Amazon Picks 20 Finalists For 'HQ2' Second Headquarters Location (nbcnews.com)

bigpat writes: Amazon took in hundreds of proposals and narrowed it down to twenty places for its "second" headquarters, with up to 50,000 new jobs promised in the next 15 years and millions of square feet of office and research space. The cities include: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami, Montgomery County, Maryland, Nashville, Newark, NJ, New York City, Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Toronto and Washington D.C. Amazon said that it will now work with the candidate locations to examine their proposals more closely and request additional information to "evaluate the feasibility of a future partnership that can accommodate our hiring plans as well as benefit our employees and the local community." The company said it would make its decision later in 2018.

Comments

I don't understand why cities compete

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I don't understand why anyone would want their city to win this. Your taxes will go up to bring in Amazon, and that gets you... what?

The way the EU has structured things, with incentives for relocation being illegal, seems far superior.

Re:I don't understand why cities compete

[hey!]

It brings in jobs, and the workers pay taxes. At least that's the theory.

Re:I don't understand why cities compete

[Junta]

It is complicated.

Much of the time, the revenue that the city 'loses' is revenue that otherwise wouldn't exist. A company either would pay, say 20 million in taxes under 'normal' rules, but arrange to only pay 3 million, it is said they 'gave' them 17 million dollars. However the alternative for the city was not 20 million, it was 0 (or maybe from alternative taxpayers, but for many of these places they got enough empty space that amazon does not exactly bump other more profitable companies out.

On top of the employment and immediately indirect benefits that the politicians like to tout, it's also a rationalization to get some public works spending through. I know that at least one of those metropolitan areas has been trying for many years to build some sane transit improvements, but the citizens never have the stomach and would rather sit in traffic two hours a day than see money spent to improve it. Amazon can become the justification to spend money on those projects.

Of course, this is all hugely unfair still and favors big businesses with leverage and is another way that economic power gets focused to a handful of leaders at a handful of companies. The consequences of capitalism exacerbated by technology that facilitates really fast information travel and logistics to make it feasible to consolidate to gigantic powerful companies that grind all competition to dust.

  It can also be greatly disappointing. There was a small town that agreed basically to let a big datacenter take of residence basically without paying any taxes whatsoever, and in very real terms went into the red building infrastructure required by the company to make the deal. It was admittedly great for the construction companies in the short term, but as soon as everything was built, they became upset because that gigantic facility under normal conditions had maybe a dozen employees. They were imagining in their heads what a textile plant of that size would hire 30 years ago and instead got to be the suckers that happen to have a big datacenter that contributes nothing to the employment or economy of the area.

Re:All in blue (or about to be blue) state shithol

[ScentCone]

I wonder why? You red-state folks seem to [sic] warm and welcoming...

In my experience, the people you meet in most red states are wildly more affable, warm, friendly, and polite than most you'll meet in the increasingly effete, shrill, divisive, identity-politics-obsessed wastelands of political-correctness-paralyzed lands of blue. Your comments is a sure sign that you never get out of your holier-than-thou bubble and echo chamber. Give it a try, you might be pleasantly surprised that the people you hate are actually a lot nicer than the people you feel you're supposed to like because they vote the way you do.

That's the excuse

[rsilvergun]

the reason is bribes, which are essentially legal here in the form of Political Action Committees, campaign donations and jobs handed out after completion of a term in office. If we were sane we'd regulate PACs, only let people donate to candidates they can vote for and even then limit the amounts and give anyone who served a significant public office a pension for life and require them to retired without owning stock.

Not a theory

[SuperKendall]

It brings in jobs, and the workers pay taxes. At least that's the theory.

As someone who pays state income and sales taxes, I assure you it is no theory.

Even if you give a company a lot of tax breaks there is by necessity a TON of revenue brought to a region that has any large company. It's not just the workers, but all of the support that goes into a large office - construction, office supplies, cleaning, etc.

On top of that a few larger businesses generally attract other businesses to the region as well. It has a halo effect when a large company someplace well enough to set up a large office there,