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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

#821

Post by mobilefriendly »

reallydude wrote: post #608
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.

> Migration is the other way round Migration meaning what? Immigration within the US? That's been a hot button topic since the first Bush nationally, and has been the source of propositions in California since the my first memories of the early 80s. Interestingly, the more the internet was adopted, the more high profile the immigration debate became, nationally. Clinton talked quite a bit (even after his presidency),…

Almost everything in your comment is factually wrong.

Reagan passed landmark immigration liberalization in 1986.

Clinton was an immigration hawk.

https://hackinglawpractice.com/blog/20-year-law-signed-conti...

GWB fought hard against his own party for immigration reform and liberalization.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/senate-ki...

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#822

Post by Declanomous »

samstave wrote: post #758
pradn wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LeBron's show raised like $6 million for various charities, so that's commendable.

I am of the opinion that any and all "Foundations" should be required to put their financials into a common splunk log repo with NLP search tools made available to anyone.

Meaning donations, who gave them, etc?

I'm a nonprofit fundraising professional, and I could probably talk about all the reasons why that is a horrible idea for 2-3 hours straight without repeating myself. I mean, at the very least, it's a bad idea for the same reason that exposing all the financials of every individual, or all other organizations, with the added benefit that you'd be opening people up to harassment for supporting certain social causes or belonging to certain religious groups. You might as well start a government mailing list called "hate crime targets."

If you think there are a lot of non-charitable transactions occurring using charities as a front, it would be a way better idea to just have the IRS audit more 501c3 orgs.

If you are trying to decrease fraud, it would almost certainly make more sense to audit wealthy individuals and for-profit corporations far more often.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#823

Post by nihonde »

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…

Of all the crummy talking points defending Amazon in this situation, the most odious is the idea that regular working New Yorkers lost an opportunity to get good jobs and upgrade their livelihoods. Amazon has an established record of being terrible to its workforce, and any fool knows that the workers in Amazon HQ2 aren’t going to be regular joes in Queens. At best, ordinary New Yorkers had a shot at serving HQ2 executives their coffee or delivering their food. Even then, their rents would be spiking due to gentrification and their businesses would be threatened by Amazon’s unique flair for vertical integration. And don’t even start with the tax-positive arguments. Amazon doesn’t pay taxes. Have a look at their federal returns.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#824

Post by Declanomous »

ceejayoz wrote: post #671
mayukh wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, what kind of data would these public entities have that Amazon wouldn't already ?

Look at page 7 of the RFP: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/Anything... A good portion of all of that is stuff Amazon could compile, but they got cities across the country to donate probably tens of thousands of hours of taxpayer salaries to do it instead. The nature of special incentives each proposal offered - custom ones for Amazon-only, or unusual ones - will also have told them which cities th…

That article misrepresents what the Illinois tax credit is. It only applies to the portion of the income tax that the employer pays.

Basically the state law allows employers who create new jobs to not have to pay their portion of the employment tax for a few years, and that tax credit applies to every company.

I'm pretty happy with the way Illinois and Chicago played their cards with Amazon, we were basically like "We've got a lot of great shit, and if you come here you can take advantage of this tax credit." We didn't offer Amazon any special treatment.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#825

Post by rsj_hn »

wnevets wrote: post #690
TulliusCicero wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason you get superstar hubs, instead of companies and employees equalizing to somewhere else as soon as one metro gets a bit more expensive. Network/ecosystem effects are a real thing. Google already has some dev offices in cheaper areas, like Pittsburgh, where office space is cheaper and the salaries they pay slightly lower. And yet, they still choose to double their headcount in NYC. Just saying, "well…

> Google already has some dev offices in cheaper areas, like Pittsburgh, where office space is cheaper and the salaries they pay slightly lower. And yet, they still choose to double their headcount in NYC. Location, Location, Location. Yes it's cheaper to live and run a business in Kansas but then you're in Kansas.

I don't want to tell you what the right trade offs are between, say, living in Phoenix or Dallas or Charleston and living in NY or SF.

But at some point people want to start families and buy a house and that starts to take precedence over being in a cool area. The only issue is jobs -- can they work remote, can they find a local employer, can they work for themselves?

