The commenters who are criticizing the New York City activists and politicians who spoke out against the Amazon deal should note that the 25,000 jobs would have been realized over 10 years, with a possible, repeat possible, total of 40,000 in the future. The publication “Curbed” estimates that the city and state would be paying Amazon $48,000 per job. Take a look at “Curbed’s” excellent exposition of the deal:
https://ny.curbed.com/2018/11/16/18098589/amazon-hq2-nyc-queens-long-island-city-explained
Mr. Covert is right. It’s a race to the bottom to see who can curry favor with rich corporations and pour more money into their already full coffers. Cities and states need to wake up.
3
That was Rick Perry's claim to fame when he ran for president. He boasted how he, as governor of Texas helped create jobs.
What he actually did was enticed corporations to relocate to Texas by giving them large tax incentives. In essence what Perry did was move jobs from another state to Texas. Beware of governors like Rick Perry.
3
I guess all the people who opposed this deal already have good jobs and don't care very much about whether other people get good opportunities. Chasing away Amazon will go down in history as one of the greatest acts of governmental malpractice in history. The state senators and council members who are responsible should be held accountable.
4
These deals never work out for the little guy. The subway will not be built. Instead Amazon buses and Ubers will take the execs to their towers in the sky. Downstream jobs will be little more than contract work with no benefits or retirement. Each year Amazon will demand more for less...best to pull out now.
29
WHAT are you talking about Bryce? Amazon had a deal negotiated with NYC representatives. A 'segment of the populous' made noise about it, so Amazon decided it was time to move on.....who in their right mind wouldn't? It's not up to Amazon to solve the myriad issues in NYC and 'the world'. Wake up !
5
Moral outrage about incentive packages, no. Too many low level pigs came to the trough. 25 thousand jobs and all the lateral jobs, delis, Uber and Lift, Yellow Cabs, cleaners, caterers, restaurants. The list goes on. What have you tolerated, Citibank with 250K jobs and 500k bonuses. What was Citi's role in driving out the lime light completion? Small foolish politicians manipulating the uninformed. A symbol, just like Trump's wall and equally deceiving and devastating. Gentrification will still take place, only difference is the right people will be paid off. At the end of the day, just like coal miners without jobs, people without apartments will still vote for the slobs that sold them out.
2
What's funny about all of this is the impression that Amazon was doing NYC a favor by relocating here.
Never mind that NYC offers a superior the talent pool.
Never mind that NYC offers a superior geographic location.
Never mind that NYC is America's global city.
New York offered plenty in this deal -- we offered ourselves. But that was not enough for Amazon; they needed cash, too. Well good riddance, Amazon. We will survive, just as we do without Walmart.
6
In many cases "jobs" is a four letter word. It is used to justify practically anything and everything, from raping the environment, unnecessary defense spending or just creating more or worse traffic jams.
In the case of Amazon and NYC the price would be greater housing costs, more strain on an already overburdened infrastructure and gentrification, not to mention paying $3billion dollars for the privilege. NYC refused to pay this price and good for it!
6
" New York Doesn’t Need Amazon’s Sweetheart Deal"
Well, that's good because you're not getting it.
And other states are not going to follow your lead - (that's your myopic, New York style collective bargaining like thought process that really doesn't work anywhere besides places like NY and Chicago)
There's a reason why businesses are fleeing California and New York for place like Texas and this is the poster child for that movement if ever there was one...
There you go suckers... you voted for it and this is how you are repaid. Overwhelming majority wanted the economic boon of Amazon in their backyard and a few ideologues defied their constituents wishes to advance their political agenda.
Bring it to Texas. We'll welcome with open arms and a business friendly environment...
And yes... we're over here laughing at you while you cut off your nose to spite your face.
4
Corporate welfare certainly sucks and Amazon has decimated industries, but this was about forking over a $3 billion welcome gift in order to make $27 billion. $24 billion ain't all that bad, is it? I guess our city, built from day one on commerce, is feeling so good about itself that it can let that money walk over to Newark or Virginia or wherever. Not sure when the greatest city in the world got so naive or decided to feel so threatened by one company.
8
If anyone wants to know how much public officials have given away in tax abatements, brownfield credits, etc., you don't have to wait for the NY Times to report it. Beginning a couple of years ago, the annual cost of those credits is a required disclosure on every government entity's financial statements including townships, cities, counties, and school districts. For example, on the 2017 State of Michigan's financial statements the 2017 annual total was more than $700 million. Yet, here in Michigan we don't have the money to repair our crumbling roads and fund our schools to prepare our children Amazon headquarter type jobs.
In the last two years, my township's (population 79,000) public officials approved tax abatements costing about $1.8 million per year for the next 12 years: $22.5 million total including $9 million for Amazon for 1000 fulfillment center $13/hour jobs.
5
We would have paid Nada and we just lost 25,000 Jobs.
The incentive was not that NY pays any money to amazon it is just that amazon would get tax incentives.
We don't need left wackies with wild green dreams as leaders we need Jobs.
That is one of the reasons Trump became president. The public is sick and tired with these politicians that are stiffening our economy with their idealism.
4
A lot of us here in Chicago were perfectly happy not to have been chosen for HQ2. Yeah, we could have had this -- this wrenching controversy. Now we sit here and giggle at New York's comedic adventure with this.
Thank you New York for leading the way, and ultimately casting some daylight on these obscene incentives being offered everywhere. Just look at the unfolding Foxconn scandal in Wisconsin which toppled the state's governor.
4
NYC will be just fine without Amazon. We don't need them. Smaller more isolated cities would readily enhance their financial power with a new headquarters but not NYC. It wouldn't add anything more than it would take away. Cornell University's Roosevelt Island campus is a much more thoughtful pursuit than an Amazon. I questioned the 25K jobs from the beginning. God knows how often NY'ers get lied to for extra tall glass residential towers and promises of fairer housing and employment. We give and give and give with our enormous tax base. Let's get something in return for a change. Imagine using some of our economic might to help NY homeless families, NY farmers, struggling veterans, our special needs population and our schools. Why do politicians seem to forget that our streets and subways are filled with what? Tax payers people!!
3
I know this is an opinion piece but it's very disappointing and not up to The Times' standards even as such. It cites to "reams of evidence" that incentives don't work. I clicked on the alleged evidence, one hyperlink which was a paper summarizing a database effort that mostly looked at the trend and focus of incentives and tax cuts, rather than whether incentives actually worked. There's a very short section talking generally about the impact of incentives but it doesn't seems to reach a clear conclusion. In the actual conclusion section it urges more thoughtful targeting of incentives as follows: "Incentives are still far too broadly provided to many firms that do not pay high wages, do not provide many jobs, and are unlikely to have research spinoffs." Aren't those exactly the types of things that the Amazon deal would have provided? This wasn't just 25,000 jobs, this was New York gaining a foothold into the exciting technologies and businesses that are going to increasingly dominate the future and employ bright college graduates. I guess those grads will just have to move somewhere else to get these opportunities.
3
Activists have clearly demonstrated to large corporations thinking of moving their business to NYC that it just may not be worth the hassle.
2
Amazon wasn't bluffing ever.
They opened up to bids from different cities, New York produced the bid - then when it was selected, it proved to be a false bid they didn't want to live up to.
New York was bluffing, and counting on Amazon to be so committed that they'd agree to new terms, very vague terms (must be innovative). Amazon called that bluff declining.
1
It's been pointed out that tax credits aren't the same as buying some grotesquely rich NFL owner his own football stadium. A $3 billion tax credit isn't money spent; it's future tax revenues going away.
Here's an idea. Why not require companies like Amazon to pay those taxes first -- as soon as contracts are signed -- and then refund those taxes in the years ahead as those credits come due? Wouldn't all that cash go a long way to upgrading infrastructure, building / improving schools, transportation and most of all housing?
Would that even work?
2
The flip side of taxes is government services. But the two are seldom connected in our national discussions. The Amazon deal proposed to reduce Amazon's tax contribution to the community even while Amazon's presence would impose large demands on public services and infrastructure. Other taxpayers would cover the resulting deficit. That lose-lose would be the immediate impact on the community. In the long run maybe additional economic activity from Amazon's presence would offset that negative impact. Or maybe not. The residents didn't buy it.
Come out to Janesville, WI, Paul Ryan's former district, and see how the Foxconn deal is working out for the community. Pretty much nothing going on, but a lot of costs incurred by the community.
8
Both sides seem to make a convincing argument. But doesn't it come down to the numbers, baby!! Companies invest to make a profit in the long term. Why shouldn't cities? If New York invests three billion in incentives and comes out with six or seven billion along with 25,000 jobs, new neighborhood businesses that employ many and real estate development in the surrounding area worth billions, is there something wrong with that?
2
Are you sure the jobs would have been high tech? I'm in an Atlanta burb and know Amazon has a presence here because they can deliver to me next day. They have their own Amazon-branded delivery vehicles. I'm pretty sure the sorting, packaging and delivery people aren't the people making high end dollars. These folks probably can find comparable wages and jobs someplace else. Every dollar they don't have to spend on delivery is money saved. Cheaper to load up at their place and send their people pr contractors out than pay UPS or FEDEX.
I'm not against Amazon. I love that I can find anything from a lost tv remote to a LAN cable at a reasonable cost by just clicking and it's here quickly. But in this Trump era I'm suspicious of "deals". Corporations benefit in tax cuts, housing goes up so you can hardly afford it esp in places like NYC and where I lived, Northern VA. My little 2-bedroom townome, all I could afford, in Northern VA doubled in price within 10 years to $340k; I sold it in 5 days.
So who holds the corporations to what they promise once they get what they want.
Jeff Bezos was an innovator. If no deals means Amazon's prices go up, so be it. Another innovator will come along. Buyer beware. What Trump has taught us if nothing else. Compare what you're getting vs what you're giving up before you sign on the dotted line.
2
The Amazon deal was made by Bezos because he got more than he was giving up. If it were not financially profitable for the company he would not have signed the papers. The idea of politicians who are without any business experience making a financial deal with one of the nation's premier businessman and think that they getting a good deal is the definition of hubris.
Those who cast aspersions on Bezos because he turned tail so rapidly are being unfair in their expectations of him. There would be prolonged disputes between the company and the community in the future. That is hardly the way for the company to carry the image of good citizen. The cancelation of the deal was in best interest of all parties except for the mayor and the governor, who lose the acclaim they never deserved..
1
Snub your nose at jobs, NYC. Your subways and ports are filthy, and yet Amazon desperately wanted you. (Yes, it's no secret Amazon always wanted to be in NYC). And unlike Seattle, you have rent control. Remember this, voters.
3
If you believe in capitalism, then you must embrace the Amazons of the world.
1
Maybe this writer is a product of bad schools; 3 billion in tax incentives for 27 billion in additional tax revenues (plus the fact that investment brings more investment).
Note to New Yorkers, Amazon doesn't love you it loves your incentives (bribes).
3
Who cares about Amazon jbs when you’re entitled to a”universal basic income” by taxing the rich?
Those foolish enough to want employment should send their job applications to Ocasio-Cortez and the other politicians who scuttled the deal.
5
The use of the term "sweetheart deal" is appropriate here because yeah, if there is someone you are "sweet" on, then sometimes you need to work at wooing them, getting their attention and involvement, just sit back in some pique of self-importance and decide you are the cat's meow and they are just going to have to figure it out themselves is not the recipe for romantic success.
I actually agree that these huge incentive packages are bad things and I would like to see them disappear too, but I'm sorry ... WHO called WHO"S bluff?!? This writer is borderline delusional. Just call a spade a spade: to continue the sweetheart analogy, you played hard to get, and the object of your affection got fed up and moved on.
Maybe his divorce lawyers advised him against the deal!!
No, Bryce. It's called cutting off your nose to spite your face. Net profit to the state and city coffers would have far outweighed the tax breaks.
2
In other words, the cities should unionize? Tough order, but you are on to something. How does it happen?
