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Amazon To NYC After Reconsidering HQ2 Plans: It'd Be a Shame If Something Happened To Your Kids' CS Education
theodp writes: Commenting on reports that Amazon is reconsidering its plan to bring 25,000 jobs to a new campus in New York City following a wave of political and community opposition, Amazon issued the following statement: "We're focused on engaging with our new neighbors -- small business owners, educators, and community leaders. Whether it's building a pipeline of local jobs through workforce training or funding computer science classes for thousands of New York City students, we are working hard to demonstrate what kind of neighbor we will be." Yep, it'd be a shame if something happened. The Washington Post earlier reported that New York State Sen. Michael Gianaris, a strong opponent of the Amazon HQ2 deal, described the possibility that Amazon would pull out of the deal -- which totals up to $3 billion in state and city incentives -- as akin to blackmail. "Amazon has extorted New York from the start, and this seems to be their next effort to do just that," he said. "If their view is, 'We won't come unless we get three billion of your dollars,' then they shouldn't come." Over at Vice, Ankita Rao examines what Amazon infiltrating America's school system might look like.
I'm not exactly a fan of Amazon, but it's rational for them to dedicate resources to the communities where they will have a significant presence. If they don't go to New York, and go somewhere else instead, then resources they were going to spend on the community in New York will instead go somewhere else.
It's critical that resist efforts of companies like Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon who want to exploit public education for profit. Amazon doesn't want to help students, they want to make money and getting their hooks into lucrative contracts with schools is a core part of that.
We've already seen Bill Gates make repeated attempts to ruin education for profit, Zuckerberg is attempting to enter that market, and now Bezos wants to do the same.
Education only works if teachers can teach instead of being bound to reciting material designed by non-educators working for billion-dollar companies that are designed to encourage dependency on their services and work advertising into lessons. Kids don't need that, and we must reject it.
Amazon: It'd Be a Shame If Something Happened To Your Kids' Corporate Servant Education
Ask their employees.There, I fixed it for you.
It would be *impossible* to prepare the kiddies for a future career in STEM without corporate support and branding.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Kids don't need Amazon to learn computer science. Just like my dad got a Timex Sinclair to teach me, if a parent these days want their kids to learn then they can get a raspberry pi.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Even though $3 billion sounds like a lot of money, it's not necessarily a terrible deal for the state. Assuming that you bring in 25,000 new jobs and you're not displacing anyone else as a result (which I'll admit is a bit of a stretch) and that the average salary of each employee is $100,000 (seems ballpark good based on a quick Google search and information on glassdoor), then that's nearly $3 billion that Amazon is paying back into the area in the first year. State taxes for those employees will be 6.65%, so the state would make back that money in a little under 20 years. Once you factor in sales tax and additional taxes gained from the additional money being spent into the local economy and the turn around might be much shorter.
That aside, I still don't think it's appropriate for governments to cut special deals. If you're going to have various tax laws, etc. then all companies and citizens should play be the same rules. To do otherwise is simply forcing other businesses to subsidize Amazon. If New York has policies that make in unattractive for Amazon to locate there, then Amazon should go somewhere with better policies. Anything else tends to send the wrong messages and encourage the wrong sort of behavior. Make it illegal for government to sell and companies to buy preferential treatment and we'll be much better off if for no other reason that it keeps the kind of pimps out of office that thrive on whoring out political power.
on par with a sports stadium but without the benefit of getting to riot if you win/lose a championship. It's going to cost more in infrastructure and direct subsidies then those 25,000 jobs will every pay out (and that assumes they really bring 25k jobs).
Let 'em go. Jeff Bezos has enough of my tax money already.
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Why is amazon not providing education and other incentives for some random hole in Kansas! Damn you corporate entity!
Sensational headline is sensational. News at 11!
Shown to be utter horseshit.
if a parent these days want their kids to learn then they can get a raspberry pi.
I suppose buying them a hammer will teach them architecture.
Dear Vihaii: don't address soulless machines - even those assembled from human components - as though they're listening: there is no "they."
were only for 240 "underprivileged" high schools, which is a drop in the NYC public school system bucket.
The additional income from additional city taxes gained from the new employees is a much bigger bucket.
I'm going to need to see a source for that. K, thx.
Well I would say something to draw with, not a hammer. But if they truly want to learn it than yes.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Not like they would even get hired by Amazon anyway. They prefer h-1b visas where the workers can't leave for better pay and working conditions.
