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Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

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Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#111

Post by whatok »

brown9-2 wrote: post #59
whatok wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon should not be compared to Foxconn just because they both happen to be topical. Amazon would need to hit targets to get the tax breaks. There is no way that committing fraud or completely misleading NYC would be worth the reputation hit Amazon would get all for just $3bn over ten years.

I’m not suggesting fraud, just that we should take forecasts for what they are - forecasts, not guarantees. However it seems to me that Amazon did not seem to mind taking a reputation hit with the idea of a year-long “search” and bake-off for HQ2 where the results were obviously pre-determined in advance.

Sure, forecasts are forecasts but their tax incentives are not tied to their forecasts so what's the big deal?

Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#112

Post by philipov »

rlanday wrote: post #91
oliwarner wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was bad for New York And I think that's where our disconnect here is. Most were advertising this deal at a net +$30bn revenue for the state over 10y, even after this $3bn deal. 25,000 highly-paid people brings serious money. Income tax revenue. Sales tax revenue. 25,000 property tax payments. That's before you consider auxiliary businesses you get serving a campus of 25k. What I'm not saying is that New York sho…

States already compete on the basis of tax rates. That’s a very good thing. If you don’t like paying taxes out your butthole in California or New York, you can move to Texas or Nevada. It would be awful if the federal govenement told every state they had to have the same taxes as California. California can get away with abusing its residents because it has beaches and nice weather, but not every state can do that.

Competing on tax rates that apply equally to everyone is not the same as selling exceptional treatment to the rich alone. That undermines the rule of law in favor of the rule of wealth. It is institutional bribery.

Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#113

Post by whatok »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #103

> The livability crisis that’s currently afflicting Seattle and San Francisco is evidence of how cities need to be careful what they wish for when it comes to the explosive growth of technology companies (and the attendant wealth that comes with it) in their metropolises. Let me get this straight, New Yorkers should view Seattle and SF as cautionary tales for what happens when high-paying jobs arrive in a metropolita…

New York definitely has an affordable housing issue but a vast over supply of luxury housing (a lot still going up to) that I'd imagine a good portion of these hires would be taking up.

Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#114

Post by seibelj »

Considering NYC residents were in favor of the deal over those opposed by 23% [0], the commentariat here and the press can continue their whining about how horrible 25,000 jobs are but the voters will remember. The Amazon pullout will be conflated with all the other issues in NYC (high taxes, declining quality of the subway, festering unfunded pension issues[1]) that it will be used as a cudgel for many years to come. All the politicians will now point fingers, first at Amazon but inevitably at each other.

More jobs is better than less jobs, increasing tax base is better than stagnant or declining. This is a huge failure for NYC and its tech community, and those who participate in furious intellectual masturbation on twitter don't seem to understand the real world consequences. This isn't a game, and it's extremely sad to see progress stopped for a bunch of worthless internet points.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/majority-of-new-yorkers-support...

[1] https://www.valuewalk.com/2018/01/new-report-on-new-york-cit...

Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#115

Post by oarsinsync »

whatok wrote: post #104
oarsinsync wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 25k jobs paying 150k I've seen a few people make this remark, on the assumption that every single job was going to be a high paying job. I believe this is an assumption as I don't recall seeing anything from Amazon stating that they were intending to do this either. A citation would be helpful for this position.

You've seen a few people reference this because it was in a widely circulated press release by the company itself. https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-det... Third bullet under Amazon in Long Island City in New York City: Amazon will receive performance-based direct incentives of $1.525 billion based on the company creating 25,000 jobs in Long Island City. This includes a refundable tax credit th…

Thank you!

Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#116

Post by fuzzybeard »

paulgb wrote: post #24
KevinEldon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NY made the offer to Amazon. If citizens of NY don't want their government to be able to bargain with a business or organization on an individual level then they should take that power away from government.

Something I haven't been able to find: did NYC actually withdraw anything promised for Amazon to back out, or did Amazon just get buyer's remorse after seeing the mixed reaction the city had?

I read that the unions, especialy SEIU, wanted a promise from Amazon against interfering with future potential unionization efforts. Amazon probably doesn't want a domino effect happening where their operations in NYC get unionized and then it spreads elsewhere. But these jobs were tech jobs, so I'm guessing there was also going to be a distribution center or something else that would unionize? Because the tech workers certainly wouldn't.

Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#117

Post by jnordwick »

jmngomes wrote: post #87
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #5

Agree with the article. The economists can argue all day about how the equation will work out to be a net profit to NYC regardless of subsidies, but that seems short-sighted. Every decision can not be reduced to a profit/loss question. One company should not have bargaining power over an entire city, and they certainly should not get special economic treatment over others. It points to and perpetuates an unhealthy po…

It turns out that in many cases there is no " net profit (...) regardless of subsidies" In fact, in some cases the jobs that the subsidized company 'creates' are move expensive to taxpayers (due to subsidies) than it would be to just pay the same people to not work, or work on something else that is actually productive for society at large. Here's a good analysis of the issue: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-in…

I hate the Guardian so much. Such a useless rag. The article assumes that these "costs" are giving a company a huge check, not tax deductions and the like.

Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#118

Post by eric_h »

whatok wrote: post #70
mcphage wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn’t whether Amazon should or shouldn’t be paying a Federal taxes, it’s whether—given this prior behavior—we would expect them to pay state or city taxes, instead of finding or creating a loophole to get out of them.

There are a lot of large businesses headquartered in New York. They all seem to be pretty smart. If there are widespread tax loopholes out there, others surely have taken advantage of them by now. If they had, you would see outrage articles on that as well.

Most of those large businesses didn't preface the building of their headquarters with a very public dog and pony show of shopping for tax subsidies.

Lots of shady tax related shenanigans happen in NYC, particularly in real estate development. Sometimes they get called out, and sometimes they go unnoticed for years/decades until new information draws the public eye to them.

Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#119

Post by hguant »

dashundchen wrote: post #78
brown9-2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes this whole episode so bizarre - they suddenly changed their mind on the value of having a HQ2 (and 25k jobs in a HQ) completely, after such a long and public buildup? Something is fishy here.

Yes, something strikes me as strange about the withdrawl announcment. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the incentives and subsidies were coming from the state, not the city. Cuomo and many majority Democrats in the state Senate were on board. The mayor, DeBlasio was on board. The opposition was driven locally by councilpeople and community activists. Some in state government opposed but I doubt it would have be…

It's my understanding that Amazon had a lot of difficulty working with the city's unions, owing to the latter's opposition to Amazon's anti-union stance. The unions had a lot of support from the local councilpersons and community activists you spoke of.

Right before the Amazon pull out, there were several meetings between Amazon, labour/union reps, and government officials (according to NPR). It's all a black box, but my guess is that either the unions or Amazon wanted some sort of contractual guarantee the other was unwilling to budge on, and the local governance sided with the unions.

Re: Did New York Lose Anything with Amazon’s Rejection? It’s Complicated

#120

Post by gigatexal »

mattmanser wrote: post #85
gigatexal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. The city if thought of as a business is right to offer incentives to get big employers as such employers as big and profitable as Amazon are likely to bring in even more skilled labor and high wage paying jobs. Yes this would lead to gentrification. But that is the job of the elected officials to set aside some of the projected windfalls in tax revenues for specialized housing for displaced people and for in…

It's not a business. It shouldn't operate like one. Your views seem quite old-fashioned, neoliberal, maximising shareholder value. Both concepts that are increasingly under a lot of scrutiny as they seem to have failed to deliver on any of their promises for anyone apart from the super rich.

And if those shareholders were the very citizens of the city would you still find fault with my argument? This is a representative democracy is it not? Who do the elected officials of the city represent but the people that live and work within its boundaries?

Therefore it should be thought of as a business. The city’s share holders are its inhabitants. It should run in such a way that it invests in the interests of the majority of its shareholders — its people. Courting potential companies that would bring in high wage earners will have knock on effects to the locals in the form of new commerce. It’s proven that one of the things that moves the whole demand curve to the right is an increase in population. But some of the “shareholders” are not as enfranchised as some others and this is where the city helps them cope with the new influx of capital and people. A city, run like a business, puts its people first and as such its people win. Excess revenues either get saved or distributed as a dividend aka a tax refund. Revenues aka taxes from both people and businesses pay for services that help the people. Etc etc.

I think it’s egocentric to make such a bold statement as my analogy is patently false because populism is increasing and the wealth creators are being attacked.

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