It's only a "bluff" if you relent and give in...Amazon didn't "bluff"!
NYC did!
1
Businesses are getting a little cozy with the following proposition:
"We - the owners and shareholders - want to get ridiculously rich, so what are you going to do about it? What are you doing for me lately?"
I say: toss them out. There is a limit to "rugged individualism for you, you pay for my losses, and I keep all my gains, and you subsidize everything I do."
At least Foxconn (see recent evidence from Wisconsin) has the integrity to say they are con artists in their names.
Amazacon! Take a hike. We won't miss ya.
1
Sorry Ms. Covert, but I think you drew the short straw on this assignment.
From what I've read so far from other bloggers' comments a new "pick me! pick me!" beauty contest has already began as Amazon regroups to find a new city which won't be offended by its presence.
It's really pathetic that The Big Apple capitulated to a handful of so-called activists who want to prevent progress at any cost. The Big Apple became a big rotten, sour apple once again.
And how many jobs would Amazon have destroyed in New York City? Amazon shows that capitalism is sick to the core. Drop dead, please.
2
It is really entertaining to watch the NYT try to spin this into some positive. For some reason I don't think Paul Krugman will be writing a piece on this..
Just so you know, at the very least NY lost an amazing ROI, a once in a generation opportunity to expand the city and its jobs in one deal.
At the worst, you regressed, not only losing billions in tax dollars (that could've been used for redistribution or infrastructure repair) but amplifying an anti-business, anti-capitalism attitude that will severely hamper your city in this century.
I really hope its not the latter..
And lest the citizens living in the capitol of capitalism forget, cities in the United States compete for jobs. Taking yourself out of the race doesn't change reality.
2
Ridiculous. These jobs and the taxes these people would be paying would help improve "education and infrastructure." Ask the people of Seattle. The lab experiment has been done. Arrogance and ignorance.
“Handouts” – ala the ACA – involve getting someone else’s $$, not keeping your own. Amazon was NOT on course to get one thin dime of “New York’s money”; it was only going to be allowed to keep its own money.
Can't have that.
NYC’s “victory”? Only someone from The Nation could aver that foreswearing 25K jobs and billions in wages and investment is a “victory”.
You know what happens when cities prosper instead of languishing? Rents increase.
If Amazon came to Newark, likely not one additional child would enter a Newark (public) school. Newark is already building a lot of new, pricey housing; it could certain do with building a lot more. And while NJT has its problems, those mostly relate to getting into NYC; getting people to Newark is cake.
A “truce” in the incentive wars simply means companies go where the economics are best, probably to the low tax states which are already cleaning the tri-state area’s clock.
And NY NJ ALREADY spend more money on schools than any jurisdictions on the planet – with pathetic results. Curiously, people are not flocking to these states, but queuing up to leave.
Repeatedly, we’ve seen what attracts business and produces prosperity: low taxes, few mandates or regulations: freedom. We’ve tried The Nation’s recipe for decades and the catastrophic results speak for themselves.
NY called Amazon's bluff? You only call when you have a winning hand. Amazon's got all the chips; NY went all in, and lost.
3
Does AOC understand that 3B dollars is not saved or realized without Amazon doing business in NYC in the first place?? Soooo there is no magical 3B dollars to use for ?? anything??
2
Want to sacrifice the good for the perfect? Follow the ideologues, left or right, down that rabbit hole and you'll reach your destination every time.
1
NY should not be giving $3 billion to Amazon...No !
1
Bravo New York!!
1
Actually, Amazon called New York's bluff. Amazon holds all the cards and can set up their business anywhere and get the same or better deal than New York gave them . New York is left to deal with blowhards like Ocasia-Cortez who have never produced anything but have shown capacity to destroy.
1
New York City fell on its sword and that was the end of the monk. The mark of New York City's decadent cultural Marxist spiral into the past.
1
Clearly you don't understand tax incentives. This wasn't "costing" the taxpayers - it was allowing Amazon to keep their own money. But then, I guess NYC can pass on the income tax revenue from 25,000 jobs. Once again, AOC has demonstrated her stupidity which has now become taken for granted. It certainly explains why those who elected her are rejoicing that Amazon bailed. Apparently they don't need good jobs.
1
No Tax Incentives for American Companies to create jobs, but; FREE College Tuition and Legal Counsel for Illegal Aliens! Race to the bottom? More like Race to the Cliff!
1
The headline should be revised: Amazon finally calls NYC's Bluff! I'm sure that must have been a typo.
As a native New Yorker, I applaud the outcome. The vibrancy of a flourishing middle class was chipped away at and ruined by corporate demands. I saw it with my very eyes. Even the data confirms it. The author is correct on all counts. Now, it is up to a divided nation to stop killing one another slowly. That is not competition. That is stupidity.
1
Would it not be helpful and working with the situation to address the comments? Just walking away doesn't seem OK. Thanks.
Bryce
What about the multiple incentives that the NYT has received in NY over the years, is that OK by your standards? Or is the NYT not subject to the same scrutiny that you apply?
Amazon's thumbs down on the Socialist Republic of New York is very understandable-- if you don't. It's really bad news--the writer doesn't seem to comprehend consequences. Some day soon, you are going to beg Republican Giuliani to come back and fix it all over again... May be he'll say "Drop Dead" this time...
1
This will be the poster event for those who say, now with absolute evidence, that liberals have lost their minds. AOC, who is a poster child for a lousy education with her degree in economics, will become the new Nancy Pelosi as a political figure we can all crack jokes about. When Andrew Cuomo declares a liberal as a selfish politician, Democrats have clearly jumped the shark.
Between this idiotic stance against capitalism, the now exposed policy of infanticide, not to mention the hypocrisy of the handling of black face and sexual allegations against those within their ranks, and the crazy Green New Deal, Americans are rapidly getting full exposure to what their party actually represents. There’s not much good for the average person. Viva Trump.
2
As all REAL New Yorkers know, Amazon should pay US to come here, not visa versa! Good riddance to that and put the $3 billion into our infrastructure!!!
1
Amazon bashers – why don’t you now have your legislators blackball Amazon from delivering to NYC? That would really put your money where your mouth is.
4
Only Democrats would say no to jobs, LOL.
2
Ms. Covert is either completely ignorant of how the $3B of tax incentives were structured or intentionally deceitful in how she presented them in this piece. New York was not going to pay Amazon $3B. The $3B was a reduction of future taxes Amazon would pay NY on future profits. So it was simply allowing Amazon to keep more of its own profits in the future. I can't believe the editors of the NYT allowed such a dishonest and/or misinformed (pick your poison) article to be published.
2
I was going to come to NYC for the US Open tennis tournament in Queens. But I'm canceling the trip - I'd hate to increase traffic and bring money into Queens which might raise prices. Hey! Backlash to Trump will give the Democratics the right to lead for the next decade, unless they do stupid, moronic things like THIS!!
Funny....I thought Amazon told N.Y.C. to get lost...
I recall when the east/west coast libs made fun of the rust belt when they lost jobs, I guess the rust belt can start laughing as well
Progressives like AOC have no understanding of basic economics and failed our community. They have failed our youth who would have benefited greatly not just from the thousands of 100k salary jobs but from all the jobs created in the area to support this evdeavor. Who among you is so stupid you would not give 3 billion in incentives over 25 years to get a return of 27 billion projected over that time? This is a sad day for the youth and small business owners of the area. Bitter progressives wanting to prove how much power they have will now spin this until their groupies are dizzy. They need to be voted out.
2
Wow, how does the board select opinions to write? People keep conflating this deal to be equivalent to the monies promised by local politicians to sports stadiums. Those are directly paid for by tax payers, and it is an outrage. This is/was different - it was a tax reduction/credit. It wasn't money that sitting somewhere waiting for an open hand. And the taxes that would have come, the new industry brought, to a city that is already too expensive and run down would have been a good deal. I'm tired of idiots just blabbering about 'hate the rich' 'hate the corporations' 'hate the whites' ' hate the men' 'hate the elderly' 'hate the boomers' 'hate [etc.'
When did the Dem party become the party of hate? The Reps certainly have a right wing of extremists that spout hate, or at least intolerance. But the Dems have gone full on with their hatred of all. That's what the new democratic socialist party is all about - attack, condemn, moralize, and control. Do not offer any solutions, do not compromise. YIKES!!!
What's wrong with America in a nutshell...and we think we're different from Mexico, Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and name another country we deem corrupt. We are the same. The bloody same. Tammany hall, you're not so far away, are you....Lindsay, Koch, Giuliani, De Blasio. "We won't get folded again..." Only every election, greed, political interests. That's New York, New York. Sing it Frank!
Golly gee, how we ever gonna Make Amurkia Great Again if we don't worship at the altar of The Holy Corporation? Don't forget, as the Supreme Court has instructed us: corporations are people too. So New York City, in addition to your heretical blasphemy, you are just plain rude to a generous person. Smack smack, bad bad!
"There’s little correlation between cutting deals with big companies and improving a state’s employment or income picture. Most incentives go to employers that would have come to the state, anyway."
Is there a coloration between 25,000 high paying jobs and economic growth?
I agree that New York doesn't need Amazon's sweetheart deal, but that doesn't mean that the deal was bad for New York.
In fact, it's the exact opposite.
New York not needing the Amazon deal is precisely why New York was able to strike such an economically favorable deal. There's no reason for New York to give away the store.
Why else do you think so many cities offered far more in incentives to Amazon?
Those places didn't have the leverage, the draw, that New York has. Those places *needed* Amazon, so they almost certainly overextended themselves. Those deals would have been bad for those cities if they happened.
Situations where neither party "needs" the other are situations where good deals tend to be made because both sides respect each other and both sides can walk away without being too badly damaged. When need is one-sided, then one party is disadvantaged and overexposed to the whims of the other.
The last thing any negotiator wants is to desperately need whatever the other person is offering. This is obvious.
Implying that Amazon backing out of the deal is good for New York because New York didn't need the deal misses one of the most important elements of the deal.
1
while your "race to the bottom" point has some merit, you are hurting the public discourse by perpetuating the too often repeated misstatement that the amazon deal was going to cost NY $3bn. In fact, $2.5bn of the $3bn was structured as a discount against future taxes of about $27bn.
Despite making $11.2 billion in profits, Amazon will not pay any federal income taxes for the second year in a row. In fact, the federal government will likely pay tax to Amazon in the form of a $129 million federal income tax rebate.
Good bye and good riddance.
1
Some good points but what you suggest is collusion. Example: What if cell phone service providers also "call a truce" on price competition?
My hunch is that most of the 25,000 jobs (which would take years to develop, btw) would be in warehouses and delivery vans. For Amazon to deliver on its promises of near-instant delivery, it needs warehouses located very close to customers. These are not high-paying jobs, and Amazon is already reviled by its warehouse workers. Good call, New York, though people who want two-hour delivery of everything will disagree. Another company will find a better use for that LIC land. Next!
1
@Magpie So why do you think they would ever put a warehouse in NYC?
Why would the performance of economic incentive programs in Kansas have anything to do with the performance of an economic incentive program in New York City?
New York City has more than twice the population of that entire state crammed into an area less than 5% of the size and a city economy that produces more than 15x what Kansas's state economy produces.
The effects of a company moving here compared to Kansas will obviously be very different because of the various factors that make New York City an economic powerhouse and Kansas, well, not. (The same logic softens the argument that Amazon would "destroy" New York like it did Seattle.)
It's disingenuous to use that study to support your claim that tax incentive deals "don't have the intended impact" when that study has nothing to do with such programs being applied in a highly developed urban area.
