Slashdot Mirror
New Yorkers Protest Amazon HQ2: 'We Should Be Investing in Housing ... Not in Helicopters' (geekwire.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Shawn Dixon's life changed overnight. On Tuesday he was surprised to learn that Amazon plans to build a giant campus with room for thousands of high-paid workers on the same block as the small business he owns, Otis & Finn Barbershop. "We woke up yesterday with our whole world upside down," Dixon said. The announcement that one half of Amazon HQ2 is moving into his neighborhood -- Long Island City in Queens, New York -- motivated Dixon to attend a protest of Amazon's future campus Wednesday. He was
joined by elected officials, labor leaders, and activists who gathered to speak out against the tax incentives, government subsidies and other perks -- including a helipad -- that New York is offering Amazon in exchange for the thousands of jobs the company promises to bring.
"We're worried about our ability to stay in the neighborhood," Dixon said. "I'm not against growth and I'm not against Amazon but what I'm against is giving away all this money to one of the richest companies in the world when our schools are underfunded, we don't have schools in this neighborhood, the trains don't run here, and small business owners have no protections." The rally was organized by New York State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents the Queens neighborhood Amazon is moving into. "By the way, Amazon was coming here without all this money anyway," Gianaris said when he took the podium.
"We're worried about our ability to stay in the neighborhood," Dixon said. "I'm not against growth and I'm not against Amazon but what I'm against is giving away all this money to one of the richest companies in the world when our schools are underfunded, we don't have schools in this neighborhood, the trains don't run here, and small business owners have no protections." The rally was organized by New York State Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents the Queens neighborhood Amazon is moving into. "By the way, Amazon was coming here without all this money anyway," Gianaris said when he took the podium.
Look, resistance is futile.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go sell the house I bought just a few years ago for five times what I paid for it.
That said, you do have elections. But, as you can see with Seattle, those don't matter either.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's now happening in areas more willing/able to resist. Too bad the game is rigged.
Then maybe you should allow more density. Restricting supply is a great way to make things unaffordable!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Their property values will sky rocket and thousands of new people will be in walking distance to their businesses.
Anyone who thinks these giveaways to big corporations for supposed reward (jobs, media exposure, etc.) needs to listen to the Citations Needed Podcast, particularly Episode 20, "How Sports Are Used to Fleece Public Trusts".
There's a good reason Amazon's HQ search was often called Bezos' "quest to find America's Dumbest Mayor". Looks like he found more than one.
My heart goes out to the people. Maybe it's not too late to replace your representatives and undo this.. :(
He is going to have a business with a large number of well paid workers right next door. Why would he be upset? Instead of protesting, he should clean his shop and get ready for the influx of new business.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I'm no fan of cities in general, much less New York, but one of "The Rotten Apple's" biggest attractions is all the open space (relatively speaking).
The problem is that it is a tragedy of the commons situation. If New York doesn't give an incentive, then maybe Raleigh, NC will. Then, as in all markets, it comes down to what will the market bear. I think there needs to be a few court cases of unfair taxation that go up to the Supreme Court. The other answer is that people fight to reduce the role of government everywhere, but then they'd have to give up their rent-controlled apartments and cheap subway tickets.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Gotta love the irony of the same folks who shit on Trump for cutting corporations a modest tax break going all out rolling out the red carpet to give money to Amazon... and then ignoring their constituency when they realize what happened.
Where does this wealth come from that you are investing? The areas Amazon is moving into are actually zoned as economically distressed and needing re-investment incentives. So you can't just Invest if you are also not making money too.
On the otherhand, I think Ocasio-hyphen got it right when she said Displacement is not urban renewal.
That'a totally correct. But it'a the model that Seattle, and San Francisco and other areas use. You gentrify the ghetto. As the Bus Boy's famous song said "Oh Boy, There goes the Neighborhood/ The whites are moving in/ they'll bring their next of kin".
In places like Santa Fe however, this sort of thing has led to cultural displacement too. Instead of houses with 300 year old family casas with poor tenants fighting over access to the Acequia waters, you have kambucha guzzling prius owners fighting over parking places in the Whole foods parking lot. The poor can't pay the rising taxes, sell off their water rights and thus extinguishing the historical wealth of the lands, and eventually move out so another condo-casita cand go up.
But that's also the story of the Bronx too. It's populace has changed over the years in immigrant waves.
