Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#191

Post by blacksqr » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 6:15 AM UTC

asabjorn wrote: post #187

blacksqr wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not trying to make a moral argument, but an observation that many seem ready to believe any statement by the powerful no matter how dodgy, while the powerless are assiduously made invisible.

I don't see how the people that dictated terms to the point where the project was unprofitable is powerless. I also question if the people fighting for this outcome are the same low income residents affected, because I have a hard time believing actual low income residents in line for the units would prefer an outcome where no units gets build in order to make a moral point. Why is it morally good to make an idealist…

OP told an unsourced story about a supposed SF housing project cancelled because of supposed demands for low-income units. You appear to have uncritically accepted this story as true, to the point where you are ranting about the injustice and immorality of those pesky poor people demanding an affordable place to live. You are demonstrating my observation that many people are inclined to accept the viewpoints and arguments of the rich and powerful without question or examination.

Even if such a development existed, I would not take the word of the builders that it was annoying poor people that doomed it, without taking a closer look all the things that can cause such a project to fail, including the competing actions of other greedy rich people.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#192

Post by droithomme » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 6:23 AM UTC

49531 wrote: post #165

lamarpye wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thought; do you want to rely on the goodwill of people you don't know, that live hundreds or thousands of miles away, to get up at 4am to farm and create food (a basic human need) for you? Or do you want to rely on the profit motive? If not, why?

Life is a bit more nuanced than profit-motive vs charity. I'd guess most of the folks on HN work for a salary at a company. There isn't a ton of "profit-motive" in the work. You don't necessarily get more money if you do a better job. At least not reliably (it's up to the discretion of the company usually). So if a lot of people are willing to do work for a salary, why wouldn't a farmer or landlord be willing to do w…

> Why does a farmer need a profit motive?

Lets assume farmer refers not to a slave fieldhand working for a corporation but to an independent farmer who actually owns his own land on a critically endangered economic entity known as a "family farm".

Many family farms still left in the US at least are not profitable. They exist because their owners (foolishly?) are holding on to a dream of a farming lifestyle. The salaries are subsidized by federal price supports and things like family members working day jobs.

Farming that works economically is farms owned by large multinational corporations which employ slave labor.

The family farms owned by individuals who are doing things for a love of farming are on their last legs. Few left. Soon it will be none. Then it will be the corporate owned ones only.

This will be celebrated by those who have spent the last decades incessantly demeaning and insulting the small family farmers, claiming that they are vile despicable capitalists living on the labor of the common man. These anti-family farm advocates push society towards the inevitability of corporate dominance of all farming and its necessary reliance on slave labor.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#193

Post by sitkack » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 6:56 AM UTC

ghufran_syed wrote: post #181

sitkack wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything amazon loses they lose on purpose. Most of us don’t have the opp to structure our tax liability like this. We are pawns to lose in a game between Alpha Go and the IRS.

Amazon makes money: I suspect you would say "they make too much money!" Amazon loses money: you say "they lose on purpose!" What position would you be happy with? Your position reminds me of arguments I used to have with religious zealots in my family - when people have a religious or moral objection to something (large businesses in this case), then whatever the offending party does is 'sinful' in some way and must…

The fact that my argument reminds you of something doesn’t make the analogy true. But I appreciate the rhetorical device of calling me a religious zealot. Well done!

Amazon is wildly profitable, if they ever have a loss, it is manufactured. An accounting trick. When they start having real unavoidable losses, we can talk again.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#194

Post by asabjorn » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 7:40 AM UTC

blacksqr wrote: post #191

asabjorn wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the people that dictated terms to the point where the project was unprofitable is powerless. I also question if the people fighting for this outcome are the same low income residents affected, because I have a hard time believing actual low income residents in line for the units would prefer an outcome where no units gets build in order to make a moral point. Why is it morally good to make an idealist…

OP told an unsourced story about a supposed SF housing project cancelled because of supposed demands for low-income units. You appear to have uncritically accepted this story as true, to the point where you are ranting about the injustice and immorality of those pesky poor people demanding an affordable place to live. You are demonstrating my observation that many people are inclined to accept the viewpoints and argu…

I’ve seen this happen countless times in SF. It is a pattern to do this here. It is unproductive and hurts everyone except those owning existing housing due to increasing prices caused by artificially restricted supply.