Looking for the best deal for its 25,000 jobs, Amazon was following in the footsteps of Boeing, another famous Seattle company. Boeing invited states to compete for a new plant, which, I believe, was to manufacture the so-called Dreamliner. Boeing shamelessly let states offer benefits galore, but what Boeing was ultimately looking for and got was a nonunion, right-to-work state, South Carolina. But Boeing was not through because its executives--a rapacious lot--saw an opportunity to hawk the headquarters itself, and that is why the Boeing company is still mostly in Washington State but the headquarters is in Chicago. Boeing also discovered that it in fact needed its high-skilled, unionized workers in Washington when the plan to outsource the parts of the Dreamliner to other countries fell apart, and the Washington State engineers and skilled workers were desperately needed to figure out how to assemble a plane with parts that did not work or did not fit together. Of course nobody lost their job in the executive suite, and they continued to collect huge salaries for their own shoddy work.
Every time I drive by Citi Field I cringe at its ugliness and experience a somewhat painful nostalgia for the former Shea Stadium. Citi Field is a monument to corporate indifference to the desires of the populace in American cities. Its exoskeleton of black girders and its back yard vista that consists of a kind of billboard glut, including one electronic tower aimed at passing motorists on Northern Boulevard and the ramps to nearby highways show a complete indifference to civic beauty and a blind passion for advertising dollars. Worst of all is the painful awareness that we paid for it with our tax dollars. Cuomo and DeBlasio expected business as usual with the Amazon venture. Both men feel they have mastered the art of combining a veneer of progressivism with an underlying loyalty to the globalist agenda to which we are finally seeing worldwide protests.
1
What guarantees does Amazon provide in exchange for the $3 billion? What if they only hire 15000 in NY? What if they decide to lay off thousands in a few years? Are the projections of increases in tax revenue/payback accurate? Even if one is OK with this kind of arrangement, the numbers have to be real and work. If Bezos is unwilling to make the case to the public for $3 billion payout, he's not someone with whom you can do business.
2
Having lived in Seattle before and after the Amazon presence, I can genuinely say from experience, that Seattle is a much, much better place now than in pre-Amazon days. It's an incredible difference now, and in a good way.
I think the people fighting against Amazon in NYC have a weird affection for the old days of NYC when rent was really cheap, but crime and drug use was rampant. Police weren't anywhere, and walking down NYC streets at night was dangerous. That nostalgia I find bizarre. Some current politicians against Amazon weren't even alive back in those days, so they don't have a real-life experience to base their opinions on, except what they have seen in a few major movies.
I hated Guliani, but he really cleaned up the city and made it safer. Bloomberg continued the right approach. Blasio and some vocal inexperienced politicians on the other hand... are taking us to a bad place. Letting Amazon walk away from this deal is truly a mistake that NYC will find detrimental, especially if a recession hit the city and someone like Blasio is in charge... god forbid.
2
Go west young man. Bezos can afford to start from scratch and found his own city. Wyoming, for example, has lots of room and a small population. It's beautiful country. A company the size and wealth of Amazon should not be allowed to grow on top of an aging overwhelmed infrastructure built and paid for by our grand parents during FDR's New Deal. I hope Americans have finally realized these oligarchs are not our friends and stop supporting them.
1
Amazon is not philanthropic in any way, shape or form, They are as greedy, if not greedier than any other corporation. Guess what? That's why they are where they are. Giving out tax breaks is an exercise in holding your nose for any city, but the long term benefits far outweigh the moments of breathing that foul aroma. This is as sure an indicator of why Trump will get re-elected. The democrats are splintering two years in advance of the election! Hard to believe I'm saying this, but get ready for two terms.
1
Good job NY! You don't need high paying jobs and the ensuing tax revenue. You don't want your real estate prices escalating and making you wealthier.
No, you want AOC ragging on about how oppressed you are.
You should follow her advice about taxing the rich too. Don't worry. They're not smart enough to move to a lower tax destination.
Good luck, NY.
1
Clearly the writer doesn't play poker and doesn't know what the word bluff means. If anything, the bluffing was being done by everyone else at the table. Amazon looked at the other players as they were bluffing and raising their bets and decided to leave the table at "pre-flop" (ironic?) leaving only a penny ante and the remaining players to deal with the flop.
Local and state leaders will never wake up to the futility of these kinds of deals because states compete for talent, for companies, and the future. If you ain't play the game, you lose. Maybe that's the problem with NY, the best of times are behind it - lack of good infrastructure, crazy housing costs, high taxes, dysfunctional political system as the local and state levels, etc. NY needed Amazon. It's a shame.
1
I wish the author of this column had actually read the NY Times. The NYT ran an interesting article about all the industries that NYC used to be #1 in. I knew about our ports and shipyards that used to be #1. I didn't know that we used to be #1 in Beer production. Other states became more competitive and lured those industries away. The Beer industry example was from the 1900s. The idea of cities and towns luring companies and creating jobs in their neck of the woods is hardly recent. This one was just newsworthy because of the scope. 25,000 jobs and 3 Billion in tax relief (but tens of Billions in taxes on those employees and mucho spending dollars).
We had a chance to lure one from the West Coast but the local politicians and one 29 year old "superstar" Representative decided to stick it to Amazon. 25,000 high paying jobs, all gone. What a waste. What arrogance!
1
You know who else is saying "Goodbye, New York"? Tens of thousands of native-born New Yorkers who can't find a decent job and are sick of paying the exorbitant taxes for the "privilege" of living in the "Empire State".
Once gone, they won't be back...
1
"Other cities should follow New York’s lead."
Another genius speaks.
Other cities will welcome Amazon and other employers.
2
Amazon is welcome in New York - just not to the tune of 3 billion in subsidies.
It's time we tax-payers said the same to all private businesses. I don't mind paying to have my garbage picked up. I do mind when I have to pay so that Amazon, Google, the NFL, or any other profitable business can reduce their costs.
2
New Jersey offered a location near Newark with $7 billion in tax incentives, yet Amazon picked the NYC spot 10 miles away and with only $3 billion in tax incentives.
Clearly tax incentives were not a driving factor for Amazon in choosing a location.
Attracting incremental jobs does not have to mean requiring taxpayers to play servant to business leaders. Businesses should engage with communities in a mutually beneficial and respectful fashion. Amazon did not do that.
1
Bryce Covert and other commentators are long on opinion
but short on fact.
If the numbers were presented clearly, particularly that the
25K jobs would pay local workers more than $10 billion cash each year to spread around the local economy and tax bases,
the $3 billion incentives would be seen in a more positive
framework, and not just as a gross bribe with public money.
There are lots of reasons to object to large companies, and
lots of problems in NY, but cash flow from this deal would
clearly favor New York. Writers should look for other reasons
to cheer about its collapse.
1
Amazon doesn't need the tax breaks, as questioned by the author. It's important to remember that NY offered the tax breaks as an incentive to bring Amazon to NYC. Does anyone really think that Amazon should have said "No, we won't take your tax break offer"? Not likely. Whether the jobs and economic expansion would be worth the benefits will now be unknown forever but I don't think that anyone should blame Amazon for accepting an offer that was offered to them.
An equally large concern should now be whether Amazon's experience with New York will make other companies rethink whether New York is a desirable possible location.
2
NYC has shown it is run by greedy, incompetent people. The tax incentives were not a payment, it wasn't coming from the tax payers, it was 3 billion dollars of Amazon's own money being credited back to them instead of being paid in taxes. That's what a tax incentive is, and it was a paltry amount when stacked next to the expected tax revenues the company would generate. The income taxes from the jobs created alone would more than offset the tax incentive (which was set to expire after 10 years anyway).
Then there were people claiming Amazon would simply bring in outsiders to fill those 25,000 jobs, as though moving to NYC to access local talent was not the whole reason they moved to the east coast. Yes they probably would bring some people out east from Seattle, to ensure the company culture remained constant between the two HQs, but so what? Once they moved to NYC they would pay income tax, sales tax, and property tax regardless of whether they were born in NYC or not. Is NYC so stuffed with overweening pride they don't even want immigrants' tax money? Even if their taxes pay to fix their decaying subway systems and public schools?
People blame Amazon for the homeless problem in Seattle, as though Amazon controls the zoning laws preventing new affordable housing from being built in city limits. The NIMBYs complain about how bad traffic is, how high rent is, then stymie any attempt to fix the issue because it means changing how the city has done things for the last 30 years
4
The residents and local businesses in the area did not want them.
2
It's a good thing this deal fell through. Giving away $3 billion in tax incentives is a terrible waste, especially when one is giving it to a huge and very profitable corporation. This is an escalation of tax giveaways that is a quantum leap from what states like Missouri and Kansas have been doing - which have only exacerbated the moving of companies a few miles across the border at taxpayer expense. One of the worst was a $6 million giveaway to a theater chain in Missouri, which then moved a few miles across the border into Kansas -- and a few years later was acquired by a Chinese company. So all that tax benefit ultimately went to a foreign country.
2
So many people rushing to the defense of a trillion $ monopoly in these comments. Never ceases to shock me how many Americans love to defend billionaires and huge corporations as if they care about regular folks.
We should all demand more, ask hard questions - why a company that made $12B in profit last year needs a penny to set up offices in a new city? Do us ordinary folks get tax breaks when buying a house in another city? No - we pay taxes instead.
6
@Justin Wrong. Many states are paying people to come.
@Tom Also trust me, NY aint paying people to come. Except maybe more billionaires.
1
@Tom That hardly makes it right. Just tells how corrupt our current system is. Bribes to trillion $ companies.
1
Hmm..interesting mind at work there.
So if you were to invest $1000 today that would earn your $10,000 over the next 20 years..you wouldn't do it?
Most people would consider it an annuity and based on the success of Amazon's growth...all those managers getting stock options who will have to exercise them some day and pay NYC and NY state taxes...would likely put that return on your $1000 investment closer to $15,000.
Or you can stick the money under your mattress.
1
An imperfect deal - Yes.
A deal to walk away from - absolutely not.
If NYC is such a great deal for any company without incentives - as the critics seem to suggest - then there would be a long line of companies waiting to move to NYC so that it and its employees could join the fun in paying taxes that are already some of the highest in the nation. I don't think that is occurring. NYC doesn't even make the top 20 list for preferred cities to locate or start a business.
I hope that the local political ambitions of few don't ruin it for the rest of NYC. A single may not be as good as a home run, but it is better than a strikeout.
1
Amazon paid no taxes, got a 100k refund. Of course, they passed these savings on to their workers-- just kidding, all their low wage workers paid taxes.
2
If the folks who run Amazon and other highly successful corporations had a shred of patriotism they wouldn't play the extortion game. Furthermore the dotcoms are killing the brick and mortars that actually pay property taxes and don't extort sweetheart deals from desperate cities.
It's all part of our national race to the bottom.
2
This is a sterling example of the kind of Democratic politics that has saddled us with 35 years of rancid republican government. The incentives are necessary not because they are fair or just but because the city will come out ahead as a result of doing it and because they are what the competition does. Placing a major tech campus where Amazon wants to build does exactly what the city needs exactly where it needs it. To scream giveaway is about as spitefully enviously perverse as it can get. Reagan and his tax tomfoolery which we still haven't lived down came about when Democrats refused to confront the reality of bracket creep. And why? Because it was a giveaway.
There is an old joke that goes; A guy walks into the New York library and asks for a library card. The librarian says; "Sure, I just need some kind of proof that you are from New York." So the guy stabs the librarian.
Personally, I'm glad that New York is so self-righteous they think that they can prosper without high tech jobs and thereby continue the city's path of growing irrelevance. Culturally, New York has become a national headache. The music scene ranges from watery and dull to pretentious and dull. The New York art scene is excessive and stifling and the New York fashion world is so out of touch with reality that they make the white house seem grounded.
I think the nation actually owes a big 'Thank You' to New York for their self-defeating behavior. It makes way for a less pretentious and more creative city (think Austin, TX) to have a big opportunity for growth.
3
Cities....Quit giving away everything to big business to relocate!
Often they leave when the tax holiday ends. They hardly ever live up to the promises made to municipalities. Finally, these corporations leave the community with less jobs, tax base and resources than they had before. The pathetic obsequiousness of cities to these poor corporate citizens should stop. Let corporations pay their way...like the rest of us.
