81–90 of 227 posts
San Francisco-ization it seems. Liberals going against their own interests. Reminds me of an apartment complex under construction in SF that was forced to include a larger amount of low-income units. The builders found it would no longer be profitable, and ceased building. So lose-lose, prisoner's dilemma, vocal social media forces "won," lacking the cooperative biases that humans normally have. They all end up with…
When a company sees a market opportunity and increases prices to take advantage of it (or benefit from tax exceptions, which is the same as generating inflation on everything but their prices), it is praised. When a labor union does the same, it is evil.
The 1% want to have the capitalism cake and eat it too.
And for some reason we are boasting a letter from the person bought to defend the tax break in the first place. If you want one single proof that this is an "advertisement" for public opinion, i will give one on the very first paragraph: he compares "25,000-40,000 jobs" as if 100% oscillation is an acceptable negotiation scale (hey, i can pay you $100 to $200k a year if you accept now to work 12h a day every day!") and then proceeds to compare it to non-tax exempt jobs. Which is like comparing one thing to another completely different, for either incompetence or malice. Since he is a Budget Director, i will bet the later.
Ironically, much of the visible 'local' opposition, which was happy to appear at press conferences and protest at City Council hearings during work hours, were actual organizers paid by one union: RWDSU. (If you are wondering if that is even legal, probably not). That is a pretty strong accusation to put in writing. I get the feeling that some investigation is going to happen on that one. Paid protestors presented as…
When fracking was the cause de jure, hundreds of people were being bussed to Albany weekly to protest.
I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but it’s a thing.
I think it's sad that the vocal minority was able to alter this decision. As the letter mentions, the project would have brought $27b in revenue to the state. This magnitude of revenue is material considering the fact that the state only collected $76b in taxes in the last reported fiscal year. I think there's reason to debate whether large corps should be able to hold an auction like this, but given the place we fin…
I'm glad they dropped it. There are some grounded concerns: * Amazon is one of the most successful enterprises in human history and should not require support from taxpayers beyond their voluntary patronage of Amazon itself. * Most of these "deals" were put together secretly without input from the public. Millions (or in NY's case, billion+) of dollars were packaged and presented without community input or oversight…
You have to be exceptionally uninformed to believe that taxpayer money from Buffalo was being used to lure Amazon.
In reality, Amazon was getting a $3bn discount on their tax bill, which would have still come out to $27bn over the same period. The majority of this $27bn would go to the state. Given that western New York gets more in state funding than it pays in taxes, this would have been net positive for Buffalo [1].
Second, Amazon would have brought 25k high paying jobs to LIC, at an average pay of $150k/year. In addition, there would have been thousands of secondary jobs in construction, restaurants, building management, and so on. All that state tax money is now going to Virginia and Tennessee.
[1] https://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/oct/14/c...
edit: go Sabres!
I suspect I'll never get why the notion of giving a tax handout to a company that's one of the most valuable in the world shouldn't be a non-starter. > Incredibly, I have heard city and state elected officials who were opponents of the project claim that Amazon was getting $3 billion in government subsidies that could have been better spent on housing or transportation. This is either a blatant untruth or fundamental…
If you want to somehow ban the concept nationally, fine, but otherwise if a city/state doesn't play the incentive game they will probably just lose out to others that will.
Further it's worth looking at LA and the NFL. The NFL takes advantage of governments -- usually desperate governments -- to build their stadiums for them, and when LA didn't play ball the NFL went sulking out of town. Eventually they went back, paying for the stadium and all ancillary costs, out of their own pockets, with zero incentives. Because in the end it simply makes sense.
Negotiating is a series of compromises. AMZN basically reflected your brinkmanship strategy back into your face.
While I wish corporate America was above this, the Unions are the ones that need to learn a lesson here.
AMZN conceded to 11,000 Labor Union jobs for construction and services. But RWDSU, you wanted it all... including operational jobs.
AMZN just will not capitulate to these tactics. And in fact, they'll go so far as to punish them and set precedence for future projects.
I suspect I'll never get why the notion of giving a tax handout to a company that's one of the most valuable in the world shouldn't be a non-starter. > Incredibly, I have heard city and state elected officials who were opponents of the project claim that Amazon was getting $3 billion in government subsidies that could have been better spent on housing or transportation. This is either a blatant untruth or fundamental…
I cant see why hq2 location cannot be based on bidding. Tax breaks are part of negotiation. Math is clear.
Reads as unreliable (presumably factually accurate but too motivated to be trusted as presenting a full picture). Anybody who pretends to be thinking about "loss for the city," is full of themselves. It's all politics, and disingenuous to imply otherwise. And morally, most other areas in the country need this more than NYC does. It sounds like the thrust of the article is "Look how stupid the decision making process…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad they dropped it. There are some grounded concerns: * Amazon is one of the most successful enterprises in human history and should not require support from taxpayers beyond their voluntary patronage of Amazon itself. * Most of these "deals" were put together secretly without input from the public. Millions (or in NY's case, billion+) of dollars were packaged and presented without community input or oversight…
> Most of these "deals" were put together secretly without input from the public. Millions (or in NY's case, billion+) of dollars were packaged and presented without community input or oversight The letter specifically addresses this. That $3B was effectively a loan with massive ROI.
It's problematic, because it's hard for states to provide equal treatment (ever firm should be equal in the eyes of the law), states shouldn't be in the business of analyzing business plans and taking on risk.
That said, NY would have probably benefited from HQ2, though it's not that there's a lack of upward forces on the salaries of those jobs there, not to mention real estate.
Quote of the Day: "The seventy percent of New Yorkers who supported Amazon and now vent their anger also bear responsibility and must learn that the silent majority should not be silent because they can lose to the vocal minority and self-interested politicians."
I'm glad we're waking up to this fact. It's not enough to hold a belief... in our system, action is required. I think this is why young people are so frequently screwed by political decisions and policy - we are, uncoincidentally, the age group that votes least often.
A good education in civics and history is necessary, as is a belief in the political system and a desire to make a difference in the world through political action. Finally, a strong and independent media that does a lot of deep investigative journalism and does a good job of providing context and background on important issues instead of catering to the lowest common denominator is key, as without it people are much more easily manipulated and mislead.