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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

#461

Post by deminature »

munificent wrote: post #179
raiyu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but they will get that tax break regardless at least this we can continue to make NYC a powerhouse tech center. And it's in Long island City not in Manhattan like Facebook and Google.

> Yeah but they will get that tax break regardless I just don't understand this argument. It's like "Someone's gonna get fucked, so I'd prefer it be me." That tax break is real money . Money that your community will not be able to spend on education, infrastructure, police, parks, all the things that make a place worth living in. Why would you hand that over to a company that doesn't need it?

It's temporary. The city was projected to get back $25bn in tax revenue on the deal, and the initial outlay paid back in a few years. Amazon had also agreed to completely redevelop the waterfront of LIC. For the long term, the deal absolutely made sense.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#462

Post by sbov »

lallysingh wrote: post #446
RockyMcNuts wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about the 2nd Ave stub, yeah, it was crazy expensive but it's serving 200K passengers a day, alleviating crowding on the Lex (entire Lex is like 1.3m), and UES to Times Square is hella faster. Anyway, for me it hinges on how much special treatment Amazon got, $100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard, would have been a huge anchor tenant for NYC tech and…

$100k in taxes is maybe 6.5 yrs of a tech worker's state income (using 6.85% state income tax @ 220k/yr). That's before other taxes, like property (directly or indirectly through rent), sales, etc. They don't need 25k jobs to support AWS clients in NYC. It's not like they're supporting on-site installations.

Usually 1 job means 1 person-year worth of work. So 6.5 years of a tech worker would usually mean 6.5 jobs.

The jobs also tend to include things like construction workers, etc. So if you hire 500 people to build the place over 2 years that's 1,000 jobs created.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#463

Post by stale2002 »

munificent wrote: post #179
raiyu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but they will get that tax break regardless at least this we can continue to make NYC a powerhouse tech center. And it's in Long island City not in Manhattan like Facebook and Google.

> Yeah but they will get that tax break regardless I just don't understand this argument. It's like "Someone's gonna get fucked, so I'd prefer it be me." That tax break is real money . Money that your community will not be able to spend on education, infrastructure, police, parks, all the things that make a place worth living in. Why would you hand that over to a company that doesn't need it?

These we're existing tax programs.

Regardless of what Amazon does, a for profit company is going to receive those tax breaks. They are available to anyone who meets the qualifications.

So it isn't "handing over" anything that isn't going to be handed over to a company already.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#464

Post by wefarrell »

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #399
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…

If you're talking about the 2nd Ave stub, yeah, it was crazy expensive but it's serving 200K passengers a day, alleviating crowding on the Lex (entire Lex is like 1.3m), and UES to Times Square is hella faster. Anyway, for me it hinges on how much special treatment Amazon got, $100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard, would have been a huge anchor tenant for NYC tech and…

Tax abatements like this are a serious antitrust issue as well. Smaller competitors don't have the political clout to get tax breaks like this, will have to pay more, will pass those costs onto customers, and won't be as competitive.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#465

Post by Wowfunhappy »

r_smart wrote: post #455
tytso wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposition is not because some high tech firm, whether it is Google or Amazon, is expanding in NYC. The opposition is because of the Massive tax breaks and other $$$ giveaways New York was going to hand over to Amazon. I don't recall Google extorting NYC for $$$ before they decided to expand....

But they probably did. It was just behind closed doors rather than publicized.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure any such tax breaks would have to be public data by now, even if they were originally hashed out behind closed doors.

If you're implying that Google got tax breaks, and no one noticed the public data confirming these tax breaks, please provide evidence of the data that has been overlooked.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#466

Post by Zecar »

jemfinch wrote: post #456
munificent wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah but they will get that tax break regardless I just don't understand this argument. It's like "Someone's gonna get fucked, so I'd prefer it be me." That tax break is real money . Money that your community will not be able to spend on education, infrastructure, police, parks, all the things that make a place worth living in. Why would you hand that over to a company that doesn't need it?

> That tax break is real money . Sure, but it's real money that your community doesn't get either way . You're living in a fantasy world if you believe that the choice was legitimately between "Tax money and 25,000 jobs" or "No tax money and 25,000 jobs." No, the choice has always been between "No tax money and 25,000 jobs" or "No tax money and no jobs." You're not getting the tax money either way. Either Amazon buil…

Corporate welfare is, and always will be, theft.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#467

Post by adventured »

fastball wrote: post #408
marcell wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you fix the rail system? With money from... taxes... from well paid workers, for example. I think a lot of people get so caught up in hating on tech workers and opposing gentrification they forget where the money comes from.

The average employee in that 25k cohort would need to be paying $12k worth of state taxes to NY every year for ten years in order to recoup the $3B tax break figure.

Average $160,000 household income per employee = ~$14,000 per year in state + local income taxes. That's ~$8,500 per year just to the state in income taxes.

Include all taxes from 25,000 employees + their families (property taxes, sales taxes, etc), and it's a very likely $4.5 to $5 billion over ten years to state & local coffers from the employees.

And that's just the direct benefits. It excludes any taxes Amazon corporate would pay, such as property taxes on any real-estate they buy over that ten years. It also ignores the potential for additional expansion in that ten years (Amazon will more than double in size over that time, to half a trillion dollars plus in sales, I'd bet on more than 25k employees).

It would have easily paid for itself, which was actually never in dispute. People didn't like it regardless of the fact that it would have paid for itself. They disliked the idea of giving Amazon anything.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#468

Post by [deleted] »

dmode wrote: post #413

In a way this is good as we need to stop this race to bottom with government subsidies. Amazon should be expanding in NYC not because of some handouts, but because of the talent it has to offer. Also, Amazon's statement that they are not doing a HQ2 search really underscores what I always suspected - the dog and pony show is about maximizing handout for a natural increase in satellite office headcount

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#469

Post by chrisseaton »

siidooloo wrote: post #282
jhall1468 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's absolutely no way they are scaling up NY to the same degree they would have with the subsidies. There's no reason to. The value proposition is gone, so now Amazon will slow-roll growth in NY like they will any other office. The fact that you (and many others) consider this a win is an attempt to revise history. This tax deal was all about Amazon expanding very quickly. That deal is gone. But feel free to pat…

New York City has no current shortage of jobs or growth. Incentives aren’t needed. If they wanted to offer incentives for companies to move to Buffalo, it might be worth it. But NYC will be fine without it.

So why do you think people in NY government wanted to go for it?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#470

Post by vonmoltke »

weliketocode wrote: post #69
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

Their dog and pony show almost netted them $3bn. That type of payday might be worth a bit of scrutiny.

No it didn't. The vast majority of those incentives were on the table for Amazon, or anyone else, without the theatrics.
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