281–290 of 359 posts
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Why should they be compensated for this? Why are those individuals living in that place a status quo that ought to be maintained?
Because making people worse off to enrich yourself is called "greed". Greed is something I and many other people frown on.
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It’s really cool how Amazon has hundreds of cities up in arms bidding just to give Long Island such a great deal. /s I have little trust in city officials and corporations to be forthright about the deal. The bidding process is hidden and full details are slow to come out to protect the deal. Payouts to corporations has been a pattern and it should be fixed at the federal level. Companies don’t make a bidding war to…
It’s not In Long Island. It’s Long Island City, which is in Queens, which is next to Long Island.
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It’s really cool how Amazon has hundreds of cities up in arms bidding just to give Long Island such a great deal. /s I have little trust in city officials and corporations to be forthright about the deal. The bidding process is hidden and full details are slow to come out to protect the deal. Payouts to corporations has been a pattern and it should be fixed at the federal level. Companies don’t make a bidding war to…
It’s not In Long Island. It’s Long Island City, which is in Queens, which is next to Long Island.
LIC is increasingly well-developed but mostly as a residential area. It's not Manhattan and doesn't really have top-tier employers. The tech scene in NYC is almost entirely concentrated in Manhattan, with the exception of maybe a tiny tech scene in parts of Brooklyn, which Queens (which Long Island City is part of) is not generally hip enough to have. This adds a top-tier employer with lots of high-paying jobs in a new location without displacing any of the existing tenants occupying prime office space in Manhattan. It also doesn't worsen the rent situation substantially where it's the worst. Rent is high everywhere but Queens has more supply, way more potential supply and is overall better positioned to deal with the additional demand than Manhattan or Brooklyn. Also, this isn't obvious to people who aren't familiar with NY but while LIC is easy to get to from most parts of NYC, it's just far enough that you probably wouldn't want to live in New Jersey, while that isn't as true of many parts of Manhattan. This definitely makes the location more attractive from the perspective of New York State, who doesn't capture the state tax from those that commute from New Jersey.
Also, you can't usually hire that many people by poaching people from other companies and they need a balance of junior and senior hires so lots of them will have to come from outside, at least on a net basis. This will include highly-compensated senior transfers from their other offices (to maintain the corporate culture, etc), will include new graduates (many of them would have gone elsewhere) and new immigrants who would've gone anywhere for the job. This also creates additional economic demand which will boost overall spending, creates an upward pressure on tech salaries which will add to the tax base. Also because Amazon does churn through people, this has the potential to bring many more people than 25K that come to NYC for Amazon and stay around to do other things. Ex-Amazonians as a group are also probably a good group to have around for any tech scene.
There's been a need for an alternative to Silicon Valley and this actually moves the needle in a significant way to positioning NYC that way. Combined with Google's plan for expansion, recent arrival of several SV tech companies and the natural advantage of being already the world's capital of finance, media, fashion, etc, at a time when tech is increasingly central not to its own industry but to every industry, this squarely puts NYC in contention.
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Seattle was created to supply the Yukon gold rush miners. Then it was heavily dependent on Weyerhauser (lumber). Then it was Boeing (will the last person who leaves Seattle please turn out the lights.) Now tech. Seattle's always been a one horse economy. (Something like 15% of workers in Seattle are Amazonians.)
Can you provide a source on the 15% number? Is that 15% of all employed people or just in a specific sector. If it is a specific sector how is that defined?
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Can you provide a source on the 15% number? Is that 15% of all employed people or just in a specific sector. If it is a specific sector how is that defined?
This person is wrong unless you define the worker market in some weird way that excludes other large employers like Boeing and uw. This article from 2018 lists other large employers, and Amazon looks smaller than expected https://www.tripsavvy.com/biggest-seattle-area-employers-296...
Google says that Seattle has a population of ~725k. Let's say that half of them are working. 725k * 50% * 15% ~= 54k.
54k Amazon employees in the city limits sounds at least in the ballpark.
https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/aug/11/...
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Seattle was created to supply the Yukon gold rush miners. Then it was heavily dependent on Weyerhauser (lumber). Then it was Boeing (will the last person who leaves Seattle please turn out the lights.) Now tech. Seattle's always been a one horse economy. (Something like 15% of workers in Seattle are Amazonians.)
Can you provide a source on the 15% number? Is that 15% of all employed people or just in a specific sector. If it is a specific sector how is that defined?
Doing some googling:
Amazon Aug 2017 had 40,000 workers in Seattle:
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/thanks-to-amazo...
Workers in Seattle are currently 425,827
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/seattle-wa/
So the 15% figure is plausible.
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This person is wrong unless you define the worker market in some weird way that excludes other large employers like Boeing and uw. This article from 2018 lists other large employers, and Amazon looks smaller than expected https://www.tripsavvy.com/biggest-seattle-area-employers-296...
I think the difference is "Seattle" vs "Seattle area." Google says that Seattle has a population of ~725k. Let's say that half of them are working. 725k * 50% * 15% ~= 54k. 54k Amazon employees in the city limits sounds at least in the ballpark.
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Literally the opposite. The tax gains out number the tax breaks 3 to 1. Each one of these $150k jobs will net NY state $13.8k of income tax per year and (at least) $2500 of sales tax. The tax break per job is $4800 per year (the $48k figure you may have seen is over ten years).
It's still a race to the bottom. Attracting businesses with tax-exempts is a zero-sum game. In the EU we have rules against things like this. As it's considered anti-competitive behavior.