4
New York wasn't giving away three billion it had in the pocket. That was the potential money if Amazon had come to LIC. Now, not only there is no billions, there are no jobs and associated economic growth. Here is a prime example why socialism is much worse than capitalism. If progressive are not careful they are going to lose even minority (Asian, Hispanic, and also Black) middle class votes on this issue.
2
The real name for the company is OCTOPUS. NYC fortunately has escaped its grip.
2
The NYC pols who polished their populist bona fides by sticking it to the man (Bezos) decided that all of nothing is better than (a big) part of something. NYC offered Amazon no special treatment: just statutory, as-of-right incentives available to anyone. As for subsidizing only "needy" companies, they're the ones least likely to come through with jobs, go belly up, and leave nothing for the city and state to "claw back" as punishment. Oh the howls we would hear then.
1
This Virginian doesn’t want New York’s share. The Crystal City deal has the same problems the NY one did, and it’s already damaging important community entities in Arlington. Why do cities let these behemoths call the shots?
Don’t answer that. We know why. Money.
2
"[Amazon's expedited] shipping means your packages may not be as consolidated as they could be, leading to more cars and trucks required to deliver them, and an increase in packaging waste, which researchers have found is adding more congestion to our cities, pollutants to our air, and cardboard to our landfills."
- Nicole Nguyen
Because we all know Jeff Bezo's primary dream of becoming the world's first multi-trillionaire could be delayed if he actually had a conscience and played fair with America's cities and their taxpayers.
Instead, he and a small group of oligarchs just like him, have used advances in communication and computer technologies combined with ridiculously unfair tax policies and low wages to destroy or sell out millions of American jobs - accumulate wealth and power that exceeds that of entire countries, and then pit cities and states (aka: taxpayers) into bidding blackmail contests against each other to survive.
These two questions can never be asked too often:
1) Just why do we need them?
2) Just why do we continue support a system that is destroying the Earth and only works to serve them?
Maybe the sickest part of this entire greedy mess is when someone has the courage to stand up and call it out, they are labeled by those on the right as "communists" or "radicals"... As if no workable solution could exist in between.
3
NYC called Amazon's bluff? What bluff? A loud minority of extremists made them feel unwelcome, despite the significant economic benefit on offer. Is Amazon a perfect employer? Who is? Did the protestors offer any alternatives? A huge ratable offering thousands of taxpaying jobs was just loudly discouraged from setting up shop here. In what economics does that rate as desirable?
5
If Bezos, deBlasio and Cuomo truly wanted to help New Yorkers and give them 25,000 jobs I can think of several other localities within NY State that would love to be gainfully employed. Places like Buffalo, Poughkepsie, etc. But where does Bezos choose to take up residence? Long Island City. Google has expanded in Manhattan without getting a dime from the state and Cuomo gave billions to a billionaire.
You're all talk Guv'nor. Good riddance to Bezos.
3
Capitalism is one big lie to which profit literally is more important than life. Life will prevail and bury capitalism.
2
Amazon would have contributed $17B in additional tax revenue alone not counting the benefits created by 25K high paying jobs. We had the chance to make a $3B investment for a minimum of $17B return or almost 6x our money. Killing this deal was the worst investment decision in NYC history. I will never understand people who cant grasp this simple math and stand on principal and then wonder why their kids don't have good jobs coming out of college. I hope the politicians and activists responsible for this disaster pay with their jobs like the generations of New Yorkers who will.
2
We didn’t want Amazon. It’s our community that would suffer. Just talk to people in Seattle.
Thank you New York. You have rejected foolish notion that a city, state or nation can buy jobs for its taxpayers.
2
Yay, all those great paying jobs and taxes will go somewhere else. Rejoice!
2
What I think is ironic is that, by demanding the $3 billion, then pouting and pulling out of the deal when he doesn't get it, Jeff Bezos comes off like his nemesis, Donald Trump. Perhaps they are more alike than we realized.
1
The common thread of why the antagonists against Amazon setting up a second HQ makes no sense, which is their fear of Amazon opposing employees unionizing.
The jobs Amazon would be creating at their proposed HQ2 wouldn't need to unionize , because, since when do people working in the tech industry making $100K need to unionize?
This wasn't going to be a warehouse, but then again these politicians are short-sighted and are stuck in backwards thinking.....
2
70% of NYC residents wanted the Amazon deal but it was lost because of a vocal minority, it makes me sick to my stomach especially since we the taxpayers subsidise these opponents, I have no more compassion to spare
2
The time for companies given tax breaks should be over. Many cities and even small villages have been raped by their plans. The companies come in, build a factory or Amazon balloon and the locals jump and dance. They now have jobs, more families move in, schools add classrooms and teachers, stores open or expand. The city is joyous! Then the end of the tax cut, usually ten years, arrives and the balloon bursts. It leaves behind an empty shell of a building(s), huge unemployment, families that can no longer afford their house payments. Families then move to find work, stores close and schools are hurting for money because now the tax revenues have declined.
Its happened in my small village. It happens in the largest cities. The states should unite and show they won't take in any company that can't hold its own from the beginning.
1
It is a big mistake to not bring major tech company to NY.
Economically it is maybe not a big deal, but local politicians and activists thrown away huge opportunity for the future generation. Sad and short sighted
I read with care what you wrote. I am deeply saddened that you wrote not a single line about how to create just one more job. Let alone a high paying job (my guess is that you have never enjoyed the pleasures of ever being an employer). Alas, your penmanship also did not contain a kernel of anything new just same (and now after seven decades) stale anti-capitalist tropes (the type that I have read time and again in societies that stagnated or, alternatively, that have fallen apart). Not a word about what the creative fusion from a infusion of new technology; fundamental research; vibrant entrepreneurship; high paying jobs, jobs, jobs.....higher tax revenues and thus more investments in schools, infrastructure, healthcare. Indeed, nothing about the addition of an entirely new rail....technology and innovation (in addition to NYSE and Real Estate).....nothing at all! Only, ruminations on the potential for mis-allocation of non-existent tax revenues (non-existent because this business had to first create the first dollar of revenue to get the 3 cents of tax rebate).
1
25,000 jobs lost, because of the albany egomania and the lack of foresight by those that rejoiced at the losing of the company. Its ok.. welfare and medicaid will cover those that could have been gainfully employed in various jobs at the company.. They are welcome here in Florida anytime.
2
See what the trend toward tax breaks for corporations has done to Louisiana -- made it the poorest state in the union.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=RWTic9btP38
2
The short-term tax inducement was little to pay for the joy of 25,000 people obtaining the dignity of a good job. Shame on those liberal Democrats, shame.
2
Apparently it was no "bluff"
1
You're absolutely right: taxpayers should not prop up businesses. Period. Unfortunately, in places like NYC, where an ugly and nasty anti-business, anti-wealth mindset rules the "logic" of the populace, the issue is not taking from taxpayers to pay off government moochers, it's the fact that these particular moochers are businesses. Such a mean group of people in NYC!
1
Amazon was copying the same scam that so many billionaire-owned NFL franchises have used. Cities are coerced into spending huge amounts to build extravagant new stadiums under threat that the team will move to another city. Cities and states take out huge bonds to raise the monies and then those bonds need to be paid off over decades, using up tax incomes that should be spent on schools, hospitals, fire departments, roads, infrastructure and local workers. In the mean time, the stadium shovels money to the team owners from parking, food, drink, luxury boxes, and special events. A true sucker's bargain. And afterwards the teams often leave for another city anyway when they are able to leverage a better suckers bargain. Where are the Saint Louis Rams today?
Moral of the tale 1: Cities should tell the NFL owners to go away. What city needs eight days a year of NFL games at this price?
Moral of the tale 2: Cities should tell Amazon and its ilk to go away. Who needs them to pay their executives massive sums while their workers are paid a pittance and replaced by robots, while neighborhoods are gentrified so that their previous residents are tossed out like garbage.
Bezos looked heroic when he took on Pecker in that shake down racket. But let's not allow that to obscure that Bezos was ready to stick it to New Yorkers with a 3 billion dollar shake down racket of his own.
2
the last thing NYC needs is Amazon. Did anyone even think what that would mean? 25K more people needing housing and transportation. That alone should have given anyone with any sense pause.
Amazon could draw talent to the middle of Antarctica. The stupidity of trying to build a campus in an already saturated urban setting is mind boggling.
The last thing NYC needs is Amazon. But there are plenty of cities elsewhere in the country that could use it. Plenty of cities in the rest of the country that would welcome what Amazon could bring.
Pick one of them and prove this isn't all a completely self-serving situation, Mr. Bezos.
1
One word:
Extortion.
The anti Amazon polemic from the leftist Democrats is a wonderful gift to Donald Trump. Now all he has to say is that when you elect a Democrat you are electing job killers. In this case unfortunately he will be right. I hope the mainstream Democrats will repudiate this form of NIMBYism.
2
Dear Amazon, there are so many cities that would love for you to come, why would you even consider New York? Prestige? There is none. Go where you are wanted and stop looking at places that do not want you. Please.
I would like to see Jeff Bezos try to attract 25,000 highly skilled individuals, making $150,000, to come, work, live and play in ...........Newark, NJ.
2
Ironically, the same Queens politicians and community organizers who could have put Amazon's additional tax revenue towards better roads, subway service, and schools are the ones cutting off their nose to spite their very red faces.
In the end, it's the children and senior citizens who depend the most on infrastructure and services in LICity that will be hurt the most by their pointless agitation and opposition. New York's loss is Virginia and Nashville's gain.
Many years from now, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has completed her 20th term in Congress, she may regret such a sophomoric stance. Maybe she'll write an opinion piece in a 2059 version of the Times. (Most likely from a condo with a nice view of the east side...full of products ordered from Amazon.)
2
So Amazon doesn't like labor unions? Of course Jeff Bezos is completely neutral on the matter, right? Has to be a decision made by the Board with compliance of shareholders..riiight.
With Jeff's hands full at the moment with other, er, pressing needs, it's time that we consider the plight of sorrowing income property investors now left holding the bag after the pullout.
Perhaps the Walton family can offer solace & practical advice to all parties concerned. We all know how they felt after being denied entry into promising urban & suburban areas. Compassion please.
1
I find it hard to see tax breaks and incentive packages for those mega corporations as anything else than legal corruption. A mirrored version of Robin Hood rules the states. Take from those who has less, and give to those who has the most.
As it looks, it didn't make much difference to get rid of the rule of kings and queens, the hierarchy of society is still the same.
2
I am not sure that i understand all the implications of this issue, but I wonder how this amazon deal would have helped the average new yorker? If $3billion were spent on infrastructure, wouldn't that create a fair amount of (at least decent) paying jobs? It would certainly make the city more attractive to other businesses that might not demand so much money or power to take advantage of it. Were there any guarantees that the 25k well paying jobs would go to current NYers, or just people from around the country brought in ( net gentrification)? I think all cities should do this math, and come to their own conclusions, but politicians should not be graded on whether they make these deals, but rather if this is an efficient way to use resources.
2
Actually, it was Amazon who called NYC's bluff. If you doubt that, just look at the reaction from the leading political naysayers who are now basically saying "Amazon should have negotiated with us". They are even taking comfort from Amazon's statement that they will grow their existing NYC workforce. Unfortunately, what these politicos simply don't understand is that is a polite way to say "good bye" and to leave in a friendly manner - courtesies that most folks across the US engage in. Obviously, some people in NYC are completely oblivious to this.
3
I have nothing against billionaires, but if NYC has $3B to spare, it should be reducing taxes on the good companies and workers who are already here instead of giving it to Mr. Bezos.
The collapse of the deal was a victory for free market economics.
2
NYC needed to offer Amazon tax subsidies to entice it to come to NYC because other locations under consideration impose lower taxes and fewer regulations than NYC. Even with the subsidies, NYC would have gained significant tax revenue and other benefits from the deal. Amazon's departure is a huge loss for NYC.
2
Three billion divided by 25,000 is $120,000. Since most of the jobs would be low wage, it wasn't worth it.