Their only goal here is to flood the market with as many programmers as possible to lower their salaries. You'd think once you had more money than you could ever spend, it would be enough, but apparently not.
also it's normal for big corporations to seek incentives from state
It's normal. That doesn't mean it's good.
, in the long run the state and population gets many times the return
No, in general not. The "long run" result is that once one company discovers that they can avoid taxes by pitting one locality against another in a bidding war, then all companies start to do that, and essentially what happens is that municipalities stop getting revenue from taxes. So they have to tax their residents instead.
Everybody loses.
Hmm, will the CS curriculum say AWS is the *only* Cloud that matters?
I think it's time that government in general consolidate and bulk up its capabilities to match the power of corporations (and by the way, also stop allowing people to derail it with ridiculous symbolic / meaningless debates on tiny unimportant issues).
Whether this takes some restructuring of government at the state + federal levels and maybe some amendments to lower our expectation of individual rights compared to overall societal good, whatever. Government is being outmatched by the power of corporations, and it will lose. We should fix it before it becomes unsolvable.
"Amazon has extorted New York from the start, and this seems to be their next effort to do just that," he said. "If their view is, 'We won't come unless we get three billion of your dollars,' then they shouldn't come."
This is just stupid. A deal involves two parties. New York politicians want the state to back out of their half of the deal, but this guy thinks that they should be able to hold Amazon to their half.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
If that's their attitude before they infiltrate, imagine after!
What resources are they going to spend on NY? The 3 billion they get for free from NY just to be there? You sure? You can't even blackmail Bezos with dick pics, you'd think he'd go of even 1 cent?
I'm not exactly a fan of Amazon, but it's rational for them to dedicate resources to the communities where they will have a significant presence.
Isn't that why we have taxes in the first place? If you don't feel there are enough resources being used for education then it's a rational argument for increased taxation on those who are paying the lowest percentage of taxes.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Amazon HQ2: Texas experience shows why New Yorkers should be skeptical ( https://theconversation.com/am... )
Why would they need to say that AWS is the only cloud that matters when they could simply not admit to the existence of anything else?
No, in general not.
Who cares about the general case? In this particular example the city will recoup all the $3B tax incentive investment in about 5-10 years just from taxes on employees' wages. And this doesn't take into account additional income from new businesses, construction work, etc.
I'm not exactly a fan of Amazon, but it's rational for them to dedicate resources to the communities where they will have a significant presence. If they don't go to New York, and go somewhere else instead, then resources they were going to spend on the community in New York will instead go somewhere else.
Politics. While it's rational for Amazon to make this decision, it may affect the standings of politicians like St. Senator Gianaris. Therefore if Amazon does pull it, the narrative is framed with Amazon as the villain, rather than the St. Senator being responsible for these programs going away as blowback for fighting the New York Amazon project.
Give them the 3 billion anyway? After the inhabitants of the city just told Amazon to go fuck themselves?
Telling someone to go fuck themself has consequences.
Slashdot - news for outraged progressives!
Yeah, like what General Motors did in Australia.
"Yeah, we need all this funding and financial support to keep car manufacturing here for the next decade. Think of the jobs!"
a year or two later
"We're shutting down all manufacturing in Australia, no you can't have your money back"
Hang on--I need to get some popcorn and watch the Rasp Pi flaming begin. (BTW, I agree with you; raspberry pi is plenty to start learning on. When you get to the limitations, you learn from them, and if necessary you can then get something "better". )
This is correct. There are no AIs out there, watching human development. None at all.
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Coming from Michigan I can tell you that decades of hand outs to the big three didn't keep them from closing factories here in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Same goes for the textile industry in West Michigan.
These deals are unfair to tax payers and even unfair to businesses because they are not distributed equally to all businesses.
I don't think a hammer will teach them about architecture. Wrong tool. But it will teach you about construction. Possibly woodworking. And when you reach the limitations of hammer-and-nail joinery, you can then progress to screws, pocket-hole joinery, dovetail. Maybe even timber framing. Possibly starting a business and hire employees, contributing to multiple families. Go get that hammer--Harbor Freight has some for under $5.
And this my friends is exactly why I am not a big fan of the argument that we should keep taxes low and rely on charities to pay for stuff.
Once the money is given by companies, or billionaire, their donations become concerns for any negotiations. Tax them and where the money is spent is no longer their decision but the public's decision.
Besides, architecture tends to be like Pro Basketball. If you're good & lucky, you make good money. Otherwise, most of the ones I've known are barely getting by.
