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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

#731

Post by smsm42 »

wolco wrote: post #643
rhegart wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of the incentives are from Amazon’s taxes. 27B in economic activity for 3B in tax breaks for just 10 years is wayyy better than almost every other corporate deal. Better than Tesla for sure. That 3B will no longer be generated. You want a net 24B or a net 0B? New Yorkers chose 0

Other businesses can move into those spaces and will end up paying more in taxes. Property values will go up slower. Having one company move in sounds great but diversity might be a better longterm strategy.

> Other businesses can move into those spaces and will end up paying more in taxes

The first is likely, the second is very unlikely. For the simple reason that Amazon would not plan such project in a market that is so hot that is able to generate tax income at the same rate as concentrated investment project of the Amazon HQ size. Surely, it won't turn into a barren wasteland, but I would not expect it to produce more in tax revenue than big development like Amazon HQ would.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#732

Post by alexis_fr »

pvg wrote: post #517
siruncledrew wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's spectacle reminds me of Lebron's "The Decision". It's one thing to work out the details and make an announcement, but to purposefully turn it into a show about "What can you do for me?" instead of "Here's what I can do for you" made it not sit well with people. Also, the pull-out letter also basically dumps the blame on state/local officials for not wanting Amazon, despite not all stakeholders being present…

but to purposefully turn it into a show A big difference is that contrived drama is at the very core of the entertainment business of professional sports. It makes for much of the entertainment! It's less helpful in the more mundane enterprise of 'building a bunch of offices and warehouses'.

Cough Trump Cough. It does look like Amazon tried to stir the same soup as Trump, and it doesn’t work (Note that I won’t defend that it worked for Trump, it’s just that it may have made it seem ok to pull money from cities using newspapers, because of that precedent).

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#733

Post by Spooky23 »

taurath wrote: post #440
Spooky23 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you keep participating in the race to the bottom, you eventually end up on the bottom. The belief that any price in tax cuts will benefit your citizens in the form of "jobs" is a particularly toxic form of economic fundamentalism, and its hollowing whole states out.

Totally agree. In my neck of the woods one county nearly bankrupted a neighboring one by offering an existing business a deal that led them to move a few miles away. The old county was stuck with sewer bonds and other costs while the revenue vaporized.

It’s difficult though as it’s a prisoner’s dilemma type situation.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#734

Post by TuringNYC »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #637
andosteinmetz wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What New York City do you live in? I have never been offered, nor do I know anybody who's been offered a month's free rent on signing a lease. Places that do this are overcharging and driving up rents. Your comment may just be emphasizing the fact that there are multiple "New Yorks." And I suspect the New York that Amazon HQ2 would benefit would be the New York that pays too much to live in a glass tower and gets off…

What is the point of this comment? It combines some smug self-satisfaction about "Your New York" with your ridiculously insulated anecdata about the first month discount many apartments give. A 5 second Google search shows hundreds of results for 1 month free rent in apartment listings. What exactly are you contributing to the discussion?

@andosteinmetz I'll offer anecdata also as a born-and-raised New Yorker (FYI - I finally moved out because the job market did not support the living costs given personal constraints.)

NY is a shell of what it was in 2005/2006. Yes, there are more tech firms, but the 500,000 or so jobs lost after the financial collapse in 2008 have not been made up for. I welcome Amazon bringing in well-paid positions, because as a New Yorker, I'd like the city to support a middle class, not just wealthy foreigners parking money into LLCd condos staying empty.

Much of the gentrification could be due to the free money and ZIRP policy in the US -- it is cheap to borrow and thus people, especially wealthy people/corps, borrow heavily and raise prices and rents. There is little correlation between actual income and rents in NYC because of this external booster.

Wouldn't it be better if the source of rent increases in NYC be the presence of lots of well paying jobs?

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#735

Post by NathanKP »

andosteinmetz wrote: post #721
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of this comment? It combines some smug self-satisfaction about "Your New York" with your ridiculously insulated anecdata about the first month discount many apartments give. A 5 second Google search shows hundreds of results for 1 month free rent in apartment listings. What exactly are you contributing to the discussion?

That's a fair criticism, and I regret my tone and making the discussion personal. But as a life-long New Yorker, I do feel a personal stake in all this. I believe OP is right that the month's free rent offered on an apartment is recouped by the landlord: in the form higher rents, which have become a real problem for many people born and raised in the city and which would likely only be exacerbated by Amazon's setting…

I agree with you. Just in the last five years of living in Williamsburg I've seen the neighborhood change a lot. I remember that local pharmacy you are referring to before it got turned into an Apple store, and before the Whole Foods got built on the same block.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm part of the gentrification problem over the last five years, but to be fair New York gentrified me at the same time that I helped gentrify the neighborhood. I only made about 30k a year before I moved to New York and I lived in a trailer home back then. After moving to New York I got a few different tech jobs and now I live in one of those over-priced one month free buildings.

