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

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.

Comments

Objecting to the give-away

[XXongo]

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

Re:Objecting to the give-away

[XXongo]

...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.

Re: Objecting to the give-away

[nomadic]

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.

Re:Objecting to the give-away

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Re:Objecting to the give-away

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Objecting to the give-away

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Objecting to the give-away

[b0s0z0ku]

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.

Re:Objecting to the give-away

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Objecting to the give-away

[jeff4747]

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.

Re:Objecting to the give-away

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Objecting to the give-away

[ShanghaiBill]

Gamergate.

So Amazon engineers are misogynist because some gamers once were?

Since when does playing games make you "tech"?