To rule the world. Once they get their tentacles into a business or an area they will be impossible to remove.
In 5-10 years they will be bigger than the Federal Government and with more economic power.
Carry on sleepwalking folks you are stuck with them unless....
Well like I said, I learned fundamentals of basic on a timex sinclair. There wasn't even a shell back then.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Whip up enough anti-business sentiment, and maybe even more business (and jobs) will leave. That'll show those capitalist crony M*&^%$F*&^%$s politicians and oligarchs!
I'd confounds me that people don't realize this. A business is profit driven, first and foremost--that's why it exists. If a business is making a decision, it's with their best interests at heart.
Amazon isn't choosing these locations to give back to the community, it's for pure strategic advantage. And benefits to the community are collateral spun up as "good will" by some marketing team.
It's hard to imagine that Amazon is so naive as to think that dealing with NYC wouldn't be a snake pit, but then you realize it's run by a guy that shoots dick pics to married women with his cell phone and everything makes sense.
Their projections show that they will recoup the cost. Past experience shows these projections are usually wildly optimistic.
Tax incentives and subsidies are a Prisoner's Dilemma. Each locale feels obligated to offer incentives because other locales are offering them. But they would be collectively better off if no one offered them. Amazon would still expand, but do so on the basis of business efficiency rather than subsidies. If NYC wants to attract more businesses, they should improve their overall friendliness to commerce, rather than lavishing subsidies on one corporation.
These subsides are a race to the bottom. This is what the Commerce Clause in the US Constitution was designed to prevent. The CC has often been abused, but a federal ban on these subsidies would be a legitimate use, and would be an overall benefit to the country's economy, and a relief to the taxpayers.
I mostly agree with you. I learned on a commodore 64.
But i have to commend the ones learning on a Timex Sinclair or a raspberry pi. The C64 had tons of (mostly pirated) games. You did a lot of gaming, a little bit of hacking to cheat and a little bit of programming. But they were mainly gaming machines and that is what the kids enjoy.
A raspberry pi on another hand... Nice toy for nerds like yours truly but how many kids are going to play games on it ?
Besides most people need formal training. A cool gaming computer will put many feet on the ladder but for most they won't be enough. It worked for you because you were very resourceful.
Coming from Michigan I can tell you that decades of hand outs to the big three didn't keep them from closing factories here in the 70's, 80's, and 90's.
In order to pay those subsidies they had to increase taxes on OTHER businesses, driving them out of the state and hollowing out the economy. So when the Big 3 left, there was nothing else to fall back on.
You can't lure a kid into programming by thinking that way. A kid can be both, I was, but in the end their interest in programming and/or gaming will be mutually exclusive. I know a kid who is gaming motivated. He likes to hack his nintendo with 3D models and at one point required a Python script. Since he's not interested in programming, he only gains a superficial knowledge of how to install Python on windows and where to put the script and run it. Only if he is interested in development would he attempt to delve into what the script does and entertain the taught of modifying it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I don't mean mutually exclusive, I mean independent
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
'We won't come unless we get three billion of your dollars,'
Or, more properly phrased, unless we are allowed to keep three billions of our dollars, which we earned through our enterprise.
Let's not confound a tax exemption with a government handout, OK?
Might makes right irrelevant.
OTOH, if those incentives are instead invested directly into the community, who needs the strings?
America the land of low paid homeless people and corporate welfare, where the rich galavant the world paying no taxes and the poor die because they can't afford healthcare.
even better
Here, the government had the 10 years in writing so roughly on the 10th year+1 day, they announced they were moving and thanks for the billions of dollars. Actually, they didn't even bother saying thanks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Terrible Chinese scammers taking good US money for nothing!
It's the avoiding state taxes bit that is NY's problem, not the federal income tax.
The $3B was not a 'donation' to Amazon, it's a tax break. What do you get in return: 25,000 high-tech jobs (average income in NYC for low-end tech jobs $125,000-150,000 that's ~$25,000/year in sales, property and income taxes) or $0.6B not to mention the cleaners, the feeders, the builders etc.
Seattle's GDP has more than doubled since Amazon got big over the last 15 years. Sure, it's not "just" Amazon, but it sure has a big impact.
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Hello text books, my old friend.
In this particular example the city will recoup all the $3B tax incentive investment in about 5-10 years just from taxes on employees' wages.
If a person told you to give them an interest free loan of 3 billion dollars, and they would have someone else pay you back the same amount every 5-10 years, but with no contract or penalty for noncompliance, would you agree to those terms?
