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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

#261

Post by skh »

zdragnar wrote: post #215
djsumdog wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There 2014 Princeton study that showed only the top 10% of income earners political opinions are reflected in the political leanings of the elected representatives in the US. I did a short video on this: https://youtu.be/sD8KtaNzI8o

I saw somewhere that the turnout for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's election was somewhere around 4%. The voter turnout for most American elections is really quite low, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were distinct differences in turnout between income percentiles. Perhaps that might go some way towards explaining it. Edit: I did a bit of research below, and 4% definitely does not seem accurate. I have no idea where…

Provided she's not lying it's hard to imagine that 4% number being believable. I don't think a House election ever had this low of a turnout.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkuxZsylioX/

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#262

Post by badfrog »

NathanKP wrote: post #63
taude wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interesting to know how many employees Amazon currently has in NY. I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's already in the thousands.

It is in the Amazon statement: "There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams." Disclaimer, I'm one of those 5k. Currently I work from home 99% of the time because the office spaces Amazon has in NY aren't fantastic. It would have been nice to have a new headquarters building, but I'll still be enjoying working from home now I gu…

> There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island

How many of those are working in tech? When I interviewed at Amazon NYC in 2016, I think there were only around 100 software engineers there. Has it grown a lot since then?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#263

Post by JohnFen »

jhall1468 wrote: post #210
function_seven wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While parent (and others) may be attempting to revise history, I think this outcome is probably for the best. Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack. Real growth brings with it real increases in public funding, that can be used to fund real increases in infrastructure demands and demands on other public services. When a local government…

> Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack. It's not going to be organic. Instead, these same deals are going to be spread out to a bunch of other companies, most of which will pay less than Amazon on average and the "subsidies" will take longer to be a net positive. Again, people confuse bribes with standard deals. Any company is eligibl…

> There's no way to turn this into a positive here.

I dunno. It seems like an unambiguous positive to me. The giveaway to Amazon was enormous -- so much so that it seems extremely dubious that New York would ever have been able to recoup that money, let alone increase it.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#264

Post by CydeWeys »

SilasX wrote: post #211
CydeWeys wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because then it's a race to the bottom and all other companies start expecting these same deals (or even better), and eventually you do end up with a situation where the city does not get back more in tax revenue. It's simple negotiation; you may lose some money on that one deal, but you'll gain more in the end by not decreasing the value of all subsequent deals.

Or, you'll lose out on all the businesses that won't start or expand there because the baseline level of taxation is too unfavorable for the economy (in either sense of the word) that the city offers. It's almost like taxing easily-moveable economic activity is a bad idea.

And yet there's a huge number of businesses that do have presences in NYC because the tax revenue funds all sorts of things that make NYC attractive to businesses that can't be gotten elsewhere.

A lot of what makes NYC great (like the 24/7 public transit system, the best in the country) costs serious money to operate. You need to get that money from tax revenue.

And businesses aren't actually easily-movable, not at all.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#265

Post by billman »

digianarchist wrote: post #169
zelias wrote: post #55

If Amazon had just quietly announced plans to expand to LIC without the "HQ2 Search" dog and pony show they almost certainly would still be here. Google buys entire city blocks and nobody bats an eye. Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition. More publicity = more scrutiny = more angry opponents of your business decision

>Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition. Unless it's for a football stadium.

Is it just a coincidence that the Giants and Jets both play in New Jersey. Maybe Amazon should just move across the river and call it the New York office.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#266

Post by komali2 »

jhall1468 wrote: post #210
function_seven wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While parent (and others) may be attempting to revise history, I think this outcome is probably for the best. Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack. Real growth brings with it real increases in public funding, that can be used to fund real increases in infrastructure demands and demands on other public services. When a local government…

> Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack. It's not going to be organic. Instead, these same deals are going to be spread out to a bunch of other companies, most of which will pay less than Amazon on average and the "subsidies" will take longer to be a net positive. Again, people confuse bribes with standard deals. Any company is eligibl…

>There's no way to turn this into a positive here.

Well, if you believe Amazon coming to NY was good, it's no more negative or positive than me not winning the lottery today, and I didn't buy a ticket either.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#267

Post by electricslpnsld »

Alex3917 wrote: post #58
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #6

Google didn't need any dog and pony show or significant forms of corporate welfare (that we know of) to announce a doubling of their presence in New York. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/17/google-...

Google's expansion doesn't require its employees to live in a part of the city that lacks adequate schools and parks. Whereas if you work in LIC it's not like you can really commute into the city from New Jersey or Stamford.

LIC has some amazing parks. Stop by Socrates Sculpture Park sometime — really cool art installations, great waterfront views of Manhattan, across the street from a cool museum (Noguchi of the coffee table fame), and you are quick walk down Broadway to some great restaurants in Astoria.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#268

Post by schnevets »

jhall1468 wrote: post #191
CydeWeys wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, thanks for the info. I wonder if this change means they'll simply be expanding those existing offices more rather than (presumably) moving many of them into the new space?

Basically NY will be treated like any satellite campus. It will grow, but slowly as it has for years. The big "deal" with this move was bringing 25k jobs to NY, which has 5k now. That isn't going to happen, at least nowhere near the timeline it was.

The public is so muddled about what an effective job creator yields. They could move a small niche of AWS to Newark, restore some warehouse into office space, and claim they are adding a projected 10k jobs to the area.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#269

Post by metildaa »

zdragnar wrote: post #215
djsumdog wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There 2014 Princeton study that showed only the top 10% of income earners political opinions are reflected in the political leanings of the elected representatives in the US. I did a short video on this: https://youtu.be/sD8KtaNzI8o

I saw somewhere that the turnout for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's election was somewhere around 4%. The voter turnout for most American elections is really quite low, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were distinct differences in turnout between income percentiles. Perhaps that might go some way towards explaining it. Edit: I did a bit of research below, and 4% definitely does not seem accurate. I have no idea where…

This seems suspiciously low, do you have a citation for that?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#270

Post by Cshelton »

tomstockmail wrote: post #52
whatok wrote: post #22

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/update-on-plans-fo...

"We do not intend to reopen the HQ2 search at this time." I wonder if this is to let some of the news cool, work behind the scenes with some of the previous offers, then surprise announcement down the road.

It has already been rumored that Dallas is working with them, still. The head of the initiative, from the start, has stated, "We have never ended talks with Amazon, they are still ongoing". That was as of earlier this week/last week.
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