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Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

amazon.com

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Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#184

The RFP is rather more interesting than the marketing page: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/Anything... The 2nd criterion is basically the total amount of sweet, sweet taxpayer dollars available to subsidize them: Please provide a summary of total incentives offered for the Project by the state/province and local community. In this summary, please provide a brief description of the incentive item,…

Amazon was built upon the competitive edge of pricing devoid of state and local sales tax. Now it is soliciting tax breaks from state and local governments.

That's not quite true. Washington state (where Seattle is) has no state income tax. The sales tax rate, however, is a whopping 9.5%. As a mail order/online retailer, Amazon only had to charge sales tax on in-state purchases. Washington state's low population made it more favourable relative to California with a much less worse tax structure, and Texas and Florida which also have no state income tax and the population centers necessary to support a growing business. Of course, I'm sure Microsoft's established engineering talent pool helped too.

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#188

CEOs always locate headquarters were they want to live.

Gates moved Microsoft back to Washington, his childhood home. Does Bezos open an office in Miami?

This year's hurricane season will give people second thoughts about Miami.

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#189
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The desire to attract tech employers like Amazon appears to be more competitive than winning the bid to host the Olympic Games. And for good reason! There aren't many companies that people would be willing to move across the US to join. People tend not to move around too much after University of their first job. Having another magnet to bring in people for relatively little (compared to a university's for example) i…

Based on how many have moved to Seattle Amazon is one of them though.

How much of that is hiring straight out of University? I would wager that Amazon has the largest tech internship program in North America.

Re: Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America

#190

You have to consider that this may be a political move by Bezos. The term "anti-trust" has been brought up a lot lately in regards to 'Big Tech.' If Amazon becomes a big employer in a lot of low population states, it would effectively be buying itself those states's Senators and creating an 'Amazon Industrial Complex.' On the other hand, Bezos might want to just move the margins and try to make a purple state blue. F…

It's plausible. One of the things that protected Walmart for the last 25 years, was its high distribution among red states and mid to low population areas (blue cities have notoriously disliked Walmart and worked to keep them out). They overwhelmingly sought to appeal to the lower to middle classes in terms of their customer demographics and still have wide support there politically.

Have to agree that Amazon will go for either the mid-west or east coast as the hub. It's the logical political choice, to re-balance itself away from the west coast as a center. To compete with Walmart & big retail politically, it'll need far greater physical representation within states.

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