The funny thing is, the companies themselves figured out that race-to-bottom price war is not good for themselves. I guess the public sector will need to repeat the learnin' of the private sector on their own.
Bill, stop telling the truth!
You know damn well what you're saying is not false. This is America. Cut that crap out!
Unlikely, Amazon is a parasite. Anything that they get as an incentive to move there is going to be a lot less than what they contribute to the local area.
They've done a pretty thorough job of destroying Seattle and yet those folks in other parts of the country were willing to compete for the same treatment. If Amazon being here was such a great thing, Bezos wouldn't be constantly looking over his shoulder when he's out in public.
Once they are there, you can count on them extorting the locality for whatever they can. We had a head tax briefly slated to go into effect here in Seattle to help counteract the damage that Amazon's presence was doing and they had some illegal meetings with the council and had it nixed. No public meetings, just backroom negotiations and ultimately, the citizens lost. We've got people who are homeless despite having full time jobs here and it's primarily due to Amazon's influence.
No way. They won't do that unless another state offers them billions of dollars. Or unless NY doesn't agree to pony up another three billion dollars.
'Cause why would Amazon do that? I mean it's not like NY just demonstrated that they could definitely do that. Oh, wait. No they just did.
The issue here isn't that Amazon is trying to get concessions, the issue is that Amazon regularly violates antitrust laws and should have been broken up years ago. Businesses that grow to the size of Amazon represent a serious threat to the economy and even democracy itself.
In Seattle, they were able to make a few calls and get the head tax that the council had tried to enact nixed. The head tax was created in large part as an effort to fix some of the problems with Amazon's irresponsible behavior in the region.
They're hardly the only ones, you see the same sort of things with companies like Walmart, Intel and Google where in the past, they would have been forced to be split in order to preserve the competitive market. But, now they have such a large portion of the market that competing with them is virtually impossible. Intel in particular was only tolerating token competition so they could claim they didn't have a monopoly.
Now this is definitely a response from a troll for Amazon. Amazon does hire many people to derail threads and forum discussions that are negative towards Amazon. Moderators here should delete this whole thread and some of the other threads that try to point how it is "normal" for corporations always do things this way.
Or like what the movie studios currently do to us here in New Zealand.
We pay 25% of the cost of every "international" film or TV series produced here, with no cap, so James Cameron is going to make a bunch of Avatar movies, and we're going to pay him millions to do it.
The Minister in charge made noises about turning money tap off last year, but quickly backed down because I assume threats were made behind closed doors.
NY is giving them 3 BILLION. Now Amazon is threatening to NOT to give 3 million back. The horror, the horror!
So you are ok with "take it out of the employee's pay and give nice money to the fat invester class"?
Historically, that hasn't worked. The city ends up holding the bag when a juicier offer comes along.
Power to the people. Tax the crap out of the corporations profits. Make it more appealing to pay a real wage to real people and stop the wealth transfer from poor to already rich.
Stop being a schil for the rich. Pull your head out and look around now and then.
And, when the tax deductions run out, a rust belt scenario comes in, and the company moves out again.
Don't worry, Amazon won't be filming the LOTR series here.
Amazon is not a stadium (which are also often funded with public money). It will have employees. These employees will have high salary ($100-$150k) and the city will tax it. I don't see any way for it to NOT work.
No sources in Federal prison, sorry Trump traitors!
new york city doesn't need anything else to jack rents and cost of living up.
new york city doesn't need amazon hq2 jobs, which will mostly be filled by transfers, not new hires from the local community.
new york city doesn't need the expense (which is not part of that $3 billion) of infrastructure improvements needed to support amazon hq, which the lowered taxes that are collected won't pay for.
new york city doesn't need amazon's "generosity" towards public education, either. they can take that $3 billion and invest it themselves in public education and tell amazon to fuck off, instead of getting a teeny tiny amount of that back in the form of a tax free 'donation' to the schools.
new york city and the state of new york now has more fuel for a criminal case against bezos and company.
My bucket of fucks regarding the standard of living of people in the east is still full. Fuck your mother, and you should fuck off and die in a fire.
If this person also commiteed to hire 25 thousand people each of which will pay 5% of their salary to me? Yes, please.
They've done a pretty thorough job of destroying Seattle
The last time I looked, Seattle is still there.
Formal training? I had Butterfield's 6502 machine language book and a copy of Mapping the Vic-20.
Don't be a pussy.
if a parent these days want their kids to learn then they can get a raspberry pi.