3
@Keith Dow Were the jobs low wage, I was under the impression they were going to be HQ job, average salary, although that could be considered low wage in New York City.
1
@Skinthebank
Maybe a few thousand of them would've been. The large majority were to be only 2 or 2 times the minimum wage.
I expect the opposition by a very small group of novice politicians and their economically illiterate supporters, some of whom have provided testimony herein, will go down as one of the biggest blunders in NYC history. Politicians are elected to make the lives of their constituents better and there is no substitute than a well paying job to uplift a community. This is especially true for local politicians whose primary responsibility is to the residents of LI City and Queens; and not to cure the broader economic and social problems of the country.
2
Actually Amazon called New York's bluff. City Democrats were confident that they could renegotiate the tax incentive agreement (a Trumpian strategy), force the company to unionize and to spend millions on public housing. It turned out that Amazon wasn't bluffing and walked away.
But that's good, right? Now we have an extra $3 billion to pay for state-wide universal healthcare, transportation improvements and housing for all the jobless immigrants we want to bring into a city that's too crowded for Amazon employees.
4
Given the havoc that a new large corporate location causes to housing, infrastructure, school, and in general quality of life, perhaps it is time for these corporations to court the cities and for the corporations to pay the incentives.
Hm. That may be known as taxes. Maybe there is some way for our governments to keep its eye on the citizens and their quality of life, and pay a little less attention to the glitz.
3
We live in these vibrant cities not because they’re packed to the brim with massive corporations, but the exact opposite.
I would love to go back to San Francisco’s pre-Twitter, et al. days. Only now, a decade plus later, are these companies being forced to do more to give back to the community. And it’s happening because the voters are forcing it to happen. But not before rents skyrocketed and long time residents lost the homes they’ve lived in for decades.
The heart of our communities suffer when our local governments place a higher value on corporate tax revenue than the people who make the community what it is.
Good job, New York. You’ll be just fine.
5
I thought we lived in a free-market capitalist system! The rules that apply are that individuals, companies, corporation are on their own. Succeed financially or fail, live or die in the bustling, hectic, no holds-barred world of competition, as Milton Friedman of University of Chicago Economics Department preached to budding capitalists who loved his message.
So, when the US national banks, investment banks,insurance companies, and hedge funds blindly decided to dive into - heavily invest in - the insane, corrupt world of subprime mortgage lending and securitization, a core principal of which, as they knew, depended upon making loans that borrowers could not possibly afford or repay, that meant that millions of these homeowner-borrowers would eventually have to be foreclosed on and evicted, the inevitable happened - near complete economic collapse of our country and many other around the world. Did the rules of capitalism apply then? No! They, but not the homeowners who were unknowing crucial participants in their criminal scheme, got bailed out by the US government. Did anyone go to prison? No.
And now this. Amazon want to move part of it's operations to New York. Fine. But there is a condition. The taxpayers, through their state and local government, have to agree to allow tax incentives worth $1.5 billion to Amazon and many, many more government-provided economic benefits for Amazon. Do the rules of hard-edged capitalism apply here? No. What madness is this?
1
Perhaps worse are the stadiums and arenas built with public money for the benefit of NFL and NBA owners. Jobs created? Mostly low paying, part-time, seasonal. And now a minor league soccer team wants Indiana to fund a sports facility, apparently funded by taxes to be generated from a related commercial/residential complex. One state rep behind this claims it will benefit the whole state. Don’t quite follow that but I do know that it never ends.
4
Perhaps Wisconsin will want to throw a few billion dollars at Amazon to get them to fill the space where the state already gave Foxconn a few billion to fill?
3
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! My small city used to be home to several thousand automotive jobs, components, and when these jobs left to globalization, we raced to the bottom, bribing corporations from abroad with all manner of incentives for nickel-and-dime jobs. I’m glad Amazon is getting the cold shoulder from NYC. Wish more struggling cities would be this way with taxpayer $$$.
4
Three billion dollars to one of the world's largest companies owned by the world's richest person just did not make sense. A building with a private helipad yet. Jobs are always great for NYC but a lot of the jobs would have been low-wage positions at $25-$35 per hour. This is not a livable wage in NYC, most certainly not for a family. Amazon also pays very little if any taxes. How would giving away three billion dollars help NYC when we have so many other needs to address? Would Amazon fix our transport infrastructure problems? No. Our housing problems? No. If Amazon want to come to NYC great, but no way should they be paid an outrageous sum to do so. Let them pay their own way.
7
@Rescue2
Were the low wage jobs? they were HQ jobs average salary expected to be $125,000 to 150,000 per year, The 3 billion in taxes that NY State were forgiving was a high price to pay, the lack of neutrality on unions is a hard one to get past, the big question for me is would they have come to NY City with much less incentives as there is an incredible pool of talent here.
@Rescue2, That's the joke. They think they are making high paying jobs! Not in NYC, where the janitors made $50k in the 1990s! And how's a family to afford the million dollar condos and homes on $50,000?
A ride looking out from the 7 train, reveals construction as far as the eye can see, condos, office buildings, gym clubs, restaurants both trendy and down home, upstart craft beer breweries, you name it. I don't see any evidence that Amazon is critical to this robust community.
8
Not all incentives are equal. Some directly support the locals and bring good neighbors; they welcome business that leaves little to no footprint and puts outside money directly into worker's hands (eg film incentive); others harm the ecosystem and and cause displacement (eg stadiums) that plow over neighborhoods and contribute little more than hot dog seller jobs for owners who should pay their own way. By abruptly leaving, Amazon showed themselves to be the fair weather friend they would have been.
Useful to put in context the fact that Amazon, rather than paying federal tax on 100 billion+ profits, expects a hundred million+ REFUND this year, all while the middle class is getting clobbered.
4
@Ben K
Amazon paid NO Fed taxes in 2017 and NO TAX on 11.2 BILLION in 2018.
It may be legal but it's not right.
How is Amazon not more of a taker than a contributor to the U.S. economy?
Google neither asked for, nor received, any subsidy when it bought the former Port Authority building in Chelsea... nor when it bought the Chelsea Market building.
It is expanding in New York City because a pool of talented people live here and are ready to innovate.
5
The problem we have is far bigger than the Amazon "deal". The contract between business of certain size and society is broken. It used to be that local communities were considered on of the stakeholders (not shareholders) of a business.
That is not the case any more. The most recent proof of that are the money repatriated due to the new tax law, which went to stock repurchases and higher dividends.
The hollowing out of the middle class has been going on for decades, likewise in Europe. The pot has reached a boiling point and the question must be answered today, not soon, not tomorrow.
How are big corporations benefiting society? How will we address inequality today, not soon, not tomorrow.
I am not very optimistic. I already read and hear about a "useless" class of people, fellow humans, or "universal" income so fellow humans can spend what the do not produce as if spending is sufficient by itself for a fulfilling, happy, productive and proud life.
There is a need for a massive, global scale need for realignment of values, norms, habits and education that I simply cannot see happening.
Nothing will give me greatest pleasure but to be proven wrong.
3
Assuming Amazon hired 25,000 people at 100,000.00/year, they would pay 158,250,000.00 in state taxes to NY. It would take the state 19 years to recoup the 3 billion in incentives. I also find it hard to believe they would pay all 25,000 employees 100,000.00/year. My guess would be most would be low level staffers making substantially less. They would have brought more jobs to the area, but with an unemployment rate of only 4% in June of 2018, that would be offset by the rise in housing costs, because a large percentage of those jobs would go to people moving to the area.
2
Let's see... 25K jobs + associated economic activity + no tax revenue versus no jobs + no associated economic activity + (still) no tax revenue. And this is a big win for NYC? My algebra must be failing me.
2
While it is true that the billions of dollars in tax breaks offered by cities to corporations is obscene, it is naive in the extreme to think that there will ever be agreement by all major parties to stop offering these incentives. No, all that will happen is that places like NYC that decide not to play the game will lose out to others that do. The playing field may be tilted in the corporation's favor, but not playing at all ensures we can never win.
1
The problem is it's not just Amazon. It's all of the other companies that will now think twice about investing in New York City.
1
Ms. Covert uses words like "boondoggle" rather freely. Jobs may not be a concern for her now, but when the next recession comes around, the only thing that will save communities from devastation will be JOBS!. Just like you might save money for a rainy day, all a region can do to ward off the adverse affects of their rainy is to shore up the job market as much as possible.
Ms. Covert asks: "Why does a company with billions in profit need billions of New York’s money to bring 25,000 jobs to a city where it already has a significant presence?" Because the can! And what does it matter if they already have a significant presence?
To simply say that there would be no benefit to having more jobs in a region because housing, infrastructure and schools will be pressured is to ignore that there are solutions to these problems. Clearly the politicians who worked mightily to bring this deal to an end, usurped their job which is to fix these deficiencies. And that is much harder to do when you don't have the tax base needed to master these improvements.
She also state: "They would also ignore the reams of evidence that these deals typically fail to produce meaningful economic results." Kindly provide us with a few modern examples if just for fact-checking purposes.
2
@It's Time
Wisconsin, Foxconn.
Amazon works. New York City --- not so much.Not a great match. let other cities benefit, serving the common good.
5
What hubris. This was a great opportunity to grow the city and diversify our economy-- now we get 100% of nothing. Rome also thought it would never cease to be the center of the world.
3
@NYC, Rome's doing pretty well.
Corporate welfare for companies that are destroying retail jobs at other long term establishments and replacing those workers with robots makes no sense. Didn't Lord and Taylor just close its main store in New York City? Online shopping should be taxed to offset the jobs lost -not given billions in tax credits.
2
Simply: Amazon is committed to automating as much as possible, as soon as possible. Only a few of Amazon's jobs would go to New Yorkers who really need jobs. Amazon would have poached from other businesses and brought in outside workers possibly with H-1b visas.
Casino stock betting and ever expanding consumption are not sustainable anyway.
3
The people at the corporate center would be the ones doing the automating at good salaries, not the ones pushing the boxes.
Trump's poll numbers surge if he manages infra structure plan well. Amazon has more options than these Brooklyn neighborhoods do.
New York was wrong to offer $3 billion in tax incentives to the worlds' richest man who pays his workers minimum wages and opposes their right to form a union. Just think of what $3 billion could do if it was used to lure GM back to Nyack to produce green energy electric vehicles (EVs) employing thousands of high-paying union workers. All New York would have to do is offer them a tax abatement along with legislating a switch to EVs by 2030 and with no state tax on the purchase of the first 100,000 EVs manufactured in New York and purchased by residents. This would be a real win for New York, its taxpayers, and the environment rather than a giveaway to another billionaire.
"Companies tend to fend off efforts at making the details transparent..."
They got a lot of help "fending off" those efforts from DeBlasio and Cuomo, who also need to be held responsible for keeping the negotiations secret. Had they involved the unions and New Yorkers from the start, maybe things would have turned out differently.
2
@mijosc
I don't think things would have turned out differently. Amazon is anti-union. They are not particularly fond of negotiating in public. They have not, as far as I can tell, guaranteed 25,000 high paying jobs to the residents of Queens.
I think if negotiations were made public, the public would have understood the limits of what Amazon was offering. I'm sure that the governor and mayor were both salivating at the promise of increased tax revenue, but it is not clear that they would have gotten much else from the deal.
@Andrew Zuckerman: "it is not clear". I couldn't have said it better myself!
My wife and I just built a new home in this small north Texas city that sits on a major highway into Dallas. We made out very well on the sale of our previous home which we built 15 years ago, and were able to pay cash as each contractor bill came due.