So it's not so sad. It's just urban renewal and re-invention. And to invest money you need to make money.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's very telling that Amerikuk politicians are all JOBS JOBS JOBS but never talk about your quality of life, time off work, and how little American workers get compared to even Canadians (nevermind a real people like Germany who universally get atleast THREE WEEKS PAID VACATION because theyre better than Americans.. lol!)
I don't know about the rest of the rant but
"By the way, Amazon was coming here without all this money anyway"
this part is true, other places offered more incentives but amazon moved there because of talent, so yeah they didn't need to throw the money.
but what I'm against is giving away all this money to one of the richest companies in the world
Not to argue for or against Amazon in NYC, this argument itself is somewhat weak. Tax incentives aren't "giving" a company money, they're just not taking it. And, if that incentive brings the business, then even without any direct taxation, it means more money for the city: higher paid workers pay higher taxes and spend more money.
It's fine to say "we don't want to entice that company to setting up shop" or even "they would come without the incentives, so we shouldn't offer the incentive," but not "we shouldn't be giving away money."
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Opposed to predators moving in...Amazon's entire business model is based on destruction of human privacy and abuse of employees.
The argument is, I think, that the present value of Amazon and their employees' future investments, tax payments, and spending outweighs the incentive the city provides. So if they want more funding for schools and other stuff, well, that's how you get the money to do it. The calculations might be wrong, but I kind of doubt it, the HQ will be dumping a ton of money in to the local economy.
So. Let them move to North Carolaaaahna.
This is nothing like the Olympics. The issue there is that you build a bunch of expensive stadiums and other crap that nobody ever uses again but it requires a lot of expensive maintenance so it either continues to drain money or just decays into a wasteland.
There's no need to convert parks to condo towers in order to achieve Barcelona's level of density (about 2x Queens').
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Not even chains. Commercial kitchens get up by UberEats or the Amazon equivalent. Going out or ordering by phone is so 1995, and techrobots are antisocial.
It's NYC. You really think it will be more expensive? Maybe in Virginia, but NYC? Shitttttt.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
... New Yorkers opposed to new jobs! Gee what a surprise.
Perhaps some people are mad about that, but many others are just mad about the tax subsidies.
Why should Amazon get a special sweetheart tax deal? In the eyes of the law, Amazon Inc. and Maggie's Pie Shop should be treated exactly the same. The government should not be favoring one over the other.
I think there needs to be a few court cases of unfair taxation that go up to the Supreme Court.
Would that apply to "enterprise zones" tax breaks designed to boost poor areas too?
Or does it just apply to incentives for disliked tech companies?
If he doesn't actually own the space he's in then with Amazon setting up shop, the lease payments are going to go up substantially to capture some of that sweet rich people money. He's going to have to decide whether his business can support the higher rent. If he decides he can't take the risk, the person who owns the building will find plenty of businesses that are willing to take the risk.
Work Safe Porn
New York state collects 76 billion in revenue every year.
The few million they're tossing Amazon to encourage development will be paid back far more with income taxes and all the other taxes the customers, employees, etc will be paying for the foreseeable future.
Crooked politicians always blame a penny for collapsed bridges while they squander dollars. The citizens should be smarter than to let them get away with such nonsense.
Work Safe Porn
Apparently Long Island City's mayor is extra dumb, because Amazon is getting about double the incentives to build there, that they are in Alexandria, VA.
Is anyone really surprised that they chose New York and DC? Talk about the most obvious choice they could have made...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Not a chance, let the prices go up and those high paid employees move in. Not only will the neighborhood start looking a hell of a lot better higher home prices mean more taxes and nicer schools.
It's the opposite direction of increased density and reduced prices we all want to avoid. If you see that happening in your neighborhood bail while there is still a chance.
Well, the city has to do a bunch of stuff not to make the whole situation a giant clusterfuck - road expansions, mass transit lines, new traffic signals, changing of traffic patterns to match the estimated traffic increases, all the water works / sewer work to be able to service all this new stuff, build fire stations, police stations, schools for the new housing, parks, waste disposal services, etc.
You know that Amazon won't be footing the bill for any of that. The current citizens will be, and there won't be any tax revenue coming from Amazon for several years after it's all done, because of the tax breaks being handed over, so the current citizenry will have to foot the bill disproportionately for some time.
Somewhere down the road, the city will start collecting on all this new shit when the deal expires; by then Amazon will threaten to leave and some idiot politician will ram through an extension just on the threat. This is the same game that urban renewal advocates play with "tax increment financing."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Their property taxes will skyrocket and thousands of new people will be in walking distance to the starbucks, mcdonalds or other chains that take their place.