I suppose buying them a hammer will teach them architecture.
You are operating on the education ideal, which shows that gender studies programs make for better relationships between men and women?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Your Minister probably backed down because the accountants showed him the math. Why do you assume the worst?
Hang on--I need to get some popcorn and watch the Rasp Pi flaming begin. (BTW, I agree with you; raspberry pi is plenty to start learning on. When you get to the limitations, you learn from them, and if necessary you can then get something "better". )
Sure won't get any Overcooked Pi's from me. Those little things are exactly what kids and adults should learn on. I think a lot of the more structured teachings try to get them into programming a bit too quickly - let 'em learn unix/linux first, then set 'em loose.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I don't see any way for it to NOT work.
PT Barnum loved people like you.
How many $100-$150k software engineers in NYC are currently unemployed?
Most of these employees will just be shifted from other businesses, which aren't being subsidized, forcing them to either cut back or leave the city. There may be some net job growth, but it is unlikely it is going to be worth $3 billion.
Most tech companies in NYC are already desperate for talent. The limit on creating high paying jobs is not companies willing to hire them, but housing available for people to move to the city. Approving new building permits (cost: ~$0) would do WAY more to grow the NYC economy that this handout to Amazon.
But there is one thing you can be certain of: The politicians are going to label this as a "success" by highlighting every job at Amazon, while ignoring the equivalent number of jobs destroyed elsewhere in the city.
I never claimed that the city isn't there. I claimed that it was being destroyed, by your argument, Detroit must be just fine because it's still there.
Seattle isn't anywhere near the point where Detroit is, but allowing one company to grow to be such a large portion of the local economy is a huge mistake. We didn't have the issues with homelessness before Amazon came and distorted the housing market. The housing market wasn't great, but people buying in expected to be here for the long haul, not to be buying it in lieu of a rental that they could dump when they left for more than they paid.
Amazon also primarily employees men, which means there are now many thousands of men more than there are women, which makes dating largely impossible. I can easily count on one hand the number of men I've met here that have actually gotten married locally. It just doesn't happen that much because we're all stuck competing with men making 6 figures and an ever changing supply that just reinforces the narcissism that women around here have always had.
Not to mention the various local businesses that Amazon has put out of business and the destruction to things like trees and their near complete lack of contribution back into the local economy. They wouldn't be here if they weren't being subsidized and Bezos has made that quite clear.
Because nobody has been able to make any sort of case for the country making any sort of profit from the movie business subsidies.
If we made a profit somehow I'm sure the tourist people would be crowing from the rooftops about it, but instead the talk was all about the jobs that would be lost.
As far as I am concerned, any business that needs taxpayer's money to stay afloat is not really a business.
How many $100-$150k software engineers in NYC are currently unemployed?
It's pretty clear that Amazon will attract more people to the NY. It's also not known for its software companies, so the talent pool is not that deep.
Most of these employees will just be shifted from other businesses, which aren't being subsidized, forcing them to either cut back or leave the city. There may be some net job growth, but it is unlikely it is going to be worth $3 billion.
Nope, Amazon will increase competition which will drive up wages. Higher wages mean more income for the NYC. I still fail to see how NY would lose. And don't forget that Amazon is going to spend a lot of money in NY directly, on new building construction.
Seattle isn't anywhere near the point where Detroit is, but allowing one company to grow to be such a large portion of the local economy is a huge mistake.
Like, Boeing? "Seattle, death rattle". "The last person to leave Seattle, please turn off the lights". Yeah, these were the good times!
And don't forget that Seattle now also has a huge Google campus, there's Microsoft across the lake and tons of other software companies.
If anything, Amazon affirmed Seattle as a place for IT companies.
We didn't have the issues with homelessness before Amazon came and distorted the housing market. The housing market wasn't great, but people buying in expected to be here for the long haul, not to be buying it in lieu of a rental that they could dump when they left for more than they paid.
Oh, fuck that noise. Most homeless are not pushed out by Amazon, they are simply drug addicts and/or mentally ill. Ironically, Amazon is actually doing better than the city itself in moving people off the streets (see: "Mary's Place").
As someone who grew up in New York, I have to say that Amazon would be a weird fit. New York is one of the last places in American where a small business owner... well where you can be your own person and own your own company without being a slave to a franchise.
I'm planning on visiting the states next week with my children, we'll head to Clearwater Florida, an area I know where as I lived there for about 6 years. We make lists of things to do before going there and with the exception of Disney and the Museum of Science and Industry, all of our money is expected to be spent at chains and franchises.
