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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

#991
post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The kind of people that want to live in New York" includes Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon employees (Amazon has about 5000 employees in NYC already). There is also the financial sector with all those quants and risk managers and whatnot. I am pretty sure Amazon wants to hire people like that but convincing them to move to Nashville won't be easy.

I can't find any numbers, but for comparison, do you know how many Walmart employees live in New York?

Interesting choice for comparison given that Walmart is banned from NYC limits.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#992
I just don't understand why it's so hard to go build such a huge head quarters in a semi-big city that's close to a big one. They get all the benefits of having talent nearby, they get to use good enough infrastructure. Businesses definitely will flourish around, lots of people and companies would be moving into this city just because of the flourish

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#993
post #990

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Again, shooting oneself in the foot by losing 25K jobs won't kill New York. It just would make it a little poorer than it otherwise could be (some people a real lot poorer - talk to some RE developers that bought properly expecting Amazon to move in nearby...) New York doesn't need HQ2, it doesn't need any one particular development at all. But if it starts approaching all of them with this attitude, it gradually wil…

Amazon’s loss is another company’s gain. There will be more deals and more jobs, you’re acting like this is a recoverable loss when this is not a loss at all but an opportunity for someone else to fill the void, without drastic tax breaks.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#994
post #731
post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other businesses can move into those spaces and will end up paying more in taxes. Property values will go up slower. Having one company move in sounds great but diversity might be a better longterm strategy.

> Other businesses can move into those spaces and will end up paying more in taxes The first is likely, the second is very unlikely. For the simple reason that Amazon would not plan such project in a market that is so hot that is able to generate tax income at the same rate as concentrated investment project of the Amazon HQ size. Surely, it won't turn into a barren wasteland, but I would not expect it to produce mor…

Time will tell.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#995
post #970

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exec…

The "regular joe in Queens" may not get the SWE job in Amazon, but they most certainly can understand that with 25,000 well paid workers comes lots of other economic activity. Do you think that retail owners, restaurant owners, construction workers, etc. etc. etc. are too stupid to understand that they're not going to get hired as a UX designer? Maybe the people who run coffee and catering businesses would LOVE to se…

Amazon treats even highly-paid workers poorly. It’s a grinder from the warehouse to the boardroom. As for local businesses, do you think Amazon will hire some local catering company? They own Whole Foods. Go visit the campus in Seattle. Amazon has its own bars, restaurants, stores, etc. Their entire business model is undercutting and assimilating small business owners on terms that only get worse.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#996
post #919

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't make that much money. their profit margins suck.

10.07 B net income in 2018 [1] is not my idea of "[not] mak[ing] that much money" [1]: https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/amzn/financials

Which is precisely why I included the word "margin"

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#997

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why did NYC bother to compete for HQ2?

We shouldn't have. That's why I'm not bothered to see Amazon pulling out. This is New York City. There will be other businesses—ones that don't need to be lured by special deals.

Turns out there were no special deals from NYC. All Amazon got in terms of tax rebates was standard stuff, available to anyone. It was big for Amazon because the headcount was big.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/business/economy/amazon-h...

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#998
In 2016, I relocated from Silicon Valley to southern Rhode Island to build and reside in a new custom home. Over the next two years, I probably injected up to $1M into the local economy. I didn't expect or receive any special treatment from the local government. I didn't go to local officials and threaten to relocate elsewhere unless they gave me incentives, tax breaks, concessions, enticements, zoning variances, etc.

In my opinion, the type of special treatment that New York offered Amazon is fundamentally anti-democratic and just plain wrong.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#999

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assessed property tax values of the property. What does that have to do with the actual amount paid? Tax breaks for an entity don't apply to the assessed value of property owned by them...

Every taxing district I have looked up property in shows the actual amount billed. They always show all applicable credits the property or its owner qualify for. I haven't tried to look up NYS records, but I don't think it's any different.

But again, what portion of the taxes in question are actually property taxes. I pay lots of business taxes and my business owns no property.

You are saying if I bought a piece of property and paid property taxes on it, that all of my business taxes would suddenly show up in the property tax records?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#1000

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you came in and bought something at a discount and then took way more than you payed for... That's more like what they were going to do.

How is Amazon taking more than what they paid for? Think of a building with apartments for rent. Half the apartments are empty and the building is falling apart because the rent doesn't cover repairs. The building manager offers new renters 20% off for a year. The existing renters protest and the new renters back out. You don't suddenly end up with more money to cover repairs.

No one is saying that money is being produced out of thin air.

Think of it this way. Walmart doesn't pay some of their employees enough to survive, so those employees get food stamps. Walmart makes enough profits to pay those people the equivalent value in food stamps, but they don't. It can be said that the government is giving Walmart some amount of money because Walmart's profits are higher because of the food stamp expenditure.

The federal government is not sending money to Walmart via a bank transfer, but there is an exchange of money taking place.

Now think about this in terms of city services. Twenty five thousand employees would not pay enough taxes to make up for what they use in city services combined with what the organization uses. Certainly not 3 billion dollars worth. In that sense, the 3 billion dollars could be seen as NY basically paying Amazon to give 25K professional class people jobs. There are other social side effects that are hard to assign a dollar value to.

Does that make more sense? No one is saying that money would come from no where. It helps if you assume for a moment that your ideological opponents are actually smart people who aren't just deluded, but that they have an interest that is actually in opposition to "your side".

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