What chains, exactly, is the guy in the article worried about? Do you think managerial level people are going to pass his boutique barbershop to go look for a SuperCuts?
we don't need to be giving the richest man on earth free Helipads. He came to New York because one of his houses is nearby. He never intended to put it anywhere else.
Invest in your workers (demand side) and the businesses will follow. They'll have to, because otherwise they won't get workers. America is where business wants to be because our military protects their ass(et)s. We're an incredibly safe and secure place to live.
And as always, if they want to leave, fine. Go. Get out. Don't let the door hit ya where the dog shoulda bit ya. But you don't get to take the ball. That's what eminent domain is for.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Tax "incentives" are the most insidious type of trickle down economics. The assumption is that without these "Job Creators" all labor would stop. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bezos was a right time/right place guy. He didn't build Amazon, the engineers did. Bezos is going to go where those engineers are. He has to. He couldn't build the company by himself. He's clever and well educated, but he's one man. There's only so much one man can do/learn.
Instead of tax incentives we should be investing in America and the American worker. Demand side economics. Let them come to us instead of us bowing and begging to them. That's what makes this feel so wrong. We're all begging Jeff to give us a little bit of his money. We've been reduced to peasants. That's what that sinking feeling in your gut means.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The local government should be building out the underlying infrastructure and ensuring good schools and good housing opportunities. Residents and businesses would both flock to the area to take advantage of that instead of feeding the giant corporations tax breaks at the expense of residents, aka potential workers. Far too often the corporations move into an area collect the tax benefits then leave the area to move on and harvest more handouts. Developing economic opportunities should benefit the tax payers directly, not the corporate tax dodgers.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Isnt Bezos liberal? I thought lib business guys couldnt do any wrong? How about tax breaks for existing businesses? Its not like Amazon cant afford to do this on theur own..good grief. I thought we wanted higher taxes on businesses...hypocrites
...for a city with underutilized housing stock and severe unemployment. But New York is packed and not hurting for jobs, there's no reason for them to bend over backwards to attract investment.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
New Yorkers Protest Amazon HQ2: 'We Should Be Investing in Housing ... Not in Helicopters'
"Sorry, the libs you vote for already bent over for us."
"Why are businesses fleeing cities? It can't be business-unfriendly politicies!"
"Oh no, businesses are coming back. They should give lots more money for the honor of providing jobs and increasing the tax base!"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
On Zillow, the "cheapest" listing for Crystal City is a 716 sq ft 1 bedroom, 1 bath for $230K. If you search for Arlington, the prices seem better (good luck getting anything at the listed price tho).
That still wouldn’t work because they’ll continue to insist on rent control. No developer wants to put up an expensive new apartment building if it means that they can’t charge market rates. That’s usually why all new development in cities by private investors is for luxury condos. Those are typically immune from any rent control ordinances.
The whole point is that there will thousands and thousands of new, well compensated professionals with incomes to tax and a giant surge of personal spending in the entire area surrounding the activity. That's exactly the sort of activity that funds the infrastructure in the first place. None of that would happen without attracting the entities that employ all of those people and stimulate all of those billions of dollars in activity. I haven't heard anyone report that the barber shop in question won't continue to pay taxes and fees on its surging new business activity, or that every restaurant for miles around that will get a huge jump in business will somehow fail to pay their taxes.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Exactly, sweetheart deals are what got Apple into so much trouble in Ireland, the EU actually has rules against this kind of thing.
horror vacui
I suspect there's plenty of "investment in housing" going on in one of the hottest real estate markets in the world.
The whole point is that there will thousands and thousands of new, well compensated professionals with incomes to tax and a giant surge of personal spending in the entire area surrounding the activity
That's the theory.
It doesn't always work out that way in practice. MA got screwed by some pharmaceutical giants who didn't quite expand as they said they would. And Foxconn is currently fucking over Wisconsin, with $60k/year jobs costing the state $250k/year each in incentives.
As for that barber shop, his landlord is going to jack his rent through the roof, forcing him to close and/or move. A new Starbucks will pay more rent, but it'll be bad for that barber.....and a huge portion of the restaurants for miles around.
It's 2% of the taxes collected by the entire state benefiting one company. This is not small change.
Cities make these deals because they bring in revenue. How much will Amazon and its employees generate for the city versus Maggie's?