When we travel to New York, we instead make plans to spend our money at family owned places. This includes pizzerias, electronic shops, etc...
New York is maybe the only place left in the entire U.S. that I've seen that people protect their family owned stores and prefer paying an extra 10% if it means shopping for groceries at a store where you know the owner personally.
Amazon will place a great deal of pressure on the environment to embrace chains. In fact, by simply having a large presence in the area, it will likely have a terrible impact on local stores as well as the health of the people in the community since it would convince people to order online and have things delivered by drone since a NY presence could mean 30 minutes or less for pretty much anything.
That said, NY wastes a massive amount of... well pretty much everything. Take a visit to Starette City and you might be horrified. Since New Yorkers have the best of everything... the best meat, the best cheeses, the best of anything since NY has always made that a core component of the culture. You can sit at most good restaurants and eat fresh Maine lobster and aged Kobe beef with fine Russian beluga caviar and it would not be considered odd to ask for such a thing. When ordering sushi, being asked "Nova Scotian, Norwegian or Japanese" regarding your salmon is a real possibility.
The single mega company brings with it a real benefit to the whole world. Grocery stores and restaurants all around the world manage their perishable items poorly. As more stores eliminate the in-store butcher, it's getting far worse. Meat, fish, dairy, vegetables etc... they are placed on display... defrosted because people want the illusion of shopping for fresh goods. People don't want to choose something from a computer screen and pick it up from a counter after it's been prepared, not when the fresh lovely colors of all the products are visible on display elsewhere.
Amazon will be able to store all perishables far longer than a grocery store which will generate substantially less waste. I've seen numbers on the order of 30% of all food is thrown away. I don't believe these numbers. I've watched grocery stores throw away 50% or more of their unsold meat and dairy.
Improves logistics from Amazon will help society as a whole, but it will eliminated hundreds of millions of jobs world wide. And this is as it should be. We need to start moving to minimizing. Commercialization is destroying us. So, as long as Amazon continues to find a way to find a balance of killing off jobs and still having someone left with money to sell to, they should be welcomed.
As for the $3 billion, that's not nearly as much money as it once was. And by simply giving it away like that, it will save New York years and tons of money trying to collect taxes from a company who has a legal team far more powerful than the state does. Remember, just because you lose a huge law suit that says you have to pay a billion dollars, it doesn't actually mean you'll pay it... you will just have to move to another negotiation that will let government right it off as a loss.
Housing, housing, housing. Even if wages go up a bit, the cost of housing goes up too. NY City isn't that far off from San Fran in that regard.
People aren't going to come flooding out of the woodwork to go to NYC if there's nowhere for them to live that makes the $150k annual salary (plus local and state taxes, ugh) palatable.
It's also not known for its software companies
NYC is the second biggest tech cluster in the world, bested only by the SF Bay Area. The heaviest concentrations are in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, and around the multiple world class universities, including Columbia and NYU.
so the talent pool is not that deep.
There are more than 300,000 tech workers in NYC, one of the deepest and widest talent pools in the world.
I still fail to see how NY would lose.
Look at the history of corporate welfare. Count the successes. Count the failures. Apply evidence-based reasoning.
The process of placing HQ2 considers cost and resources and not .. environment? Look at a sat picture of the chosen area. Its already packed full of people and civilization. How about going across the river and taking up a place in NJ? Plenty of space and an educated workforce and a local airport,Lots of Highways and .. Ok... a mediocre mass transit system. Amazon, make a solid impact on the place you chose to make your nest. See beyond the green stuff.
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
NYC is the second biggest tech cluster in the world, bested only by the SF Bay Area.
Nope, Seattle is bigger. NY labor dept puts the number of IT personnel at 73 thousand: https://www.labor.ny.gov/stats... , Seattle and Bellevue have about 100k IT workers.
IT in the Seattle area got so big that software developers are now more numerous than retail workers: https://www.seattletimes.com/s... , NYC is nowhere close to that.
Look at the history of corporate welfare. Count the successes. Count the failures. Apply evidence-based reasoning.
Actually, there are plenty of successes. Boeing, SpaceX, Tesla - all got big in part because of corporate welfare.
"Gee, it would really suck if we passed this 10% sales tax bill on online purchases, right? Also, those warehouses over there are sure to be full of illegal aliens, would be a real shame if we enforced those laws too. Wouldn't be hard for us to get Seattle to ship some executives over here".
You'd figure they'd learn dealing with literal mobsters but I guess not.
