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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

#661

Post by JJMcJ »

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...

NYC is very political.

Surprised AMZN had such a thin skin.

And after all this, they are going to move into vacant office buildings in DC near the airport, and in Nashville.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#662

Post by magduf »

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #303
chiefalchemist wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Forget everything else, it's First Past the Post voting that is the cause of many of our problems (e.g., no possibility of third parties). If we had an alternative voting system (there are several good ones), people could actually vote _for_ someone rather than just _against_ someone, and there would be some criteria for voting other than who can put out the most inflammatory campaign commercials. But again, the stat…

Or maybe we shouldn't be voting for people at all, but instead parties. That's how it works in Europe, and they don't have the two-party system we have because of it.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#663

Post by stvswn »

mmanfrin wrote: post #639
bko wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

56% is not a resounding endorsement, though, especially for such a big-ticket giveaway that the city absolutely does not need.

Big ticket? Of the abatements, only $500M (the portion related to construction) wasn't available to any business that met the state's requirements. Giveaway? These are tax incentives that are part of the state's tax code -- taking less in taxes to incentivize a particular action is not the same as giving away money that could be spent elsewhere (to illustrate why it isn't the same, that money is not currently available to be spent elsewhere). NYC won HQ2 originally in spite of not giving nearly as much as other jurisdictions were willing to. The polling is much higher than 56% when the question is asked generally, and the polling is highest in Queens which stood to gain the most. The city may or may not "need" 25,000 new jobs but LIC certainly "wanted" those jobs. The proposal was most popular among Black and Hispanic Queens residents and least popular among White Manhattan residents -- suggesting that those who stood to benefit from local economic activity were most excited.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#664

Post by lamarpye »

jamiek88 wrote: post #512
koheripbal wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax breaks are just a temporary discount on taxes that otherwise would be paid at all. It's not like Amazon was getting CASH to move to NYC.

That’s assuming that space would be left empty. Which in NYC is unlikely.

I guess time will tell. We can track how long it takes for another company or companies to develop the same properties. Hopefully it will be less time than the length of the tax breaks

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#665

Post by robterrell »

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.

OMG don't give basketball players this idea. Cities would totally write tax exemptions into law to land LeBron!

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#666

Post by doublescoop »

a13n wrote: post #434
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

> Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition. Unless you're Elon, then it's celebrated.

I think you're misreading Musk's reputation outside of tech circles. If they're aware of him at all, he's more or less viewed as a Bond villain at this point.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#667

Post by anth_anm »

JJMcJ wrote: post #661
bko wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

NYC is very political. Surprised AMZN had such a thin skin. And after all this, they are going to move into vacant office buildings in DC near the airport, and in Nashville.

It's not a thin skin so much as it is submitting on an ongoing narrative. They probably hoped they could do this and end up with the tax breaks, the NYC offices they want, more favorable conditions, and the public would laud them for it.

Instead they got a pretty massive backlash that adds more fuel to the already burning story about Amazon's mistreatment of workers, Amazon's 0% tax rate, Amazon lobbying defeating taxes in Seattle, etc... They have a PR problem already. They are bringing a whole lot of negative attention to themselves. They will have it worse in the future when they try to do the same sort of thing in Washington state.

They folded because staying in wasn't worth it.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#668

Post by philwelch »

i80and wrote: post #658
philwelch wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, so “animal cruelty” is Newspeak for not being vegan.

As someone who grew up on a farm: there are entirely reasonable ways to define standards of livestock welfare that don't require veganism.

This is true, but the bulk of this hyperbolic criticism comes from vegans, and they're going to use terms like "animal cruelty" no matter what livestock welfare standards you set.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#669

Post by sammycdubs »

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

It's New York City, we don't need to give the largest company in the world a huge discount to do business here. It's not like the economic development of NYC is dependent on Amazon. It's a central hub to so many industries because of its infrastructure, talent, connection to capital markets etc, not because of handing out discounts.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#670

Post by anth_anm »

stvswn wrote: post #663
mmanfrin wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

56% is not a resounding endorsement, though, especially for such a big-ticket giveaway that the city absolutely does not need.

Big ticket? Of the abatements, only $500M (the portion related to construction) wasn't available to any business that met the state's requirements. Giveaway? These are tax incentives that are part of the state's tax code -- taking less in taxes to incentivize a particular action is not the same as giving away money that could be spent elsewhere (to illustrate why it isn't the same, that money is not currently availab…

> NYC won HQ2 originally in spite of not giving nearly as much as other jurisdictions were willing to.

Because the entire "competition" was a sham. Amazon was never going to park the future of the company into a place lacking talent.

> The proposal was most popular among Black and Hispanic Queens residents and least popular among White Manhattan residents

That's a good point, but the counter is that the Black and Hispanic residents are the ones who would end up pushed out by Amazon's white and asian workers.

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