New York Mayor Says Amazon Headquarters Debacle Was 'an Abuse of Corporate Power' (cnn.com)

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is still upset that Amazon isn't coming to New York. De Blasio attacked the company Sunday for canceling plans to build a second headquarters in Queens last week. From a report: "This is an example of an abuse of corporate power," de Blasio told NBC's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press." "Amazon just took their ball and went home. And what they did was confirm people's worst fears about corporate America." He made similar comments in a New York Times op-ed Saturday. Amazon canceled the deal just months after announcing plans to split its new, second headquarters between New York and Virginia. The Seattle-based company, which is trying to grow its footprint at home and abroad, spent a year reviewing hundreds of "HQ2" proposals from all over North America before settling on the two regions.

[...] On Sunday, de Blasio, a Democrat, said New York offered Amazon a "fair deal," and blamed the company for making what he called an "arbitrary" decision to leave after some people objected. "They said they wanted a partnership, but the minute there were criticisms, they walked away," he added. "What does that say to working people that a company would leave them high and dry simply because some people raised criticisms?"

Comments

Tax is for the little people

[youngone]

Amazon don't want to pay tax. They want to profit from doing business in a developed country. They just don't feel the need to help pay to maintain one:
$11.2 billion in profits means you pay -0.1% federal tax. Nice.

Re: Tax is for the little people

[Darinbob]

The part where the profits are increased because government taxes went and paid for infrastructure that they depend upon. Ie, water and sewage for their workers, roads so that workers can arrive at the plants, railroads and bridges so that their goods can be shipped out, a court system so that they can make use of a legal system when they have disputes, police and military to protect their real estate and workers, etc.

Companies do not make money in a vacuum, governments are a vital part of doing business. When a large corporation pays 0% in taxes then they are essentially free-loading off of everyone who does pay tax. Even the most staunch capital-L Libertarian will agree that this is unfair.

And don't say "comrade" as if paying taxes were synonymous with communism, that just makes any argument you had look stupid.

Re: Tax is for the little people

[youngone]

The problem with expecting the tax load to fall on everyone but the very wealthiest, is that when that idea has been tried, it ended in a succession of wars: here's an example.
One of the revolutionary demands was equality before the law, as in many monarchies in Europe the nobility were the only ones electing the legislature, and paid no tax. Bloodshed ensued.

Re: Tax is for the little people

[mlyle]

> Most of the rest goes for government giveaways.

Like the $1.2B in refundable tax credits that Amazon demanded to move to NY, and $500M in capital grants to build facilities with. It takes a long, long time of a couple percent of property tax to pay these things back, let alone pay for the services they're consuming in the meantime.

Re:Tax is for the little people

[Kohath]

The problem is, even with your fanboy defense of corporate tax fraud, you are still paying taxes. They aren't.
Focus on changing the laws so YOU pay no taxes. Don't worry about fighting their fight. They have deeper pockets and more lobbyists than you.

They won't be charged with fraud. Because they didn’t commit any fraud.

If liars can lie about Amazon, liars can lie about me or anyone else. If taxers can loot Amazon, taxers can loot me or anyone else.

No one is safe until we are all safe.

Re:Tax is for the little people

[kenh]

Amazon negotiated a 10% discount on an estimated $30 BN tax bill over the first ten years of the new HQ2/2, while the economics major AOC focused on the loss of $3 BN in tax revenues, she completely missed the net $27 BN in new tax revenues the project would bring to NY State, NY City and the residents of Queens.

Congratulations, now the Democrats are railing against Job Creation!

I like how Mayor De Blasio has decided to try and insult Amazon into returning to Queens.

As Amazon said, they were looking for a partner, they found arguments, and lost interest - they went to Plan B, which is to further build-out their Virginia and Tennessee locations instead. If De Blasio has a problem with Amazon pulling out, he should take it up with Notorious A.O.C., the new face of the Democrat Party (according to the head of the DNC).

Re: Tax is for the little people

[kenh]

Amazon entered into a 10 year deal with the City and State of New York, and over those ten years they would have paid an estimated $30 BN in various taxes and fees. Instead, NY City and State agreed to 90 cents on the dollar, AKA $27 BN over the next ten years to lure Amazon to Queens. So AOC & Friends didn't "save" NY city and state $3 BN, she cost them $27 BN in new tax revenue.

25,000 new jobs for a 10% discount on taxes, seems like an OK deal to me, but then again, I'm not an economics major like AOC is.

Re:Tax is for the little people

[youngone]

Nobody is arguing Amazon are breaking the law.
The argument is that the law ought to be different.

Re: Tax is for the little people

[srichard25]

They might not be doing anything illegal, but I disagree what they are doing is ethical. Ethical is a higher bar than legal. One of the definitions of ethical is: avoiding activities or organizations that do harm to people or the environment. So they found a loophole that allows them to avoid all federal taxes. They could chose to not use that type of loophole and pay a reasonable amount of tax to the country that allows them to make billions in profit.

Re: Tax is for the little people

[ShanghaiBill]

Seriously, nobody's fool enough to let the government be the power company.

There are plenty of places in America with government run municipal power.

Municipal electric utilities in the United States

They generally work well. Electrical power is a natural monopoly, so free market competition isn't really an alternative anyway.

Re:Tax is for the little people

[dryeo]

Higher corporate taxes results in lower wages and distribution and thus lower individual spending.

Actually higher corporate taxes results in more spending on wages, infrastructure etc as the corporation would prefer to spend their money, expand their business and write it off then give it to the government. Unlike wage earners, who basically get taxed on income, corporations get taxed on profits, or the amount left over after paying the bills including wages.