Win-win scenarios are possible more often than one might think.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#195

Post by bobthepanda » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 8:20 AM UTC

asabjorn wrote: post #189

bobthepanda wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and a tax base necessary to invest in Queens that has received very little investment in decades. In what alternate universe is this? Queens is hardly Camden or Detroit. The neighborhood in question has 40+ story office and residential towers sprouting up like weeds. Queens is at a record low employment rate ever since this started getting tracked at the county level: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYQUEE1URN .…

This is about diversifying the economy away from real estate and wall street. It is also about bringing high-paying jobs to Queens, and encourage the kind of investment that brings. From what I understand developers started building in anticipation of Amazon coming there, and that investment is now in question.

The area has been built up with skyscrapers over the past decade, well before HQ2 had even been announced. Development in New York is not so quick that you could shovel a project through in the four months after the announcement.

New York's economy is plenty diverse. There's real estate and Wall Street, sure, but there's also legal services, advertising, media, health, education (NYC has the largest student population in the country), hospitality, tourism, etc. This is no one company town like Gary.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#196

Post by jayventura » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 8:23 AM UTC

Interestingly, although 70% of New Yorkers felt positively about the Amazon HQ2, I wonder what that percentage looks like for the actual current inhabitants of LIC. For many of the folks I know who rent in Queens, they were very much against the HQ2 and fearful of how it may affect their ability to afford living in Queens. Additionally, many New Yorkers I know who are around my age were very much against HQ2 because we felt that it was already so incredibly hard to even think about owning property in NYC, and that this was just one more notch that would make us feel like the possibility was slipping away. Not everyone works in tech/finance/RE and enjoys the salaries in those industries. Another common fear was how will this affect the subway system?

For many of the people I know who were against HQ2, it wasn't about the tax relief. It was about the feeling that the most valuable corporation in the world was going to move a lot more money into the city, and make it a lot harder for folks not in the industry to live.

A lot of these concerns where not addressed. It was always about jobs, jobs, jobs. And if they were addressed, it was not communicated effectively.

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#197

Post by afiori » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #162

icelancer wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it morally better to get 100% of nothing than to participate in a project with incentives that give you 9 times return plus create 24-40k jobs? Because people who rail against deals like this take zero responsibility for any of the consequences. It's all of the fun moral policing and none of the downside. It's great to be an activist.

In fairness, the real reason, at least in NYC... is that they never end up in a situation where they get 100% of nothing. Google and Amazon have thousands of jobs in NYC, and they will move thousand more there in the future. For these people in NYC, they don't know the consequences of not having loads of places to work. For them, it really is a situation of "Heads we win! Tails we win slightly less!".

Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#198

Post by afiori » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

ec109685 wrote: post #166

asabjorn wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are addressing the quote: > You don't need to be the State's Budget Director to know that a nine to one return on your investment is a winner. I think you are here making a moral argument of sorts. Why is it morally better to get 100% of nothing than to participate in a project with incentives that give you 9 times return plus create 24-40k jobs? I simply don't see a viable argument that this was morally right, a…

Amazon jobs aren’t unionized, nor secure.

it was required as part of the grant

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#199

Post by afiori » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

Redoubts wrote: post #124

graeme wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If google creates jobs in long island city, they would get the same handout though. Any company locating there does: it's a program NY state and NYC made to encourage development outside of Manhattan.

So what was the deal Amazon negotiated, and why does the public opinion matter on what ultimately is just a land purchase?

as far as i understand, amazon negotiated with other cities to see if they could get a better deal than with new york

Re: Open Letter from New York State Budget Director Robert Mujica Regarding Amazon

#200

Post by speedplane » Sun, Feb 24, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

afiori wrote: post #197

bilbo0s wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, the real reason, at least in NYC... is that they never end up in a situation where they get 100% of nothing. Google and Amazon have thousands of jobs in NYC, and they will move thousand more there in the future. For these people in NYC, they don't know the consequences of not having loads of places to work. For them, it really is a situation of "Heads we win! Tails we win slightly less!".

Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief

> Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief

The problem of the deal wasn't the mechanics, it was how it was sold to the public. A competition putting cities against cities, negotiated without any public input, a large tax break to one of the richest companies in the world, choosing already popular cities rather than really investing in a newer one. Amazon could have definitely closed this deal if they pitched it properly.