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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

#141

Post by rlanday »

philipov wrote: post #112
rlanday wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the tax breaks Amazon was going to get are, in fact, offered to all businesses. The reporting on this has been absolutely awful (as most journalism is).

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

#142

Post by whyisthewhat »

Spooky23 wrote: post #10
nkozyra wrote: post #2

I know in the technical sense, calling it Amazons rejection is accurate, but in reality this was a power play of a different kind from the people of the city. While I've not found a consistent stance among people I talked to almost everyone found it at least troubling how Amazon could wield this kind of power. The people who opposed it were vocal and diligent. I'd argue NYC rejected Amazon. More importantly, while ci…

This whole thing seems fishy to me. The Governor of NY and Mayor of NYC were in alignment (highly unusual) and are profoundly powerful people. Amazon doesn’t typically give a hoot about activist opinion. And honestly, the professional activists in NY give zero shits about Queens and would have been bought off with something else. This was a thing that was going to happen.

Who are these “professional activists who don’t give a shit about Queens”? The two most vocal opponents of the deal were a state senator and a congresswoman who represent Queens.

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

#143

Post by madcowherd »

kec wrote: post #132
nihonde wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people misunderstood that the $3B was a credit, not real cash being gifted to Amazon. But even among people who understand the nature of a tax credit, we felt that NYC should not forego revenue that another company would have to pay. In other words, the city has enough bargaining power to collect all the taxes that it would be owed. Amazon can flounce and run off to Virginia or Nashville or wherever, but NYC wil…

How can the Bay Area have less than 1/8th the GDP of NYC when Apple’s revenue alone (~300B) is over 1/3rd of NYC’s GDP (~800B per Wikipedia)?

Is that 300B Apple's global revenue? If so, I'd imagine there's your answer. Prior Apple fancy accounting tricks had all revenue funneled through the friendliest tax haven until they got called on it.

I'd imagine though, only US revenue gets claimed in CA.

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

#144

Post by dingaling »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #105
dingaling wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't hate the player, hate the game Without the players, the game ends. Amazon can afford to pay its own costs many times over. Many SMEs cannot. I'd have had a lot of respect for Amazon had they just chosen a site on logistical criteria and built it out of pocket. Instead, I despise them even more than before.

> I'd have had a lot of respect for Amazon had they just chosen a site on logistical criteria and built it out of pocket. Amazon is a publicly traded company. Like every company, the point of the business is to generate profit. This means reducing overhead costs in order to do so. Sure, they could do it out of pocket, but why do that when NY was offering standard business incentives to bring them there? Why cost your…

Amazon doesn't pay dividends, so the magnitude of profit has no direct relevance to shareholders.

So if it won't harm the shareholders ( most of whom are secondary-market holders and thus not investors ) why not what is morally right versus technically right?

Isn't that what we ask engineers to consider before working for ad networks, for example? Why does that not scale to companies?

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

#145

Post by whatok »

mcphage wrote: post #135
whatok wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Given the response to Amazon doing so is "how dare you complain about Amazon using these loopholes, it's their fiduciary duty to bilk the government out of all the money it can", I don't think there would be widespread publicity to other companies using loo…

I'm not trying to shut anyone up. Please don't be rude. I'm wondering why all the blame is directed at Amazon when they sought to take advantage of (mostly) pre-existing programs. If the problem people have is with tax subsidies in general then isn't the government the real issue here?

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

#146

Post by whynyc »

matt4077 wrote: post #12

This really isn’t about New York. The problem is the race-to-the-bottom communities engage in when heaping tax subsidies on companies that would create jobs no matter what. For public finance, it is one of the purest examples of a prisoner’s dilemma one could think of. And just as in that thought experiment, it is entirely obvious how to get to an outcome that is better for everyone: cooperation. Other economies have…

And just as in that thought experiment, it is entirely obvious how to get to an outcome that is better for everyone: cooperation.

Ya its called being a cartel. 1000+ members cartel (city/state/national govts) is just extremely unstable and short lived. Think Amazon HQ2, Brexit and others as trust busting done by free market. The Cooperation is not going to work.

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

#147

Post by scarejunba »

mcphage wrote: post #61
whatok wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really sad that this point has been lost in all of this. Somehow existing programs got spun into the city/state hand delivering a $3bn check to Bezos. Really sad.

Because if not for Bezos, those funds would have gone to other companies—some of which might have actually needed them, and weren’t just using their clout to try and get free cash while floating on billions in profit.

The funds don’t exist. They aren’t going anywhere because NYC now has less money than before not more.

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

#148

Post by SneakyMission »

tfehring wrote: post #138
whatok wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In what sense is there an oversupply of luxury housing? Are there lots of vacant luxury units?

> In what sense is there an oversupply of luxury housing? Are there lots of vacant luxury units?

Short answer, yes. If you're interested in detailed information about NYC housing, I definitely recommend checking out the Housing and Vacancy survey data (https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/hpd/downloads/pdf/about/2017-hvs...)

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

#149

Post by cowmoo728 »

tfehring wrote: post #138
whatok wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In what sense is there an oversupply of luxury housing? Are there lots of vacant luxury units?

The number of vacant apartments and the number of apartments listed for sale/rent are both at an all time high. Despite this, most new construction is priced at the high end of the market. In addition, there's been a big boom in ultra-high-end multimillion dollar apartments.

https://www.6sqft.com/nearly-250000-nyc-rental-apartments-si...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/realestate/brooklyn-devel...

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

#150

Post by downandout »

minikites wrote: post #102
downandout wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment, along with the tweet you linked to and all other tweets like it, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the deal, resulting from a gross oversimplification of it. New York was never “giving” Amazon even $1. They were simply going to give Amazon a tax discount for a limited period of time, and the estimate was that the tax savings would have been about $3 billion over 10 years. This money is not sitt…

It's interesting that you use retail coupons as an analogy. Are you familiar with the idea of a loss leader? What happens if that revenue isn't earned elsewhere? It's not at all clear that New York would come out ahead on this deal, given the infrastructure costs and Amazon's well known tendency to avoid paying taxes.

I am familiar with the concept of a loss leader, but that has nothing to do with what was happening here. Giving someone a discount on taxes doesn’t mean they don’t pay taxes, or, as your original comment and the tweet you linked to implied, that they were simply handing Amazon $3 billion in cash that was sitting in the bank and can now be diverted to random government projects designed to invent jobs. The $3 billion never existed; it was a long-term estimate of Amazon’s potential tax savings under the deal.

Anyway, it’s a moot point. They aren’t going there, and either are the jobs and (discounted) tax revenue that they would have brought with them. If you consider that a win, then you have indeed “won”.

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