Re: Tax is for the little people

[Ichijo]

How can ordinary citizens like you and I get the same negative tax deal as Amazon?

Re: Tax is for the little people

[dcw3]

Please define "negative tax deal".

What you can do is start a company that will employ ~25000 people. You'll have municipalities calling at all hours to offer you oral sex if you put the jobs in their location.

Amazon are scum...

[b0s0z0ku]

Amazon are scum with no regard for their customers' (or is it products') privacy.
(1) Archiving/mining/sale of purchase data
(2) Selling facial recognition systems to police agencies worldwide, including in less than savory places
(3) Normalizing always-on microphones in people's homes.

I hope this is only the beginning of the backlash against Amazon and Jeff "Pic Dick" Bezos -- the ideal end game would be a big 'ol trust busting party, as was held for AT&T in the early 1980s. Split Amazon up into 10 or so companies, then move on and do the same to Google and Microsoft.

What is good for the goose

[markdavis]

>"New York Mayor...' 'This is an example of an abuse of corporate power,' de Blasio told NBC"

I suppose all these major "incentives", bonuses, express permitting, promises, tax cuts, state-funded infrastructure for private benedit, and other such things are not "an example of an abuse of government power"?

You get the idiot you voted for

[WCMI92]

That is the bottom line.

Blaming the wrong party

[MikeRT]

What does that say to working people that a company would leave them high and dry simply because some people raised criticisms

Why don't you go ask Ms. Occasional-Cortex why she and her peers lead a rage mob at them when Amazon was willing to move into a community that has an average income of $15k and create jobs there? None of the "criticisms" were sober and civilly expressed. It was typical Twitter culture rage mob with over-the-top rhetoric, vilification, etc.

And then you wonder why Amazon politely says "no, you can fuck right off and die" and leaves? Truth is, if AOC and co had been civil and demanded that the benefits package be cut in half, then had been otherwise welcoming, Amazon would very likely still be moving in. This is real life, not Twitter. You don't have Jack Dorsey and his biased admins padding your safe space every night while you sleep. There are consequences.

Re:DNC platform

[Darinbob]

The number of jobs that companies promise in exchange for tax breaks has always been a lie. The actual jobs are always a small fraction of what was originally claimed, and the promised increase in revenue to the cities never actually shows up.

If a municipality or state makes an agreement here to get new business relocated, then they should be putting in hard requirements into the deals. Ie, reduce the taxes only if the promises are kept, increasing them proportionate to how far apart the promises and reality actually are.

Politicians weasel out of this though. When the jobs don't show up the politicians never takes the blame, but just passes it along to the company ("how was I to know they didn't consider a handshake to be binding?") or to an opposing party ("they undermined me at every turn!").

Re:DNC platform

[apoc.famine]

It's worse than that. Companies often get massive investments into the infrastructure that they will need to use, which often isn't included in the original deal. Power, water and sewer, transportation, etc. The rationale is that there's budget for improving those things anyway, and might as well improve them for the company which will now have thousands of employees and a giant building complex using all that.

This means that communities which aren't near the company and which had been earmarked for infrastructure upgrades now lose out, so the company can benefit.

Who ran the numbers first?

[King_TJ]

It seems to me like a LOT of people involved with or impacted by this Amazon HQ being in, vs. leaving New York are just running off emotions and assumptions?

To determine if this was a "good deal" for NY taxpayers, you have to look at many factors and crunch all the numbers. I'm confident the likes of Cortex didn't do so, but I question if DeBlasio did either?

I mean, you have to calculate impact of the extra traffic it generates .... the extra demand on public utilities like electric power, sewer and water. You obviously have to look at how much you gave Amazon in tax breaks and benefits, vs. how much they'll really benefit the public with new jobs. (How much will you collect in taxes from the people they hire?) And if the deal wasn't struck with a clause in it that required Amazon STAY there for a number of years -- you have to try to take an educated guess about the long-term future. Many times, companies take advantage of these deals to put a business in a state, only to pull back out as soon as the perks expire.

I don't know if the HQ was a good deal of Queens or it wasn't .... but the people making the decision should sure know, and I'm not confident any of them do?

Or in other words

[cascadingstylesheet]

You wanted them to come and be your live in whipping boy, and when you bragged to your usual audiences about how badly you were going to whip them, they reconsidered for some mysterious reason.

Wasn't the government's fault

[rsilvergun]

hell, you said so in the first paragraph. The Gov't of NYC was ready to bend over backwards. Excuse me, let me rephrase that, they were ready to bend the taxpayer over backwards.

The NYC taxpayers, OTOH, took exception with what amounted to handing Amazon $3 billion dollars in return for some jobs that may or may not materialize and that, even if they did, might end up going to folks brought in from out of state. They're the ones that shut down the deal by loudly protesting and making it clear that if their "leaders" went ahead with the giveaway there'd be a blood bath at the polls next election.

Like I said on the last NYC Amazon thread, Bully for them. It's high time we start standing up to these corporate A-holes and taking our country back from them.

No, they lost out on the _potential_ revenue

[rsilvergun]

from a company with a history of not paying taxes.

The expected outcome, based on prior experience, is that Amazon would have pocketed their subsidies and then when they dried up left.

This isn't Job Creation, it's Job Extortion.

Nice right wing talking points ya got there, BTW. Even worked in some AOC there even though she had nothing to do with it except personally opposing the deal. Do you work for a right wing think tank or just parrot everything they tell you to for free?