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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

#341

Post by throwawaysea »

CydeWeys wrote: post #13
lovecg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the city gets back much more in tax revenue?

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.

What's the problem with governments competing? That's not a "race to the bottom" any more than competition is a "race to the bottom" in market economics. It is a forcing function on efficiency and good governance where there would otherwise be no competitive pressure.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#343

Post by dontbenebby »

josefresco wrote: post #76
slg wrote: post #9

I wonder how many Amazon employees sold their nice new condos in the last couple weeks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18503434

I wonder how many Queens residents sold their apartments/condos before this news broke? Talk about timing. I know of one person who was drooling at this unexpected windfall and will now be very... sad.

I think in the long term that condo will have value. Queens is reasonably priced and a decent commute to Manhattan. My suspicion is long term, it will be commute time that dictates housing prices. (Look at cities in Europe, where there's excellent public transit - the "nice" areas are downtown, and the "slums" or "rough" areas are often in the burbs.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#344

Post by Spooky23 »

bunderbunder wrote: post #244
bilbo0s wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think they're really gonna scale up in Nashville. At least not in any meaningful way. 10 years from now, both Amazon and Google will have right around 25 thousand workers each in NYC. The reality is that NYC is not Wisconsin, they don't need to give out money. EDIT: I'd even go a step further, and predict that both Amazon and Google will also have ludicrously large presences in the DC-NOVA area in 10 yea…

Wisconsin doesn't need to give out money, either. If anything, they need to not give out money. The story of the Foxconn factory, for example, is one of Wisconsin acting as if you can give a bunch of money to a company that smells of technology, and they will plunk a bunch of jobs for highly educated and skilled people in the middle of a region with relatively few highly educated and skilled workers. Which, it never…

It depends on the business. If you’re capitalizing a big facility, even things like sales tax exemptions are big value adds.

As long as some places in strategic areas do the incentive thing, it’s hard not to.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#345

Post by JohnFen »

kodablah wrote: post #312
berbec wrote: post #7

Not going to miss them. Local governments giving huge tax breaks in exchange for stadiums, businesses relocating never works out.

I have plenty of examples where it works out. The town I live in gave large tax breaks not too long ago and it's working well. Nearby, sports facilities were financed with balloted measures at the request of the public, sometimes in conjunction with the local ISDs who share the facilities. The vast majority are benefiting from this public/private economic cooperation.

I can offer a counterexample. In the city I live in, there have been several major tech companies that were given enormous tax breaks and other gifts in exchange for moving in. They'd move in, build their buildings and factories, and everything would look rosy for 3-5 years. Then they'd cut and run, leaving the city worse off than if it had never done the deal in the first place.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#346

Post by Justsignedup »

bunderbunder wrote: post #244
bilbo0s wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think they're really gonna scale up in Nashville. At least not in any meaningful way. 10 years from now, both Amazon and Google will have right around 25 thousand workers each in NYC. The reality is that NYC is not Wisconsin, they don't need to give out money. EDIT: I'd even go a step further, and predict that both Amazon and Google will also have ludicrously large presences in the DC-NOVA area in 10 yea…

Wisconsin doesn't need to give out money, either. If anything, they need to not give out money. The story of the Foxconn factory, for example, is one of Wisconsin acting as if you can give a bunch of money to a company that smells of technology, and they will plunk a bunch of jobs for highly educated and skilled people in the middle of a region with relatively few highly educated and skilled workers. Which, it never…

Kentucky was a perfect example of this. They gave the best corporate welfare money can buy. And everyone left. There were no decent roads, schools, police. So there were no decent workers. The companies were basically given the best deal in a place with no workers.

If anything the workers left even more because there was even less attractiveness to be there.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#347

Post by thomasmeeks »

tmaly wrote: post #317
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-...

But as a thought experiment, say they did create 25,000 jobs at an average salary of 100,000. What type of taxes and secondary effects on the economy does this have? Does the city get back more than the 3 billion in concessions and how long does that take?

Looking at it from a strictly "benefit to government's tax coffers" standpoint (since that's the argument for the tax breaks):

Would those new Amazon jobs cause 25k people to move to NYC? Or is it more likely to just make the local market more competitive? How would other businesses react? Would they move? Embrace remote? If they increase salary across the board and live with unfilled positions, how does that affect tax revenue? Even if those people do move, how does that influx affect people with lower paying jobs? Will they be pushed out? How does that affect tax revenues?

Those are the kinds of questions I saw raised by opponents, and it seems like there weren't clear answers to them.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#348

Post by [deleted] »

magduf wrote: post #196
kokokokoko wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very different because a large amount of NYC residents rent as opposed to own. To a resident that rents in NYC, Amazon moving in means they will have higher rents and less money on their pocket. It ends up costing many NYC residents actual money in rent to host Amazon, regardless of the subsidy. I think this one is a special case.

I don't see the problem here at all. If you have higher rents, that's because there's more demand for housing, and not enough affordable new housing is being constructed. Who controls that? Your local politicians. Who controls them? The voters who elected them, which is you if you live there. So you have no one to blame but yourself, and no cause to complain. You have the government you deserve.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#349

Post by objektif »

tmh79 wrote: post #108
raiyu wrote: post #70

After being a resident of NYC for 30 years and seeing the city change and become a technology hub and just a financial center I think this is a real loss for NYC. It would also be in Long island City which would provide a huge influx of new workers and move that neighborhood forward in development rapidly. The down side would be that it would push some residents and business owners out but this is simply a fact of li…

the issue for me is that the main benefit of the tax breaks is capitalized by owners of AMZN stock, mainly Bezos, the wealthiest man in the world. AMZN is going to grow somewhere, they should pay taxes where they grow.

I mean a simple calculation shows that ny state would have break even in less than 10 years.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#350

Post by orblivion »

pointillistic wrote: post #230

In this story I am only sorry for people who bought up all the real estate around the future campus, ouch! Remember all the "insider trading" condo purchases, just before the announcement, that is going to hurt...

I saw leftie Twitter refer to it as "insider gentrification" which I thought was a hilarious and clever observation.
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