So there is a huge demand for higher paying jobs in lower cost areas compared to the demand for higher paying jobs in higher cost areas. You personally may think it unbearable to live in Scottsdale, AZ or Minneapolis, MN, but most people find it pleasant enough and will pull the trigger as soon as they can find a job that pays even 2/3 of what they are earning in SF or NY.

Another data point is the taxes.

This might be also interesting (pdf warning): https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2019-0...

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#826

Post by nihonde »

smsm42 wrote: post #719
sammycdubs wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> we don't need to give the largest company in the world a huge discount to do business here Looks like you do, because now we have - no discount, no business. > It's not like the economic development of NYC is dependent on Amazon Of course, losing several billions of added value and 25K jobs won't kill the economy of the size of New York. Just as shooting oneself in the foot won't kill most healthy people. But keep…

NYC generates about 10% of US GDP, already houses Amazon, Google, and every other global player. We have our fingers in everything already. We don’t need to play this kind of needy urban development three-card monty nonsense to continue kicking ass economically all day and night long.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#827

Post by r_smart »

JohnFen wrote: post #796
r_smart wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically standard practice for any business to negotiate tax breaks for building in one place rather than another. I'm not going to spend any real amount of time tracking down theoretically publicly available documents on these deals. Sure the records exist, but I have no knowledge of a database I can search, and I'm not putting in a FOIA request. Here's an article discussing the topic at large[0] (and Google i…

> It's basically standard practice for any business to negotiate tax breaks for building in one place rather than another. Yes, this is common. But just because it's common doesn't mean it's right or should be allowed.

Please point to where I said anything about right or allowed.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#829

Post by reallydude »

mobilefriendly wrote: post #821
reallydude wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Migration is the other way round Migration meaning what? Immigration within the US? That's been a hot button topic since the first Bush nationally, and has been the source of propositions in California since the my first memories of the early 80s. Interestingly, the more the internet was adopted, the more high profile the immigration debate became, nationally. Clinton talked quite a bit (even after his presidency),…

Almost everything in your comment is factually wrong. Reagan passed landmark immigration liberalization in 1986. Clinton was an immigration hawk. https://hackinglawpractice.com/blog/20-year-law-signed-conti... GWB fought hard against his own party for immigration reform and liberalization. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration/senate-ki...

> Almost everything in your comment is factually wrong

That is, in itself, incorrect.

> Reagan passed landmark immigration liberalization in 1986

Yes, bringing it to the forefront, but without a way to communicate effectively, the party in power passed landmark legislation without a national consensus. Most people were unaware, until it passed and had no recourse after.

> Clinton was an immigration hawk.

I'm not sure what you believe, but that's incorrect, imo. He gave strong lip service in "securing borders" but was instrumental in toothless legislation that paved the way for the current passive acceptance alongside the tripling (ish) of the illegal immigration. The insistence that legal immigration continued to outpace illegal immigration year-over-year before and after his presidency is classic Clinton doublespeak meant to push an agenda by interpretation, which he maintained after his presidency. See his last John Stewart Daily Show appearance. Winners write the stories, so this will likely just be forgotten by the future.

> 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.

GWB's reforms were not well supported, so the initial point I made stands, regardless of what was reported. The idea that GWB was doing anything but appealing to a wider base. What he did, was speed up deportations (ending catch and release) and stopped talking about it after his election. So you can interpret that how you will, but it certainly wasn't "fighting hard".

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#830

Post by thelasthuman »

ceejayoz wrote: post #671
mayukh wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, what kind of data would these public entities have that Amazon wouldn't already ?

Look at page 7 of the RFP: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/Anything... A good portion of all of that is stuff Amazon could compile, but they got cities across the country to donate probably tens of thousands of hours of taxpayer salaries to do it instead. The nature of special incentives each proposal offered - custom ones for Amazon-only, or unusual ones - will also have told them which cities th…

> > The most jarring incentive reportedly comes out of Chicago, which, under state law, could redirect between 50 and 100 percent of the income taxes incurred by Amazon employees right back to Amazon

Stealing the worker's surplus labor value isn't enough?

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