781–790 of 1001 posts
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how many thousands of businesses will have to move there to make up for the taxable revenue that an amazon HQ would register?
Probably zero; NYC is very good about generating its own businesses from the population. It's a big city with a pile of opportunity.
As someone who lived in NYC for 5 years, I can't understand how anyone can not consider this a loss to NYC. Don't get me wrong I hate corporate welfare as much as anyone else and I have no desire to work for Amazon because it seems like a corporate sweatshop, but 25k jobs at an average $100k+ salary would've been a boon to the city, even despite the $3 billion in tax subsidies. The additional revenue for workers and…
> The subway for people commuting into LIC for work is probably currently fairly empty, so the subway could accommodate them. (The same cannot be said of the reverse. Commuting from Astoria, Queens or Williamsburg, Brooklyn into Manhattan for work during rush hour is horrible). I lived in Greenpoint and Sunnyside for 3 years ~5 years ago and either took a train from LIC into the city or through LIC. They were always…
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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.
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Do you think there are 25,000 high skilled workers in new york sitting around waiting for Amazon to show up? No, those workers are in high demand. So the only option is too pull from outside the region further driving up the cost of housing. Its pure numbers. What about the low skill jobs? Amazon doesn't employ cleaners and other low skill workers. They contract those jobs out, so the low skill employees see no benef…
Literally tens of thousands of students graduate each year from NYU (16K alone) and other colleges in the area. You're right that skilled workers don't sit around waiting for jobs to show up. They'll go to where the jobs are, which for tech still largely means the West Coast. And I say that as a NYC resident and tech entrepreneur. The tech scene in NY is weak, and non-existent across the river in LIC. Having an Amazo…
As someone who lived in NYC for 5 years, I can't understand how anyone can not consider this a loss to NYC. Don't get me wrong I hate corporate welfare as much as anyone else and I have no desire to work for Amazon because it seems like a corporate sweatshop, but 25k jobs at an average $100k+ salary would've been a boon to the city, even despite the $3 billion in tax subsidies. The additional revenue for workers and…
I'd say the MTA's problems around poor oversight wouldn't be magically solved by NYC taking control. For example, NYCHA was under NYC control. Sure, over the years the Federal Government has diminished funding from their side -- but that should not overshadow the contractor and union corruption that NYCHA, whose head was controlled by the City, suffered with. You don't need to re-read the headlines about the falsified lead inspections, but I probably do need to remind you that in the last couple of scandals (one involving orgies and parties in a South Bronx project, as well as clocking overtime while not being there), not a SINGLE person got fired, thanks to union protection. Rumors are an elevator repairman position pays 300K. Until recently, NO repairs were done anywhere after 4pm due to union agreements. Finally, the City is the worst landlord - racking up violations more than any private landlord could, in the worst sort of hypocritical irony. So no, I don't think so.
NYCHA was found at fault recently in a Federal lawsuit, where HUD almost took the whole thing over. You can't blame the Federal Government for that.
You probably don't want to know that all the green scaffolding that lasts years is being rented -- the money going to a private contractor. You can look this up and do the math, it's just another example of incompetence.
Next, the City is already making MTA's life harder financially, and here are two recent examples. One is, the Mayor came out against banning food on the subway because it supposedly disproportionally affects the poor. Yet, trash fires from stuff like food containers account for a sizeable fraction of the delays. Here's another. The DA stopped prosecuting subway turnstile jumping, which costs 80M a year from lost subway fares and something like 120m from lost bus fares. And prosecuting this would be racist, we're told.
Finally property taxes go up 20% a year -- at least mine do, because that's the max allowed by NY State. If NYC were running its own affairs, I can't even imagine what would happen.
They failed to implement a wider congestion charge, like they do in London and many other places, because, ahem, it, according to the Mayor, affects the poor (he said this). So now we applied a congestion charge to taxis and Ubers/Lyfts/for-hires, because the drivers are rich, right?
I could go on. Finally I'll leave you with, have a look at how many new City jobs opened up and new agencies opened up in 2018. Do you really think the City can be trusted fully owning its budget?
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What is the point of this comment? It combines some smug self-satisfaction about "Your New York" with your ridiculously insulated anecdata about the first month discount many apartments give. A 5 second Google search shows hundreds of results for 1 month free rent in apartment listings. What exactly are you contributing to the discussion?
@andosteinmetz I'll offer anecdata also as a born-and-raised New Yorker (FYI - I finally moved out because the job market did not support the living costs given personal constraints.) NY is a shell of what it was in 2005/2006. Yes, there are more tech firms, but the 500,000 or so jobs lost after the financial collapse in 2008 have not been made up for. I welcome Amazon bringing in well-paid positions, because as a Ne…
However, I think we can do better than giving massive tax breaks to megacorporations with bad records on labor relations and what has seemed to be an adversarial relationship to government and public services. I have no interest in seeing a replay of what’s happened to SF in NYC.
I think it’s important for cities to stand up for the interests of all their citizens, not just software developers and product managers (etc) in negotiations with increasingly powerful tech companies.
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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
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Do you think there are 25,000 high skilled workers in new york sitting around waiting for Amazon to show up? No, those workers are in high demand. So the only option is too pull from outside the region further driving up the cost of housing. Its pure numbers. What about the low skill jobs? Amazon doesn't employ cleaners and other low skill workers. They contract those jobs out, so the low skill employees see no benef…
Literally tens of thousands of students graduate each year from NYU (16K alone) and other colleges in the area. You're right that skilled workers don't sit around waiting for jobs to show up. They'll go to where the jobs are, which for tech still largely means the West Coast. And I say that as a NYC resident and tech entrepreneur. The tech scene in NY is weak, and non-existent across the river in LIC. Having an Amazo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally tens of thousands of students graduate each year from NYU (16K alone) and other colleges in the area. You're right that skilled workers don't sit around waiting for jobs to show up. They'll go to where the jobs are, which for tech still largely means the West Coast. And I say that as a NYC resident and tech entrepreneur. The tech scene in NY is weak, and non-existent across the river in LIC. Having an Amazo…
As someone who worked as a software engineer in NYC for 6 years ~5 years ago, I couldn't disagree more strongly with your claim that the tech scene in NY is weak. It's second only to Silicon Valley when it comes to tech jobs.
The NY metropolitan area is ~20M people, but it's clearly much weaker when it comes to tech than the bay area at only ~7M people (I'd say, a magnitude less in number of tech startups alone), and somewhat stronger than the Boston metro area at 4M but not significantly so. Having lived in all three (and now living in Manhattan for 4 years), I don't think for example there is significantly more tech meetups (maybe even less?) or startups (definitely numerically more, but not of better quality) than in Boston, while by numbers alone it should be a whole magnitude greater.
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That's a fair criticism, and I regret my tone and making the discussion personal. But as a life-long New Yorker, I do feel a personal stake in all this. I believe OP is right that the month's free rent offered on an apartment is recouped by the landlord: in the form higher rents, which have become a real problem for many people born and raised in the city and which would likely only be exacerbated by Amazon's setting…
I agree with you. Just in the last five years of living in Williamsburg I've seen the neighborhood change a lot. I remember that local pharmacy you are referring to before it got turned into an Apple store, and before the Whole Foods got built on the same block. I'm not gonna lie, I'm part of the gentrification problem over the last five years, but to be fair New York gentrified me at the same time that I helped gent…
You should also recognize that many people would be actively harmed by it, not just "not benefiting as much as others".
Whether the benefits outweigh the harm is a question I can't answer, but even if they do, it's still true that people are hurt.
None of these issues are easy or clear.