At no point in time did we get any incentive of any kind. Every permit for this and permit for that involved a fee. There was a construction permit for a shop built before work on the house was started, then another for the house itself. Their was a permit to install a propane tank. A permit to connect to the city's water line. (My neighbor, building a new home on the lot adjoining ours brought in two large portable storage containers to hold his household goods when the home they were living in sold and the new house still a ways from being ready for occupancy. Each of the units required its own permit, good for 60 days. The permits will have to be renewed at least once.) There's a fee for the final inspection that decides if your home is up to codes. There was a fee for a septic system (water, but not sewer is available). There was a monthly dumpster fee that over the course of construction amounted to over $2500. The city has a monopoly on dumpsters within its city limits. Private dumpster services run about 1/2 of the municipal rate. As of the last tax statement, the city gets $1400/yr from us. We're not in the city's school district, so those taxes go to a town 6 miles away.
Where is our incentive?
Based on the merits, the most attractive city wins - taking your definition - the one with the best education and infrastructure.
In order to improve education and infrastructure, you need money. Where does that money come from? Taxes. Where do the taxes come from? Companies/Jobs.
So if you are not the most attractive city, how do you break the cycle and win the beauty contest? Through a subsidy. You can think of that as an investment on future tax revenue. By getting more employers, you would get more tax revenue, build the infrastructure/education system and then be more attractive to future employers, thereby mitigating the need to offer subsidies.
The problem is that this is a competitive market and what is rational for the cities overall is not rational for an individual city. So I don't think you break the cycle. Your suggestion is similar to encouraging sports owners to collude to not offer big salaries to free agents to improve their teams.
1
“The only way out of the mess is for local and state leaders to wake up to the futility of these kinds of deals and call a truce.” That’s naive. Cities will compete to attract jobs. New York has the most hostile business environment in North America; the city is compelled to offer incentives if it hopes to compete. The state is a poster child for job loss - upstate in particular - due to high taxes and stifling regulations. We are losing population and congressional seats to other states. NYC is a one-industry town, and those financial firms can easily shift jobs elsewhere. Most troubling is the recent discovery of significant tax revenue loss blamed on the out-migration of more high-income (highly mobile) taxpayers. The canary is dead. We should be paying heed.
1
I love how do many folks decry the Amazon deal which was loaded with benefits for community residents....job training opportunities and real jobs. Not one of the naysayer politicians has a plan To get those people retrained or employed in better paying jobs. Good work.
4
" in exchange for which the city and state had promised as much as $3 billion in incentives." The word "incentives" is ambiguous. Does it mean 3 billion that city and state would pay to Amazon or does it simply mean 3 billion that the city and state would not have COLLECTED from Amazon?
I do not know whether this outcome is good or bad. But it is important to keep in mind that the deal was not engineered by some right wingers but by our governor who is a Democrat.
1
I salute all New Yorkers who took a stand against the invasion of Amazon in your communities. New Yorkers have forced the hand of the status quo, and forced politicians to find alternatives to the corporate marauder. We in the Washington metropolitan area will soon discover that too much Amazon is not good for the digestion. Having lived and worked in Silicon Valley, I know that the volatile high-tech industry is subject to regular boom-and-bust cycles. Large numbers of people may be hired but, when necessary, people will be paid off, then laid off in droves, due to a "business decision" (namely, downsizing to keep profits high). Lamenting the loss of jobs for people of color - largely African Americans and Latinos - is bogus and offensive. Little or no money is invested in the formal and nonformal training required to enable these populations to perform other than minimum wage or support positions. The bulk of the best-paying jobs largely go to men of European and Asian ancestry, who still predominate in the ranks of computers and artificial intelligence professionals. Our failing school systems are way behind in terms of preparing people for 21st century jobs. As an educator, I've seen both sides of this equation, and America cannot compete with India, China, Russia, and other countries which see the future, and are preparing their children with the requisite technological skills - often in our American schools. We can and must do better.
2
Subliminally the videos of belts with packages being shown on loops by television news gave the message that the jobs to be created by Amazon would be of warehouse people. These were not the type of jobs that would be created in LIC. Rather the jobs would be those of technicians and creative jobs.
3
a loss of $27B in future tax revenue is a win for NYC? I'm laughing out loud.
Giving a $3B tax cut in high tax area, in a deal that will generate massive jobs and benefit, and $27B in future tax revenue is a net Very Positive for NYC.
seeing only the negative of the cut of $3B as a "gift", is very short sighted or just a mis-understanding. such silliness amidst journalists with agendas.
6
Some say the tax breaks will pay out in short order. Others say never or decades. Where’s the independent evaluation? It doesn’t exist. So we’re left to trust one side or the other.
Amazon is paying $0 in federal taxes this year. Cuomo and Deblasio were willing to give this company $3 billion of New Yorker's tax dollars. A company like this needs to be paying its fair share of taxes to support the infastructure it uses and the schools where its employees are trained in a way that represents New Yorkers' priorities. Pay your taxes and let our elected officials decide how that money is spent. Jeff Bezos may be a perfectly nice guy, but in the absence of his paying into our collective system I resent that he unilaterally decides the priority of the money that he dontates to school projects or other charities.
I am disappointed that Amazon is not coming to NY, but they could have just agreed to pay their taxes and be a good neighbor. Since that was apparently too much for Amazon they made the right choice not to come.
4
You have to wonder if this pullout was part of the plan all along. Having a spare in case one location went south is good strategy for all sorts of reasons such as leverage. Good luck to Virginia which is no comparative infrastructure paradise.
4
Subsidies, originally a good idea to aide and assist depressed economic zones, have become an opioid of some significance to the political leadership class. So easy to use. So very, VERY, difficult to stop. Overall it will take more than just saying no, as NYC has done, but at least it's a start.
It comes to this for me. You have to ask yourself exactly why it is Amazon (and the politicians supporting it) feel it is necessary to be given what amounts to corporate welfare? Really? Isn't that a lot like Warren Buffet, Carl Icahn or Bill Gates standing in line at the local food kitchen waiting to be fed? Really? Is that really necessary? Quick answer; no. No it is not.
John~
American Net'Zen
2
It is more like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet getting the senior discount at the bagel shop after buying a dozen.
Why should other local and state leaders declare a truce? In fact, NYC is the last place that should want to remove tax incentives from the competitive mix - such tax rebates, like the 11% rebate offered to Amazon, are needed to make NYC's ludicrously high taxes at all competitive with the lower local taxes in other jurisdictions. It would be great if every American business felt a corporate and moral imperative to subsidize NYC's aging infrastructure, bloated public workforce and dinosaur unions, but they don't. For the same reason, the $10K SALT deduction limit will never be repealed. Why should low tax states subsidize high tax states, by allowing high tax state taxpayers to reduce their Federal tax payments by deducting their ridiculous income and property taxes? The low tax states suffered from that unfair economic competition from NY, NJ, CA etc for decades, but I didn't see any complaints in the NYT about it.
2
I don't know what world Ms. Covert is living in if she thinks cities and states are going to stop competing with each other. Perhaps a better deal could have been had, but I wouldn't call Amazon's withdrawing, "New York City's victory..." I'd call it New York City's loss.
3
I totally disagree with the writer that tax break or subsidies for Amazon was a bad deal. The city was not paying cash money to Amazon. It was getting a break from its tax. Still the NYC would earn good amount revenues. The worst outcome is that NYC lost 30,000 good paying jobs which means about 100,000 household members lost their opportunities. The city would have known as big business friendly. More high tech business would come to city which was great news for young adults. Now no big business will come to NYC as they will be scared of the ultra left wing socialist zealots. Too bad
4
I hear Foxconn is looking to exit Wisconsin. There's a new deal in town being promoted by one P.T. Barnum.
6
Privatize the profits, socialize the expense.
New York lost nothing.
5
Do people understand that the money from these tax breaks doesn't even exist if Amazon doesn't set up shop in NYC? All this clamor about using the money instead for education and whatnot--what money?! If they don't come, there's no tax bill, and thus no tax money.
4
In the future, when politicians try to lure companies like this, it should come with strings attached: a firm contractual commitment to improve transportation and infrastructure and to be a good neighbor. In any case, Amazon was a traditional company (with non-traditional practices like no unions). NYC should be aiming for more tech companies who want to and should follow Google's lead in being a decent neighbor in NYC.
3
Unforeseen consequences: Amazon's decision is like a Trump 2020 re-election commercial, coming right on the heels of his State of the Union warning vs socialism. Guess what: more American voters love and appreciate Amazon, than vote for Democrats. Siding against business, especially a big and popular business, is a great way to lose the 2020 election. Well played AOC!
1
I agree wholeheartedly! This deal was emblematic of the problem with the relationship between state and municipal authorities and big business. It is, indeed, a race to the bottom. Why should localities offer subsidies for profit-making companies to relocate? Look at all the cities that spent lots of time and money courting Amazon. If Amazon wants a new headquarters in the East, let them do their own research and come up with a plan that makes sense for them. If they need public subsidies to do it, it simply means that the plan is not viable. If it is not viable without the subsidies, the taxpayers are making up the company's profits. This is just welfare for the rich, and the taxpayers, not the company, become the job-creators.
3
Of the many commentaries on the Amazon deal gone sour, this may be the best. At a glance, it looks crazy to reject Amazon over subsidies and business incentives that are common practice. But in the bigger picture, we've created a country that's by and for business, not the people, and that's the real problem. We need to change business as usual, including Citizens United, the tax code, and the financing of political campaigns. It's all interconnected.
8
The high industry and the empowered, privileged types it attracts -- is the root cause of homelessness and extreme poverty in San Francisco.
Congratulations New York for rejecting the digital gentrification, and not paying the bribes the politicians were willing to pay with other peoples' money.
3
I'm not surprised by Amazon's decision to bail out of putting a new campus in Queens. Months of bad publicity took its toll until Jeff Bezos couldn't take it anymore. Now some other city will benefit from Amazon's decision to abandon Queens. Some other city won't mind giving Amazon a measly $3 billion dollars in exchange for stimulating their economy with new jobs. The anti-corporate crowd just refused to see the big picture. To them multi-national corporations are just plain evil with no redeeming qualities.
I hope they remember that the next time these angry activists log on to their Amazon accounts.
1
Ms. Covert's piece ignores two core truths.
First, New York City offers absolutely nothing that is not available in scores of other metropolitan areas and brings with it costs, taxes, and other negatives (some of which, like weather, are immutable).
Second, the entire Amazon beauty contest was a sham designed to maximize incentives. Like every other modern corporation, Amazon's future is in location-independent, networked centers for management and development collaboration as well as for supply chain and logistics operations. HQ2 is really HQ2 through 300.
1
Bryce,
I love your idealism.
However, as you said "Cities that lost out, such as Chicago, Miami and Newark, went back to Amazon to try to woo it once again." And I thought Newark was a better choice (considering the finalists--I was hoping for Buffalo or Rochester) than anywhere in NYC.
Communities are money blind when presented with these kind of deals. It reminds me of The Magic Christian (except companies don't work that way).
1
I think this is a good thing, not because of the subsidies, but just in general - Amazon should be moving to a more up and coming place like Austin or Pittsburgh or St. Louis even, rather than a top of the world place like NYC (as far as cities go). NYC doesn't need Amazon and IMO, Amazon needs the NYC talent more than NYC needs Amazon.
Some of my mentees have gone on to work for some of the big tech companies (Amazon, Google, Microsoft - I lived in Seattle for 14 years) and I'm happy for them but given how busy/difficult their life seems every time we meet, I thought I was a demanding mentor.
In the end, it's up to the community of LIC to determine if Amazon was a good fit or not, and if they said no, so be it. I believe they made the wise choice given how Seattle changed when Amazon moved in (I was in the building right next to Amazon's SLU headquarters).
3
New York cannot by itself end the obnoxious practice of tax-benefit luring. Any fix would have to make it illegal nationwide which no one thinks is likely. Given that, it is a practice New York can win at. Most of the tax windfall to New York from the Amazon deal would have come from its employees. New York City has the highest income tax rates in the country. Also very high mortgage recording, "mansion" and real property transfer taxes, all of which would have seen windfalls from Amazon employees. New York City, unlike other places, can afford to take a modest haircut and still do fine. The money deal was good enough. And growth in New York's tech industry, as it is weakly correlated with Wall Street's boom-and-bust cycle, tends to make our local economy and public budgets more resilient.