Those are hammers in a very limited sense. If you want to start someone out right, get them an Estwing. That way they get to know how to hammer correctly. When I was framing, my Estwing would drive a 16p nail in one stroke with very little effort.
Just a suggestion (and shameless plug). :)
Ideally, a starter curriculum should start away from an OS. That you picked one just shows you have a bias, no more.
Mine wasn't.
Ignore last part of previous comment. I posted that before reading this one. My sentiment about lure remains.
Actually, there are plenty of successes. Boeing, SpaceX, Tesla - all got big in part because of corporate welfare.
Good job! Now count the failures.
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First off, your point about Boeing is exactly why Amazon shouldn't be allowed to continue to grow here.
Secondly, citation needed, most of the homeless here are pushed out by housing prices. Not by drugs. It's virtually impossible to find a place anywhere in the city that normal people can actually afford to rent.
As far as Mary's Place goes, that's at best a bandage and it's mostly there so that Amazon can claim to care while doing that absolute bare minimum. In practice, due to all the high salaries and people only being hired from outside the city, the ability to afford housing is beyond the reach of many people.
''commiteed'', LOL.
You're a moron.
Guess Bezos can only handle being the extorter, not the extortee.
Best solution to the Amazon problem is for Amazon to set up HQ2 in Bangalore, India. They will find plenty of CS students there. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook should follow suit and set up shop there, too. Bangalore City will be renamed Cloud City, the AI capital of the world.
Clearly. Othing is good enough for you. Hypocritical feelgood libtard bstd
Why doesn't Amazon just threaten to release "d*ck pics" of NYC's Mayor Bill DeBlasio if Amazon doesn't get what they want?!? Ironic, given what recently happened to Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
And the silicon slopes region (two adjacent metros in Utah) has over 100k as well. Having worked in the 3 areas, though, NYC felt more advanced/competitive than the other 2.
How is âoenot paying taxesâ welfare?
Define "long run".
Quite often the companies get tax reductions or outright eliminations for N years and then close up and move somewhere else after N-1 years. IIRC, IBM did that in N. Carolina. Motorola did that in Illinois---more than once: the never really completed Harvard manufacturing plant, abandoning the large, long-lived facility in Schaumburg for Chicago and other suburbs that offered sweet tax deals. I'm sure more examples can be found. This business of playing states (and cities) against each other to receive all sorts of tax breaks, immunity from environmental regulations, etc., should be stopped. Here's hoping that states/cities do more push back like NYC is doing.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I'm just making a guess but by 'incentives' what is usually meant is 'not being required to pay taxes'.
I've always thought it a highly disingenuous attitude suggest that someone is 'getting something for free' by not paying money. It is the idea that we somehow 'owe' taxes of a certain amount to the government, because THEY provide 'Services'. Honestly I would be happy a a LOT fewer 'services' and a lot more of my own money , that I can then either spend as needed , or use to help people I know personally.
I think especially city and state but certainly federal government, should stay out of anything that requires them to enforce religious opinions on the general populous. 2 fine examples are health care and public schools. How many lawsuits about one religious freedom issue or another have we had that effects the public school system. The best solution is to get government out of it and return the money to the people. Let them self organize to educate their children.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Amazon makes deal with NYC
NYC pulls out of deal
Amazon pulls out of their side of the deal
NYC: shocked pikachu face
Come visit New Orleans....very much like that here too.
Especially on the restaurant side of things...when in NOLA proper, I rarely see a chain restaurant place to eat, unless it is a local chain.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's also not known for its software companies, so the talent pool is not that deep.
I take it you've never heard of Silicon Alley.
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The articles I can find suggest that the opposite is true:https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazons-1-billion-in-tax-breaks-does-it-pay-off-for-cities/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... Everything I have seen says that tax incentives to businesses go to large corporations while the drivers of a strong economy are small businesses and that small businesses suffer from the arrival of a new large corporation in the area.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Not everybody loses.
Life is a competition. It just is.
it's a competition at all levels from who gets the most attractive guy/girl to who gets to be top surgeon to who gets that brand spanking new Amazon HQ2.
Yes, we put in place rules to make the competition 'fair'. I can't just kidnap the most attractive spouse I want and take them. That would be unfair.
Regions never stop getting money from taxes.
So New York gives some tax breaks to a corporation. All the workers for the corporation pay income tax, sales tax, and better yet... have jobs so they don't have to rely as much on government support. At the end of the day, all taxes are paid by people. Even investors are people who pay capital gains and other taxes. The government gets its money no matter what happens. All that matters is people get to brand it corporate taxes or whatever.
