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Facing Opposition, Amazon Reconsiders NY Headquarters Site: Report (washingtonpost.com)

Posted by msmash on from the breaking-news dept.

Amazon.com is reconsidering its plan to bring 25,000 jobs to a new campus in New York City following a wave of opposition from local politicians, The Washington Post reported Friday [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], citing two people familiar with the company's thinking. From the report: The company has not leased or purchased office space for the project, making it easy to withdraw its commitment. Unlike in Virginia -- where elected leaders quickly passed an incentive package for a separate headquarters facility -- final approval from New York state is not expected until 2020. Tennessee officials have also embraced Amazon's plans to bring 5,000 jobs to Nashville, which this week approved $15.2 million in road, sewer and other improvements related to that project. Amazon executives have had internal discussions recently to reassess the situation in New York and explore alternatives, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the company's perspective.

20 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Objecting to the give-away by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What they're objecting to, of course, is not the jobs being brought in, but the massive taxpayer funded give-away that New York politicians promised (without any oversight) to give Amazon to tempt them to come, along with the tax breaks they promised as well, to make sure that they don't pay for it.

    A billion here, a billion there-- it adds up

    1. Re:Objecting to the give-away by XXongo · · Score: 4, Informative

      ...and not to mention that Amazon required a nondisclosure agreement from the cities bidding, so that the taxpayers actually couldn't know what their politicians were giving away.

      Which was: 3 billion dollars.

    2. Re: Objecting to the give-away by nomadic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Amazon needs a large, highly-educated workforce, and I'm not sure the people they need would be willing to move en masse to Amarillo, Texas.

    3. Re:Objecting to the give-away by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yadda yadda yadda, taxes bad. Taxes pay for things like education (NY state has some great schools and colleges), public transportation (I love trains!), and a social safety net. Those things actually make places livable. You know what's bad? Squandering $6 trillion on the Federal level on military homicide sprees and security theater. Wars and nudie scanners don't actually make places more livable.

    4. Re:Objecting to the give-away by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A tax break is not giving them money.
      It's simply refraining from taking it from them.

      Be that as it may, it's still asking other businesses which are being taxed so subsidize Amazon who is getting preferential treatment. I think that high taxes are idiotic and usually counter-productive, but if some city or state wants to enact them, then they should be applied fairly and evenly to all who live and do business there. If those cities or states find that it drives out businesses, then they can vote to reduce the tax rates.

    5. Re:Objecting to the give-away by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A tax break *to a specific company* is picking a winner, which the government shouldn't be doing. If they cut taxes for *all companies*, that's one thing... that's not what was happening here.

    6. Re:Objecting to the give-away by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Taxes are great when they're used to pay for useful services like education, public transit, infrastructure, and public health care. Taxes suck when they're squandered on security theater, wars on moral panics like drugs, or wars abroad. Yeah, yeah, the latter is Federal, but NY sends much more money to DC than it gets back, so it adds up. Time to REALLY put America first and stop squandering tax money on nonsense.

    7. Re:Objecting to the give-away by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The people that Amazon employs are likely to earn more than the people they displace, which means the state will collect additional income tax simply due to the higher wages, but also because Amazon workers will fall into a higher tax bracket. Those workers also have more disposable income which means more money being spent into the local economy. If people are being pushed out at a 1:1 ratio with every person Amazon brings in, there's no net change in road utilization (unless Amazon workers are more likely to drive) or other utilization. If it displaces other types of labor, it just means that value of what remains increases due to more limited supply, so it would raise wages for those jobs. There's also plenty of housing available, but some of it needs to be reclaimed but idiotic development laws typically mean that no one wants to spend the time or money dealing with it.

      It may still be that the net effect doesn't result in much additional revenue for the state or city, but I'm not sure if I agree with the reasoning that you've used to arrive at that conclusion.

    8. Re: Objecting to the give-away by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      Well it is the catch 22 of today's economy.
      Small rural towns, would love a big company to come in and bring in jobs. Because the influx of jobs would bring in more higher skilled people who would then require services which brings in more jobs. However these companies will not open in these small rural towns because they don't have the educated workforce, or the infrastructure to deal with the services they will want.

      For the old factory jobs, this was easy for a small town to get a factory, and grow the economy. Because you needed basic labor, and skilled labor only needed a couple of months of training. Now we need people with College Degree and advanced specialized skills. You can open a company in the middle of nowhere, but you will have a hard time attracting people who can do the work, and people will not flock to that location because the small town couldn't support them.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    9. Re:Objecting to the give-away by jeff4747 · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's why NY leads the country in population loss.

      New York State is not New York City.

      Upstate NY is doing very poorly, decimated by the same manufacturing sector ills that have hit the rest of the rust belt. It is suffering large-scale population loss, not because of taxes, but because there's zero reason to build a factory there. Why build your factory in a place famous for massive winter snowfall when Alabama exists? Or Juarez? Low taxes do not stop lake effect snow. If anything, low taxes would make lake effect snow worse since they would start to have trouble affording plows.

