If skyscraper-studded Manhattan is hostile to businesses, I am really curious what a city friendly to businesses looks like....
It's possible the studding of skyscrapers occurred before the hostility, right?
Sure, but Manhattan is not a ghost town either. The usual crop of employers is present, there's certainly no surfeit of supply on the commercial real estate market, etc. There are cities with mostly-empty skyscrapers and overly ambitious commercial centers. NYC isn't one of them.
I'm under the impression that Amazon has never been a big taxpayer.
Their employees still pay tax though. With tech wages as high as they are it is probably non-trivial amounts. I am not advocating for big businesses evading tax mind you. Just suggesting it would probably still be a boon for the state tax income if a bunch of tech wages migrated to the NY tax base.
The average salary was to be 150K, which I feel is likely to be well within the margin of a desire for minimization.
It's possible the studding of skyscrapers occurred before the hostility, right?
Sure, but Manhattan is not a ghost town either. The usual crop of employers is present, there's certainly no surfeit of supply on the commercial real estate market, etc. There are cities with mostly-empty skyscrapers and overly ambitious commercial centers. NYC isn't one of them.
For the past 24 hours I've been a bit befuddled, like "Amazon would have brought sorely-needed employment to [checks notes] New York City."
One factor is that NY pays 5-10 times more than comparable cities to build its mass transit: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
and in return for all that money, they receive the sewage waterfall: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/penn-stations-latest-... Honestly, why is this so hard when so much of the rest of the developed world manages to do it so well?
Yeah, I heard raw sewage flows through Penn Station so often that people aren't even surprised anymore. Not rare at all.
What are you talking about? LIC has lots of schools and parks. It's a very residential neighborhood. > Whereas if you work in LIC it's not like you can really commute into the city from New Jersey or Stamford. Why not? Take the Path to the E or the metro north to the 7.
> What are you talking about? Could you please edit swipes like that out of your comments here? They acidify discussion. Your comment would be fine without that bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Maybe you should just permit people to say "what are you talking about" as a form of "you seem to be confused" instead of trying to dictate which colloquialisms people use to express themselves. Your position on this is overbearing and absurd. FYI you have a history of being condescending over nitpicky nonsense to the point of incivility.
This is the same thing that happened to the Mall of America many years ago. It was extremely welcomed, then opposition, and it got scaled down considerably and lost some benefits the state was offering.
That was my first thought on seeing the headline as well. However I think those buyers will still do just fine. I doubt very many people have lost money by investing in NYC real estate.
Depends if they can hold. A lot of speculators are going to have to take an L if they thought they were going to flip as Amazon ramped up. Especially if they took debt to do so.
Those city govts can choose 0 in new business or new business with jobs and income taxes and property value increases. A business choosing a location is a business transaction, as is city taxation choices. Both can freely choose how to woo the other. NYC chose to lose possible decades of high paying jobs over their unwillingness to deal.
NYC is not exactly desperate. NYC is the anchor of an enormous economy that houses dozens upon dozens of large corporate offices and a vast number of jobs at all pay levels. NYC can afford to not deal with a corporation that is known for its poor working conditions and that did not even conduct its search in good faith. Other cities are not so fortunate, but Amazon has no interest in truly desperate cities (or even c…
NYC as a whole not being desperate still makes throwing billions in income for residents, not all of whom make as much as Amazon would bring, a dumb move.
Amazon’s role is not charity. It is to be as productive as possible. NYC does have the role in being a good steward of resources for its citizens. It threw out a lot of money and job for them due to a vocal minority.
> 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…
NYC generates about 10% of US GDP, already houses Amazon, Google, and every other global player. We have our fingers in everything already. We don’t need to play this kind of needy urban development three-card monty nonsense to continue kicking ass economically all day and night long.
Again, shooting oneself in the foot by losing 25K jobs won't kill New York. It just would make it a little poorer than it otherwise could be (some people a real lot poorer - talk to some RE developers that bought properly expecting Amazon to move in nearby...) New York doesn't need HQ2, it doesn't need any one particular development at all. But if it starts approaching all of them with this attitude, it gradually will start losing them, one by one, becoming poorer and poorer as they go. Would it kill it? Probably not, Detroit still exists. Is it a smart way to conduct affairs? I guess that's for New Yorkers to decide, if they think losing 25K jobs and billions in future tax income worth sticking it to Bezos - well, they can rejoice.