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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.
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.
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?
"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?
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?
Amazon HQ2: Texas experience shows why New Yorkers should be skeptical ( https://theconversation.com/am... )
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.
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". )
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.
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.
Please enlighten me as to this magical state which doesn’t tax you. I know that there are stars which don’t have an income tax, but you’d better believe that they make it up in other ways.
Perhaps it’s advantageous for you in some states given your unique circumstances, but on average you’re better off finding states which spend the least as on average they’ll tax you least regardless of how they go about it.
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.
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.
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.
And when they come, somebody will have to pay for infrastructure upgrades to make it all work. If Amazon gets to keep the money they would have paid in taxes, it won't be them paying for it, now let's think a minute who might be left holding that bag...
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.
Saying that tax breaks are not a direct subsidy is a flat out lie. It this circumstance it's a bribe and for Amazon it's a "head I win tails you loose" proposition. It's just like building sport stadiums: a scam to loot the public treasury for private profit. (Just ask St. Louis or San Diego about the Rams and Chargers moving to LA.)
If you don't think that tax breaks are a subsidy then why not tax religion? Just suggest it. I dare you. Tax breaks are money in the pocket. Besides being declared as an agent of the devil by "legitimate" religious figures some nut job will do a drive by and put a bullet into your house or perhaps toss a Molotov cocktail in your direction.
Everyone who profits from sucking off the public teat is the same: they think their free ride is a natural law of the universe and any other option is a perversion of the natural order. Libertarians are just another set of blood sucking scamsters.
Why is Snark Required?
They've done a pretty thorough job of destroying Seattle
The last time I looked, Seattle is still there.
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.
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.
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.
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.
why not tax religion? Just suggest it. I dare you
Tax religion. Go for it. Treat them as exactly what they are: Profit generating businesses.
Better yet, regulate them. Prevent them from preying on vulnerable people and forbid them from self-policing. Maybe we can reduce the numbers of children abused.
I'd happily vote for this.
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.