      New York City is doing quite well, and attracting a lot of people....despite having an even higher tax rate than upstate NY.

    10. Re:Objecting to the give-away by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think this just shows the real problem with taxes. Half of the things you think are great, are not good use of tax dollars according to another group of people. Some of what you want to spend more taxes on is going to be considered squandering tax money on nonsense by others. No one has a problem identifying the wastefulness of government spending in the things the consider to be bad, yet seem to believe that such could not happen with those things that they want tax dollars to fun. Once you legitimize government largess, it's no wonder that people will crawl out of the woodwork to direct some of it towards themselves.

      And New York seems to consider it a fine idea to take from those who have most and redistribute to those who have less. They are one of the richer states, so shouldn't they be happy that more federal money is being spent on the states that contribute less? Everyone loves the notion of taking from those who have more, but most don't realize that they're quite far up the ladder themselves and there's a whole wider world that has much, much less.

    11. Re:Objecting to the give-away by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Misogynists are not welcome in NYC

      There is zero evidence that tech workers are more misogynistic. I have worked in several professions, and tech is the least misogynist. Have you ever worked with salesmen, or warehouse workers? They make nerds look like saints.

    12. Re:Objecting to the give-away by jeff4747 · · Score: 2

      If it was taxes, then NYC would be doing worse than upstate, because NYC has higher taxes.

      Pretend I'm looking for a place to build my factory. Manufacturing is more high-tech than it used to be, so I need employees that have at least a good high school education.

      I'm trying to pick between Utica and oh, let's say Huntsville, AL. And let's pretend I've negotiated a sweetheart deal where I pay no state taxes so we take those completely out of the decision.

      Why do I pick Utica for my factory? The weather's worse. The transportation network I need for my supply chain is worse. The nearest airport is an hour away. The schools are worse. The dream of the local high school students is to move as far away as possible, leaving me with the ones that couldn't pull that off. So I need to do more on-the-job-training. The houses are old and not being replaced. The supermarkets are all competing for the cheapest place to use food stamps.

      The gas station in my neighborhood started selling crack pipes at the registers (you had to ask for the stuff to go into the pipes. At least according to the multiple arrests there). The owners of the gas station decided to lose their branding instead of no longer selling crack pipes, so it's no longer a Chevron station. It is considered the nice part of town.

      Taxes are not the problem with upstate NY. Infrastructure and weather are. Infrastructure is not just roads. It's schools and workers too.

    13. Re:Objecting to the give-away by jeff4747 · · Score: 2

      It's not just the tax rate, it's that the high taxes are paying for things that people in NYC want the taxes spent on rather than things that benefit the taxpayers in Utica.

      I'd like you to explain how spending taxes "better" will stop lake effect snow. 'Cause that's part of the problem with the infrastructure.

      Also, the people in Utica weren't asking for "better" spending. They were asking for lower taxes as if that alone would magically create jobs. Heck, it's what the local politicians spent their money on: tax breaks for businesses. Not, say, making SUNY-IT competitive.

    14. Re: Objecting to the give-away by jeff4747 · · Score: 2

      This is false. Treaties can not override the Constitution. They can only override laws (by effectively being a law).

    15. Re:Objecting to the give-away by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Gamergate.

      So Amazon engineers are misogynist because some gamers once were?

      Since when does playing games make you "tech"?

  2. Let it be by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

    Good. Quit blowing politicians who need your jobs but ride to power trumpeting how evil you are.

    Let the voters weigh the relative importance. That's why the pols are huffing and puffing in the first place.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  3. Re:Good Thing by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2, Interesting

    2.3 billion looks big and scary until you realize that NY State's total population is 20 million. That's about $115 per person. Total state budget is $168 billion, so that's about 1.3% of total budget.

    The real problem downstate is that Albany controls NYC's purse strings. The subways would run much better if they were run by the NYC Department of Transportation directly, not subject to authority of clueless bureaucrats from Albany.

  4. They should just change their name by bobstreo · · Score: 2

    to Omni Consumer Products and move to Detroit. /s

  5. Re:Techies will follow the jobs. by jeff4747 · · Score: 2

    Techies will follow the jobs.

    Only to a limited extent.

    I lived in upstate NY for a while. The area was a former manufacturing center that has been economically destroyed by the same things that hit the rest of the rust belt. The local politicians were sure the techies would follow the jobs, so they had several programs to try and recruit companies to the area. And hey, housing is really cheap so cost-of-living is low. So clearly techies would flock to the area.

    It failed. The area is just too shitty now. The schools are awful, the roads are barely maintained, there's little to do outside your own house, drug use and it's accompanying problems are rampant and overall quality of life is bad. Recruiting and maintaining a high-tech workforce there is very difficult, even with NY city pay scales and rural cost-of-living.