At this point in history, a company who offers thousands of jobs in a region is highly valuable. What does your region offer than others don't? Why would they pick your region instead of another region?
Some regions do better than others. Educated work force. Good university system. Already existing supply chain, transit, stable government...
You can definitely limit competition if you want. Generally that means limiting trading zones, but inside your zone, it's a competition. You can definitely move away from competition and allocate it via government. Every region gets x number tech jobs and y number nursing jobs...
One could even propose that since all taxes are paid by people, set the corporate tax rate to 0 to prevent this kind of tax shopping and just tax people. About the only tax you would need is something to prevent the corporation from hoarding money. But beyond that you capture all the money by either taxing investors and employees.
The "long run" result is that once one company discovers that they can avoid taxes by pitting one locality against another in a bidding war, then all companies start to do that, and essentially what happens is that municipalities stop getting revenue from taxes. So they have to tax their residents instead. Everybody loses.
Not everybody loses. Life is a competition. It just is.
In a zero sum game, that would be true-- in that case it's a competition, some people do better, some do worse.
Society is, however, not a zero sum game. When companies pit community against community to get the best deal to avoid taxes, at the individual level, the company has won, but at the overall level, when all the companies do that, everybody loses.
(Unless you're a radical libertarian, and think the government is evil. Then not paying taxes is a good thing in and of itself-- schools and roads and sewers are evil socialism!--and the companies who manage to avoid taxes best are altruistic. Yay, tax avoiders!)
the rest of your post misses this point. You don't seem to understand prisoner's dilemma payout, where a company may have incentive to do X, but if all companies do X, everybody hurts.
and some of your post is simply baffling. "You can definitely limit competition if you want." The discussion is about one municipality competing against another municipality, but your comment goes on as if we were talking about governments limiting a company's competition against other companies. Restriction of trade is irrelevant here, because that's not what we're talking about.
Approving new building permits (cost: ~$0)
I can't agree with your cost estimate. Someone has to review the permit applications and do whatever research is needed to corroborate the application -- I'm assuming the NYC officials don't just rubber-stamp "DENY" on every application.
While I agree that NYC would be well-served to issue more building permits, that's a nuanced issue. There are a host of regulations involved -- which ones should be cut? Standards on parking availability? Requirements for low-income-affordable units in new construction? Elevator safety standards? Sprinkler systems? Clearly, you can't just ditch all standards and approve any half-assed plan.
Changing the permit standards has a cost, too. Setting aside the political infighting that will inevitably be involved, someone has to review all the current regulations and group them into critical-safety, important, expendable, and why-did-anyone-think-that-was-a-good-idea categories. That group of someones has to have engineering, construction, and infrastructure expertise (probably some other stuff I'm not thinking of, too -- I don't have expertise in any of those categories). That work of reviewing the regulations needs compensation, too.
Overall, I like the rest of your post: This is kind of a minor nitpick, TBH.
But that is exactly what it is when you make it look like a lot of fun. At some point they will find out it won't be and at that point they lose interest or they don't.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Ideally, a starter curriculum should start away from an OS. That you picked one just shows you have a bias, no more.
So you are going to teach someone to program when they have zero idea how a computer works? any mention of an operating system must be avoided. I don't think so.
You have to start somewhere. And it makes sense to start simple. A Pi is about as simple as it gets, an Arduino is simpler, but I don't think it is a good learning device for group activities.
The whole process is charming, from downloading the NOOBS Linux OS to putting the system together, to booting and running. That terminal is Linux is merely what you use to get around some things in the computer.
Your method apparently is based on writing the code on paper, then someone takes it away to a mysterious secret OS computer, then telling you if it worked or not.
Sorry, but since all the software based computing devices I know have an Operating system, you have to choose one.
Side note: You can get W10 for IoT devices on Pi, and a couple others, like RISC OS, (non Linux), or even an OS that boots to BASIC https://www.raspberrypi.org/do...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This reminds me of the Monty Python skit where the Mafia is trying to extort something from the army: https://youtu.be/cNZKUozrBl4?t... I cannot help but feel that this is what Amazon is trying to do to NYC.
Amazon should take the HQ2 to another city, perhaps in Alabama where the German rocket scientists went after World War II. The children and grandchildren of the scientists that built the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo moon landings are in Alabama, and they could handle all the AWS programming needed by Amazon and more.