax revenues from additional sales, real estate, income taxes, and corporate taxes.
Now they're turning that all away. It's such an irrational decision that if I were Amazon, it would raise a big red flag for me as well.
No need to open in a community that doesn't want your money.
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…
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.
Not paying Federal income tax isn't paying no taxes. Also, the "zero federal tax" meme is popular among the Bernie Sanders crowd, however, much of Amazon's credits were due to paying stock-based compensation. In 2017, they paid out almost a billion dollars in stock compensation -- compensation for which recipients are taxed -- and taxed at a higher rate than the equivalent funds would have been taxed if retained by the company since such compensation is taxed as ordinary income -- not only are federal income taxes due, but also social security and medicare taxes. The point is that $917 million in stock compensation was written off against Amazon's income, but that $917m likely yields roughly $250 million in federal tax revenue , while if that were taxed as company income, it would yield roughly $110m given the historical effective tax rate paid by Amazon.
Essentially this: If Amazon didn't exist, the US government would be far worse off in terms of tax revenues, despite Amazon paying "zero" taxes. An intelligent view of the situation wouldn't look at "federal taxes paid" by the entity of Amazon, but their total tax revenue impact on the United States government -- including their state and local, and taxes paid by their employees. If you wanted to be more intellectually honest about Amazon and taxes, you'd also include the tax impact of everyone that profits as a result of Amazon. There's also the impact at the consumer level -- the price of products is the sum of all of the inputs used to produce, market and deliver that product. If you raise the price of any of those inputs, prices necessarily increase. Let's say we increase the taxes of Amazon -- that means that their "Hefty Garbage Bags" are now selling for more money, but that also means that competitors selling Hefty Garbage Bags can also raise their prices. Essentially corporate taxes have the same market-wide effect as a tariff -- raising prices for everyone. Who gets harmed most by higher prices for consumer goods? It isn't the "rich." It's the poor and middle class. Lower prices for goods helps the economy far more than the equivalent amount collected in taxes due to deadweight loses.
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But as a thought experiment, say they did create 25,000 jobs at an average salary of 100,000. What type of taxes and secondary effects on the economy does this have? Does the city get back more than the 3 billion in concessions and how long does that take?
they estimated about 30B over 10 years