I share my story just to say that in my perspective gentrification is a complicated system, and like you I also have a personal stake in all this. In my experience working in tech in New York has been a huge opportunity to improve my life. Amazon would have offered roughly another 25k people such an opportunity, some of them would have been newcomers, and some hopefully long term NYC residents. I can't lie, some people might not have benefited as much as others, but at least those 25k would have been able to get the same opportunity I did when I moved here.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#736

Post by 1986 »

smsm42 wrote: post #719
sammycdubs wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's New York City, we don't need to give the largest company in the world a huge discount to do business here. It's not like the economic development of NYC is dependent on Amazon. It's a central hub to so many industries because of its infrastructure, talent, connection to capital markets etc, not because of handing out discounts.

> we don't need to give the largest company in the world a huge discount to do business here Looks like you do, because now we have - no discount, no business. > It's not like the economic development of NYC is dependent on Amazon Of course, losing several billions of added value and 25K jobs won't kill the economy of the size of New York. Just as shooting oneself in the foot won't kill most healthy people. But keep…

Amazon is already in New York and their own statement today says they will continue expanding those teams despite not moving forward with HQ2. No discount, still business. "There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams."

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#738

Post by zanny »

heyjudy wrote: post #535
phjesusthatguy3 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all going to have to do something for the people at the actual bottom once we cater to the people racing to the bottom. The people that can't afford to live at the bottom of NYC also can't afford to move their families to Central African Republic and run the tshirt machines producing stuff they ship back where they came from. The USA already has a tax structure in place. Amazon could afford to pay the existing…

UBI, livable wages, raise estate and corporate taxes, operable unions without "right to work" (for less) / union-busting laws, more worker-owned co-ops and integrated standard-of-living net that lifts instead of treating people like criminals. But first, getting rid of the corporate capture of both major political parties, elected officials, government and policy-making is a precondition to do anything to reverse the…

I would also like some flying pigs and entropy reversed with my order of complete fantasy.

Im not saying its wrong, but us muggles worth less than countries have no real, meaningful say in the future at this, and to be fair also at most other, points in history.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#739

Post by taurath »

Spooky23 wrote: post #733
taurath wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you keep participating in the race to the bottom, you eventually end up on the bottom. The belief that any price in tax cuts will benefit your citizens in the form of "jobs" is a particularly toxic form of economic fundamentalism, and its hollowing whole states out.

Totally agree. In my neck of the woods one county nearly bankrupted a neighboring one by offering an existing business a deal that led them to move a few miles away. The old county was stuck with sewer bonds and other costs while the revenue vaporized. It’s difficult though as it’s a prisoner’s dilemma type situation.

It sounds like the county that was bankrupted left themselves at the mercy of the business.

Re: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus

#740

Post by JDiculous »

As someone who lived in NYC for 5 years, I can't understand how anyone can not consider this a loss to NYC. Don't get me wrong I hate corporate welfare as much as anyone else and I have no desire to work for Amazon because it seems like a corporate sweatshop, but 25k jobs at an average $100k+ salary would've been a boon to the city, even despite the $3 billion in tax subsidies. The additional revenue for workers and taxes would've been a huge boost to the economy and would've more than paid for itself.

The jobs would've been in Long-Island City, which is basically a glass tower condo ghost town with practically no office/business presence. The subway for people commuting into LIC for work is probably currently fairly empty, so the subway could accommodate them. (The same cannot be said of the reverse. Commuting from Astoria, Queens or Williamsburg, Brooklyn into Manhattan for work during rush hour is horrible).

I agree that politicians need to do a better job of accommodating those who are displaced by gentrification. NYC housing costs are insane (as someone else mentioned we undertax single-family homes and $100m penthouses), the subway is failing, etc.

Perhaps the deal would've gone through had politicians better communicated how the $3 billion subsidy package was not just a handout to Amazon but would actually improve the city and the well-being of its residents.

But given the city's failure to build affordable housing (not the "affordable housing" buzzword where luxury apartments are subsidized to low income people who enter a lottery, but doesn't actually meaningfully increase affordable housing stock) and fix the subway, maybe the city isn't capable of managing itself and stemming the pitfalls of gentrification, and so the opposition was fired up by this awareness. It seems that so long as fundamental aspects of NYC like its subway system are managed by NY State, we will never see any meaningful change at anything more than a snails-pace. Perhaps NYC should be fighting for independence from NY State to be in full control of its own destiny rather than being at the mercy of politicians in Albany with a poor track record of attending to the city's needs. (sorry I got derailed there a bit, just a stream of thought)

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