Still, I'm glad to see the deal go bust. Amazon is a monopoly so arrogant it did not even try to sell itself. It's attitude towards the right to unionize and towards ICE don't play well in our town. Amazon's failure to even attempt hypocrisy on these matters should warn us about a future pattern of influence-buying and skin-flinting while ignoring the needs of the community where it lives. For reasons unrelated to the three billion, I don't want them here. Good riddance.
5
I want to say this up front: I LOVE AMAZON. The reason I LOVE AMAZON is because they make my life easy.
I love Jeff Bezos, who owns what he does and so can stand up in front of the rest of us and say "So what." I love him because he poured money into the Washington Post to make it a viable honest source of news for all Americans without influencing the direction or opinions of the editors. (Or so I hear.)
However Amazon headquarters here in Queens right off the BQE and the Ed Koch Bridge and what ever subway line, is just not viable. Where are 25,000 more affluent people going to live? Is all of New York to be gentrified? Are the Housing Lottery Winners to be the only lower to middle income citizens? How are these future employees of Amazon going to commute to the new campus in Queens? Are they going to be in cars or Ubers sitting on the BQE or Ed Koch bridge? Or waiting on a crowded subway platform for the next train that they can fit into? All this talk of future revenue doesn't correct the crumbling highways and byways that NYC has right now. This is not a class war, or old school Democrats vs New Green Deal Democrats, it is just common sense.
In hindsight, more research needed to be done on the impact of the headquarters on the quality of life of current citizens then on the prospect of future revenues.
If Amazon really wants to be a pioneer, they should look to Detroit. If I was younger and could go anywhere that is where I would go or maybe.. Philly?
9
Amazon has become a leviathan, a monopoly with too much power. The last thing it needs is incentives and welfare options at the cost of tax payers to relocate and break havoc in that area of NYC. Denizens of Long Island can give a sight of relief Look what is happening to rent prices, traffic and gentrification in San Francisco with Silicon Valley nearby. You don't want that nightmare there.
6
In San Francisco, the Planning Commision denied a permit to Amazon-owed Whole Foods to open a 365 Store last November. The vote was 5-1 against opening this store. This company wanted to open the store in a congested neighborhood on a narrow intersection. The proposed store was six and a half blocks from another Whole Foods Market. Neighborhood groups, consisting of local merchants throughout the city and residents opposed to gridlock, voiced their oppostion to the Commisioners won. In January, ironically Amazon/Whole Foods announced they were no longer opening 365 Stores.
5
What is really sad - with a 70% approval rate for the deal among New Yorkers - I suspect this was all about local politicians playing games, trying to look like they won something, to posture for reelection and stature.
The tax break was 10%, the area would have gotten so much more than that. They overestimated Amazon's commitment to the location.
1
This is a case where democracy worked. Elected representatives, concerned about Amazon's impact on the communities that elected them, pushed back and asked pointed questions. This is quite different from just conducting an opinion poll, and using a vague majority response to justify plans that were hatched behind closed doors. Isn't ironic that Jeff Bezos could stand up to personal threats from Trump and the National Enquirer, but turned and ran from legislators and unions? Autocratic CEOs can't abide elected government that isn't bought.
4
I agree with this article.
If a huge and very wealthy business like amazon needs to expand their business, then they should go ahead and expand their business. Why should their business expansion rely on the backs of local taxpayers for a giveaway?
If it makes smart business sense for amazon to open a site in NY, then do it without the billions in bribe money.
This whole bribing big business to open sites in a particular location has gotten out way out of hand and is a disturbing national trend.
While we are looking at the very rich getting richer and richer, we need to include a serious look at corporations.
When these rich companies get tax cuts, the delta has to be made up on the backs of middle class people who may not see any personal, direct benefit from said corporation- and may see cost of living go up dramatically.
Taxpayers are sick of being left holding the bag.
13
If they aren't relocating the NYC site to another (runner-up) city then you might consider the possibility that subsidy contention or not Amazon has figured out they didn't need actually need or want a second location.
By inviting bids from cities, amazon was counting on dividing and conquering. The same strategy that the Olympics games use. Look at all the cities that hosted the games. Majority ended up in the red. Time to wake up to big business' con games.
8
Actually, Amazon called NY's bluff.
3
What I’m not seeing mentioned is the question of who benefits from Amazon’s arrival? Realtors, wealthy landholders, banks, high end restaurateurs, construction people, developers.
Who loses? Present residents who want to stay in their community, rather than see it disappear before their eyes and see themselves and their friends and relatives get prices out. Current small businesses. People who like the place as it is now.
I think the latter deserves a voice, too.
16
Amazon is profitable paying taxes, they are just more profitable receiving public charity.
Amazon is a victim of the failure of local governments to manage affordable housing in cities. I’m not talking about people below the poverty level, I’m talking about people making $24k - 48k a year. At $48k, your rent should max out at $1300 a month. Good luck with that.
Amazon would be better moving to somewhere in middle America and offering generous relocation packages. I’m sure Detroit would love an amazon HQ
5
As proud as a New Yorker might be for standing up to tax breaks, unfunded new demands on schools, sewers, roads and transportation - unless the other 50 states stand as one these profiteers will just move elsewhere and drain their resources .
Taxation is a responsibility to the society that makes your business possible, but as long as those who benefit from tax abatement can spend unlimited funds electing sympathetic office holders- we will continue to settle for a paltry revenue stream to fund an ever increasing population. So sad, because we would all be so much happier if we allocated resources in ways that serve the good of the people- and maybe we just might be proud enough of our planet to take care of it for our children.
2
It's interesting, you talk about the costs, but you don't mention the perceived benefits states hope to receive. In this case, approximately $27 billion over 20 years.
I'm no economist, but I'm fairly certain if Amazon offered a bum deal to 50 states, most of the 50 would probably not offer so much in incentives. You have a hope that other states would follow suit and reject Amazon's demand for incentives. Hard to have that hope when you don't what to know WHY states are willing to offer that. I suspect the answer isn't simply "because politicals are getting kickbacks."
What is not mentioned are the thousands of collateral jobs, income and tax dollars which would have been gained from contractors and local merchants interacting with the company and its employees every day. This is a loss for these people and small, local companies as well - guess this would not all fit on an Cortez twitter stream.
That the state promised 3Bil in incentives would have been more than offset by the estimated 25Bil worth of taxes, hardly a boondoggle.
3
The irony is that companies do not want to move to New York because of its ridiculously high taxes, making such tax breaks necessary to lure companies. The simple solution is to lower taxes across the board.
3
Hey, I am thinking about moving to New York. Long Island City sounds okay. Please call me, Cuomo, and let me know what tax breaks you can offer. I am open to negotiations! My preference would be no taxes at all for five years.
Walmart plays this game with cities all over the country. They get big breaks, put up a cheap warehouse big box store, or have someone else do it, then jump outside the city lines once the breaks are ended. They get PAID to put a store somewhere and then abandon that city when the benefits are used up. The American way.
New York probably offered a deal that was too good and 25,000 new jobs in a crowded city environment was probably too many to consider all at once.
Remember this: America's corporations benefit greatly from all of our collective investment in roads,
transportation,
infrastructure,
sewers,
schools,
air traffic control...
and on and on.
We pay to make the way for them to be successful. They don't need us to invest more in tax benefits to satisfy their greed and their need for ever constant growth.
The states and cities can get together and make this sort of silliness stop. How? Make an agreement before hand that no place will offer more tax breaks than the other. Keep it reasonable, help them get started in a new location but don't put them on welfare that we all will have to pay for over many years.
9
This is a HUGE loss for NY. The repercussions with other companies now second guessing or backtracking their NY state business expansion plans - due to political climate is not going an easy fix for socialists.
4
Thank you Ms. Covert. I hope the writers of today's NYT editorial read this column. Amazon walked away because they want communities that will roll over for them, not communities where people speak up against them. Democracy is not part of their business plan.
13
Follow New York's lead? No, they'll take the jobs, leaving you with the high taxes, crumbling infrastructure, and boundless self-righteousness.
2
Were the 25,000 high paying jobs really guaranteed or just a promise that might not have been realized?
When GE took millions of state and local subsidies to move to Boston, they promised 800 great jobs would come to the city, but they never materialized. To its credit, GE is returning the subsidies, but what were the opportunity costs in the course of negotiating the move. This kind of dishonest bidding war has to end.
11
The commentators saying this is a good thing and the city should not be giving a tax break seem to think that the property where Amazon was going to build their office complex is already generating significant tax money for the city and therefore NYC would lose money by giving these tax breaks. That is a fantasy. The property does NOT generate property tax at anywhere near the level the property would have provided if this deal went through. Granted the property with Amazon's office complex would be far greater in value than it is now and therefore would have paid a greater tax bill if assessed at current rates but without the complex the property does not pay anywhere near what Amazon would have paid. In short the City LOSES tax revenue by shutting out this deal. The City Loses 25,000 jobs, most high paying, ie $100k+, the City Loses the construction jobs building this complex, the City Loses the construction jobs to build the infrastructure, the City Loses the businesses that would have grown in the area to support the 25,000 job and the jobs that go with those businesses.
IN SHORT BIG LOSS FOR NYC and QUEENS and Queens politicians.
7
The Target in my town got a 15 year property tax rebate to open a store here. The minute their 15 years was up they pulled up stakes and left town. So much for corporate citizenship.
16
Amazon wanted to set up shop in Queens because they knew that they could get thousands of foreign techies with H1B visas to work for lower wages than Americans. There was never a guarantee about how many of these jobs would go to New York graduates. Amazon is not a good company to work for. Their adamant opposition to unions is another indication that what they had their sights set on were foreign workers.
14
Don’t H1B visa people pay income taxes and sales taxes? Do the homes they rent or maybe buy not pay property taxes? What is the difference regarding an investment?
When you write that thousands of similar (though for lower dollar amounts) deals are done throughout the country, but that the public doesn't scrutinize them that closely, I think it might be better to stay instead, that most of the public has no idea whatsoever that these giveaways are commonplace. A software company I worked for once received $50 million in tax abatements from the county government. Eventually, jobs were offshored, the headquarters was nearly vacated, and the company was sold. The HQ has a skeleton staff now.
6
The reality is that a $3B giveaway is not a giveaway if it results in a $28B reward. To say that the subsidy for a wealthy corporation was the problem is false. It was fear of gentrification pure and simple.
6
The gist of this is just say no. That only works if everyone else also says no.
It’s analogous to a merchant that offers incentives on Groupon. Will it cheapen his brand, get customers that would have shown up anyway? Or will it truly bring incremental benefit. In the end it’s about competing for the spoils.
1
The assumption underlying this opinion piece is that New York's having rejected Amazon will somehow, by some magic, by imitated by every other state and municipality. Would that it were so! But the hard reality is that New York City is currently one of the very few places that has the luxury to reject so many jobs with so many well paid. Other places, desperate for these, will continue to offer incentives that dwarfed what New York had offered.
3
Ten years from now, Amazon will be thriving in Tennessee. Then it will be obvious to all (as it is obvious to some now) that NY needed Amazon more than Amazon needed NY.
6
Apparently the author is not familiar with the phrase “cutting off your nose to spite your face”.
9
Media pieces like this are part of the problem.
10
This will sound cruel but I think the subsidies to AOC voters should be cut so we would all have the skin in the game and understand that our voting choices have consequnces
6
Another know-nothing column by a preogressive. "Stagnating wages" we're a Hallmark of Obama - remember "we' ll never be able to bring back manufacturing jobs". Well they're coming back with strong growth in the bottom 40 percent. if anything is holding back wage growth it is illegal aliens.
3
I'm sick and tired of activist pretending they represent me instead of my elected officials.
