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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

#641

Post by magduf »

josefresco wrote: post #65

"70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence" Sounds like a negotiating tactic, to encourage residents in support of the campus to put pressure on their representatives in government. The "politicians" are upset, because their constituents are upset. Amazon, attempting to turn the tables is an interesting tactic - sort o…

>"70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence"

While I'm skeptical about this claim about 70% of NYers supporting this, if it's true, then they should do a better job of voting.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#642

Post by philwelch »

zelias wrote: post #55

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

It worked out for Amazon. The biggest goals of HQ2 were to get around barriers to further growth and development in Seattle and to hedge against the risk of further populist backlash in Seattle. The fact that a populist backlash in New York happened so suddenly demonstrated that NY suffers the same afflictions as Seattle.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#643

Post by wolco »

rhegart wrote: post #626
sammycdubs wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in LIC and I've not met anyone who supported it, especially the $3BN of incentives. No wonder Gianaris, who represents our district in the NY Senate, was such a strong opponent.

Majority of the incentives are from Amazon’s taxes. 27B in economic activity for 3B in tax breaks for just 10 years is wayyy better than almost every other corporate deal. Better than Tesla for sure. That 3B will no longer be generated. You want a net 24B or a net 0B? New Yorkers chose 0

Other businesses can move into those spaces and will end up paying more in taxes. Property values will go up slower. Having one company move in sounds great but diversity might be a better longterm strategy.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#644

Post by magduf »

elfakyn wrote: post #253
magduf wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem here at all. If you have higher rents, that's because there's more demand for housing, and not enough affordable new housing is being constructed. Who controls that? Your local politicians. Who controls them? The voters who elected them, which is you if you live there. So you have no one to blame but yourself, and no cause to complain. You have the government you deserve.

That is a very shortsighted blame-the-victim mentality. You're conflating the power of the individual voter with that of the entire voting bloc. Besides, even if new affordable housing was constructed (which is getting harder and harder in nyc as people are being pushed further and further out geographically), it's not easy to just up and move, even in nyc.

Sorry, I have no sympathy for "victims" who have all the power, and bring their misery on themselves. The voters have the power over their government, so if they don't like their government, it's their own fault. In the short term, sure, voters can be fleeced, and have to wait for the next election to choose someone else, but this kind of stuff isn't happening within election cycles, it's long-term.

As for "being pushed further and further out", that again is the voter's own fault for not voting better. They don't need to move farther out, they need to build more densely, and they don't do it. This is largely an American problem because for some reason, Americans associate dense residential areas with "slums" and think that only suburbs with McMansions with gigantic and useless lawns can possibly be "nice".

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#645

Post by trhway »

skookumchuck wrote: post #634
trhway wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

more closer would be a Saudi prince agreeing to become a US citizen in exchange for a personally reduced income tax rate. Would you support it?

Would you call that "bullying" by the Saudi prince?

Yep. Definitely. This is exactly what Saudis do to US every time they can, like that 100B defense contract that made current White House into Saudis' faithful servants afraid to even mention Khashoggi or Yemen.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#646

Post by Q6T46nT668w6i3m »

rhegart wrote: post #626
sammycdubs wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in LIC and I've not met anyone who supported it, especially the $3BN of incentives. No wonder Gianaris, who represents our district in the NY Senate, was such a strong opponent.

Majority of the incentives are from Amazon’s taxes. 27B in economic activity for 3B in tax breaks for just 10 years is wayyy better than almost every other corporate deal. Better than Tesla for sure. That 3B will no longer be generated. You want a net 24B or a net 0B? New Yorkers chose 0

Except it isn’t 0. It’s far from 0! LIC’s growth is really impressive without Amazon.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#647

Post by m3kw9 »

bko wrote: post #554
zelias wrote: post #55

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

Most new Yorkers supported the project even when told about the subsidies. It's a vocal minority that sank the project https://www.wsj.com/articles/majority-of-new-yorkers-support...

It’s always the intolerant minority that controls the action. The majority thatbisnok either way will not be heard, because they are ok either way.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#648

Post by yourbandsucks »

nodesocket wrote: post #620
yourbandsucks wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And vastly more of them are not on the Forbes list. People have done studies on income mobility and inter-generational income mobility. The studies say that it's getting worse, not better. Yes, people can move up/down, but most don't, and it's happening less over time.

Going from the top, Jeff Bezos himself and Warren Buffet both grew up in middle class environments. Bezos worked at McDonalds as a short order cook while Buffett while young was notoriously hard working and frugal. Buffett would take his paper route earnings (mere dollars) and invest in stocks. Anyway, I don't have the resources and time to go through the entire Forbes list, but I suspect there are a lot more people…

Do I really need to explain anecdotes vs data?

Income is a strongly inherited trait. Look at this absurdly linear plot in section 2: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2018/01...

The only deviations from pure correlation are that the extremely poor and rich are EVEN MORE likely to be extremely poor or rich.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#649

Post by jngreenlee »

J5892 wrote: post #598
atoav wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always vocal minoirities who do things, even with very popular topics. Animal cruelty? There is only a vocal minority who takes a public stance, despite this beeing a very clear cut issue in terms of public opinion. Migration is the other way round: most people don't give a fuck, but have a loud vocal base that will even hurt themselves to make a point and you will be heard.

Animal cruelty isn't a great analogy. It's not a vocal minority, it's a vocal subset of the majority. A vocal minority is when the opponents of a popular viewpoint are louder than its proponents.

Always relevant:

The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#650

Post by joejerryronnie »

will_brown wrote: post #588
jfnixon wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the company that owns vast swaths of cloud computing space doesn't have talent to back it up? Amazon is way more dominant than LeBron in their respective businesses.

I don’t know about having more talent, but amazon definitely has more ego...At least LeBron didn’t demand special tax deals and non-public data from cities to bring his talents.

No, Lebron just demands the coach be fired, management take on horrible contracts for Lebron's buddies, and all organizational decisions be run by him. Truly, Lebron's lack of ego is staggering.
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