Yes. Because the JOBS such things bring in WON'T add money to the local economy and fuel investment in housing...
I swear to God. Some people are so fucking stupid I just want to nuke the planet and be done with it...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
They took 'er, wait, hold on, gave 'er jobs?
Mid-sized markets never had a chance, this is known. And Bezos already owns mansions in DC (the Obama's are neighbors) and New York (Manhattan).
https://www.cheatsheet.com/mon...
BlameBillCosby.com
Then maybe you should allow more density. Restricting supply is a great way to make things unaffordable!
There's a reason that places like California have laws to encourage development of affordable housing, and that reason is that developers on their own will not build affordable housing unless they happen to be philanthropists. Simply building housing in non-affordable areas with no other constraints on that development often results in more units of unaffordable housing. While it's true that restricting supply often raises prices in a free, fluid market, increasing supply in constricted markets with other constraints (e.g., too many people with high incomes) may not put any downward pressure on prices.
Richard Wolff did a good job of concisely making the points on just how bad a deal this is for New York and Virginia (which are together funding over half of the costs of this project -- $5.5B versus Amazon's $5B according to the New York Times)—and all for an estimated 2,500 jobs in New York (I don't know how many jobs are projected for the Virginia site but I'm guessing it's comparable totaling around 5,000 jobs). Here's some of what he said:
Digital Citizen
Drivers will have to give up the cheap roads and bridges they drive on.
Chicago once put up high density housing for low income people. It was called the projects and resulted in places like Cabrini Green. It resulted in places plagued by crime, gang violence and generally deplorable living conditions. This is what you get when you make high density low income housing.
The problem is that, as K said, individuals are smart, people are stupid. When you get groups of people in these kinds of environments you end up with the tragedy of the common.
Conversely when people pony up a good deal of money to live in a high end condo, apartment, townhome, they have an interest in looking after their investment. Likewise the owners of businesses in the area, who would lose revenue if they don't keep their businesses clean and in good working order, invest in doing so.
There's really no way around it. Slums will always be slums as long as the same people live there. Cities succeed in urban renewal only when they displace the poor with higher income workers. It ain't fair but it's how it works.
Amazon doesn't need these subsidies, but its a classic supply and demand situation. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of places that Amazon can put its HQ. Any place they do will see some level of influx of higher wage workers and jobs. If you want them then they're damading that you, as the locale, pay by giving them tax breaks. You, as the locale, can refuse to pay, but somewhere else will, and Amazon will go there.
People also overlook the obvious. Local politicians almost always come from the upper half of the economic scale. They are upper middle class moving on upper class. No locality actually wants to have poor people. Gentrification is something that almost all localities want, not something they try to avoid. If the courts didn't prevent them cities would still have vagrancy laws the police and sheriffs offices of just about everywhere would still be telling the homeless "Be on the other side of the county line by sundown."
This move of Amazon will create no jobs. They will move workers in from other areas, or hire college educated workers from other companies. they might pick up a few high GPA university students, who they would have hired anyway and who probably have a number of top flight Big Tech companies looking at them.
No unemployed New Yorker will get a job out of this. Even the janitors and cafeteria folks will be from contract companies who already have workers on the hook other places.
The issue here is not what the local government can pull in terms of taxes, but the effects for the people already living in the area. It's pretty easy to find textbook examples of this going badly wrong as you only need to look at all of the big tech hotspots and areas with a manageable commute to them. Tech workers pay a lot of taxes, but because of the massive increase in housing cost a lot of particularly lower class people have had no choice but to leave the area they grew up in.
This is also neglecting the issue that workers may end up commuting from outside of the area that's giving them the tax break Boise-style to save money or be able to buy a bigger house, meaning that they obviously don't get any additional tax revenue from these people. In this case all they're getting from the deal is more wear and tear on their infrastructure.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Cities make these deals because they bring in revenue.
Why do you believe that Amazon will bring in more revenue than the businesses that are displaced?
How much will Amazon and its employees generate for the city versus Maggie's?
Stupid comparison. The only important metric is the revenue, PER EMPLOYEE, which would be roughly the same.
If it was my neighborhood, I would prefer the pie shop. Nevertheless, it should be left to the market, not to bureaucratic whim.
Where I live, the fuel taxes cover the cost of road building and maintenance. It's even enough to fund some bus systems that are mostly empty every time I see them.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Fuel taxes are a mere drop in the bucket where I live.