5
This shady end run around any kind of public involvement has Bloomberg's fingerprints all over it. When the dust clears we will find it was he, fellow billionaire Bezos and the usual cabal of NYC real estate ghouls, who formulated this deal. Cuomo and de Blasio were just bystanders sitting at the kiddies table. Bloomberg bought an illegal third term, rezoned, by fiat, huge swaths of the city to enrich his cronies and views the (non-wealthy) citizenry as merely an encumbrance. I'm sure he and Bezos both share disdain for messy things like public hearings and due process. It's also no coincidence that LIC is literally a stones throw from Bloomberg's Roosevelt Island tech campus. Funny how that all worked out!
3
Brilliant place to draw a line in the sand, NY —- none of your sports stadiums, all taxpayer subsidized, drew so much ire. But 25,000 white collar jobs was too much. Go Jets, Giants, Nets, Knicks [and all your subsidies].
6
Has anyone who was against Amazon locating in New York ever created a single job in their lives?
7
Bring it to China please,Amazon.
Wow. I’ve always thought New Yorkers are brash and pushy. I’ve NEVER thought they are stupid. There is no $3 b cost to NY taxpayers. It is a reduction in tax that Amazon would have paid had it located there. Now you get NO tax and jobs from Amazon.
Seattle thanks you.
4
@Neil Bruce
Amazon would have been like an alien mothership landing and gradually terraforming the landscape into something equally alien. In the end, LIC would be unrecognizable to any current resident and unaffordable by them as well. It would have been Bezos' own little fiefdom, probably with its own private police force.
Sorry, does the writer think that NY now has $3bn to spend that it wouldn't have had with Amazon? If so, she gets it completely backwards. A "tax subsidy" is primarily a reduction in the tax rate -- so instead of taxing the company $10bn, you only tax them $7bn. But if they don't come at all, you get zero. The real math here is an enormous LOSS to taxpayers, not a gain. This is a terrible and unforgivable loss for the city, and a strategic blunder as it should be looking to diversify away from the financial sector.
9
For any of you thinking this is some great loss on New York's part, you have no idea what you are talking about. New York has many problems, but lack of high-paying jobs for people shipped in from out-of-state is not one of them. Housing for the people already living there is a big one, and this would only make it worse.
Amazon pulled out because of the scrutiny, that is all. They were likely still going to get tax breaks, but now they would have been forced to live up to their side of the bargain, and they know better than their critics what a scam this all is.
20
A bad day for New York. Protesters short sighted, if not downright blind to the opportunity lost for future. Worse, 70% of New Yorkers wanted Amazon. The people!
4
This is just wonderful. Corporations come to cities because they need them, not the other way around, and it's time cities started acting that way. A corporation which is attracted to the lowest bidder will be happy to hop ship long before the projected payoff ever comes to fruition, in search of more suckers. If, instead of throwing money at corporations, cities invested in their infrastructure, they would be be far more effective at both attracting and anchoring corporations.
11
Ms. Covert, I suspect your bank account is full. Not so for the people who were counting on getting one of those jobs.
I doubt you will visit those who will suffer from this loss, but I'm going to remind you of vital things you can donate to churches and food banks: canned goods, fresh vegetables, peanut butter, pasta, diapers, personal and feminine hygiene items, children's clothing, winter clothing and boots, blankets.
Oh, and one other thing: clean and gently used clothing that can be worn during job interviews. Too bad they won't be worn at Amazon.
3
The opinion writer should read Edward Glaeser's Triumph of the City which explains how idea clusters form value added economic agglomeration benefits that improve a region's microeconomics. How else can a city improve its tax base without advanced companies, like Amazon, moving in?
3
New York was not in a "rage" about the deal, only a vocal minority was. But now we are in a rage that they torpedoed it.
4
NY Finally Called Amazon's Bluff
Wait a minute, calling Amazon's bluff would have meant not giving them tax breaks but Amazon locating it's HQ2 in NYC anyway.
Rejecting Amazon was economic idiocy on a large level. Cuomo was correct. 25,000 tax paying jobs plus Amazon corporate taxes plus economic development would have eclipsed the tax breaks given in fairly short order. Just dumb. NYC loses.
4
Way to go, New York City! I applaud your stand against corporate welfare. I'm sure that the Gullibility Capital of the US, Nashville Tennessee, is busy scraping together more incentive money to throw at Amazon, to the detriment of the rest of good city governance.
8
We have lost a lot of corporations as well as banks to Jersey City; Wilmington, Delaware, and points west and south.
Tech companies will pay heed, reconsider New York City, and go elsewhere.
Now instead of attracting decently well-educated tax payers, we can make do with our run of slouches living off their mothers and girlfriends. Who will be left to pay their rent?
Oh, that's right. The middle class.
Even Bill de Blasio knew Amazon would be good for us. But shush! He'd never tell really why.
We are in for it now.
1
Hey, let Westchester woo and subsidize Amazon...the city will still get the overflow benefits and Westchester can raise its taxes (yet again...)
Like when the Jets and Giants headed to the Meadowlands!
Perhaps Russia's Putin has the right idea. One pays the govermnent for the privilege of making money in Russia. Russia then guarantees the company to be free from hassle and offers security. Only here does the govermnent pay, in my opinion, extortion to a bunch of self centered greedy people. Gotta love American form of capitalism
1
Instead of "I love NY" change that to "we want to be poor", or "we don't want jobs" or....
3
Anyone who's been to LIC knows the neighborhood can barely accomodate another ten residents, much less 25,000. For Amazon this would have been a win- solely because they hope to attract the highest level employees- and those people want to live in NYC (not BFE); who wouldn't? No doubt they also schemed at micro-capitalizing on the dense local population with more "buttons" "add-ons" and delivery type services. Too bad they lost. Let them go to BFE where an infusion of economy is needed/ wanted. And let the Amazon worker bees sacrifice living in the trendiest city in America so they can further their careers whilst watching tumbleweeds tumble... (and perhaps create a little culture where it isn't?) Jobs, housing, retail- let it all bloom. Far away from here!
2
These promised 25,000 jobs at HQ are not for the low and middle income living in the neighborhood. They are for the new crowd that who would replace the neighborhood people. Amazon should've proposed social programs for those affected by the rising costs of living. Instead, they asked for subsidy. Good riddance.
4
Here’s the explanation you requested:
Our record setting employment numbers, thanks to Obama’s policies to lift ourselves from the record low unemployment numbers from the Bush administration, were established w/o any giveaways to Amazon, which proves it’s not necessary for governments to use taxpayer money to pay a company prostitution money.
1
@Marc Grobman: "thanks to Obama’s policies to lift ourselves from the record low unemployment numbers from the Bush administration, were established w/o any giveaways to Amazon,"
No giveaways to Amazon. Right, as long as it's not Amazon. Wall Street bankers? Well of course it makes sense to heap cash on them. In fact it's the right thing to do, just ask Krugman.
I guess I’d forgotten the part where NYC sought Amazon’s HQ businesses. Or, maybe this columnist did. NYC and Amazon negotiated a deal that would land Amazon in New York City. That deal was negotiated (in good faith, by both sides) before being announced. Why did New York even express interest if things are just fine without them? Other cities — Tulsa, Pittsburgh, Toronto — seemed genuinely interested and, while also offering incentives, would have appreciated being put on the tech map. NYC, with all its fancy banks, restaurants and stores needs to watch it. High rents and high housing prices will continue to drive HQs down here to Texas (our primary incentive is no income tax...and a state willing to make a deal to bring a bunch of new jobs).
1
All these cities and states give incentives to businesses and people are ticked that children get free meals at school. Maybe outlaw all these giveaways to corporations.
It's strange that the author frames this as NYC calling Amazon's bluff when Amazon is the one that called this off.
Amazon: let's get married
NYC: Sure
Amazon: But we need to sign this pre-nup first
NYC: Sure!
Amazon: Great!
NYC: Hey, I've been thinking, my parents aren't too cool about the pre-nup, do you think we can talk about it more?
Amazon: sorry, things haven't worked out between us. Let's break up.
Who's calling whose bluff here?
1
Rather than blaming all those “liberal activists,” how about casting a couple of stones at Mayor DiBlasio and Governor Cuomo? This deal was done in secret, without even consulting the City Council. It was this lack of transparency, as much as anything else, that fueled the rage felt by many New Yorkers and politicians alike. Well, the backlash bit them in their hind ends. Not that anything will change. The contempt of elected officials for the citizens they govern is hardly limited to New York. The Utah legislature is busy watering down the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare that was approved by voters. Other examples abound. When people feel that they’re not being heard, they start shouting.
3
I have no idea why we should be giving the richest man in the world tax breaks, when his net worth is 126 billion. And Newark offering 7 billion. Just what NJ needs, more taxes to offset corporate giveaways. Corporations have already received a giant gift in the form of tax cuts from the GOP. Meanwhile, people still go without healthcare, we regularly hear about how badly Amazon treats its employees. These sweetheart deals need to be stopped. What happened to the days when corporations supported the communities around them? What is Amazon's mission statement? More money now? If this had been Wal-Mart, a universally hated company, there would have been marching in the street and there has been, that's why NY doesn't have a store there. LIC is already gentrifying, why not build this in the Rockaways? NYers, were right to question Amazon's intent and Amazon didn't have the right answers.
9
Food trucks, bodegas, dry cleaners, maintenance workers, union construction laborers, cab drivers, and many many more ordinary New Yorkers all lose the additional business that Amazon employees would generate. Despite wishes that all municipalities should just say “no,” other cities will be more than happy to offer tax incentives to a leading corporation that will bring twenty-five thousand good paying jobs. Generating employment in most places is considered a terrific achievement of government. Too bad. They just don’t know what’s good for them.
2
Ms. Bryce, I suspect your bank account is full. Not so for the people who were counting on getting one of those jobs.
I doubt you will visit those who will suffer from this loss, but I'm going to remind you of vital things you can donate to churches and food banks: canned goods, fresh vegetables, peanut butter, pasta, diapers, personal and feminine hygiene items, children's clothing, winter clothing and boots, blankets.
Oh, and one other thing: clean and gently used clothing that can be worn during job interviews. Too bad they won't be worn at Amazon.
2
To paraphrase Jeff Bezos: "If in my position I can't pay this kind of taxes, how many people can?" It's time to end corporate welfare and outlaw tax abatements and infrastructure allowances as incentives.
5
True story - in CT, the 'leaders' in New London cut a deal with Pfizer Corporation which included taking the property from tax paying owners and bulldoze a neighborhood for the benefit of Pfizer. This cause a court case that went all the way to the Supreme Court (see book/movie Little Pink House). End story - Pfizer left after about 8 years with nothing but empty buildings behind them. To say that there was some "resentment and bitterness among some local residents. They see Pfizer as a corporate carpetbagger that took public money, in the form of big tax breaks" is putting it mildly. The city was play for a fool.
Do you think it would have been any different for NY and Amazon? Was it any different for Foxconn and Wisconsin?
5
It's math. $27B in taxes generated by Amazon jobs (over 25 years) vs. $3B in NY tax credits, over half of which were Excelsior Tax Credits, which were already approved, and are spread out over 10 years. The taxes don't include the additional benefits of the school, theater and green space Amazon would have built, or the additional jobs, by some estimates 67K: construction, etc, created to support the NY HQ2. Nor did it include the increased real estate values, which would have generated millions, maybe billions more in property taxes over the long haul. Bottom line, no one likes tax give aways, but it looks like NYC lost a lot of tax revenue over 25 years, plus 40K jobs paying $150K (the avg. income in Queens is $54K), so a handful of politicians 'scored points.' I would not be surprised if Newark gets this HQ instead. Even though they will give away more money: $7B, the benefits to that relatively impoverished community (average income is $16K) likely outweigh them over time. It also doesn't hurt that Newark airport is under utilized and next door.
5
I would happy for Newark if they did build there. Newark NEEDS it, badly. NYC, not so much.
1
It's corporate welfare and nothing more. NYC has a population of 8,000,000 people. 25,000 jobs won't leave a dent. They will not recoup 3.8 billion dollars in tax incentives. I don't support this behemoth called Amazon. I do my business with small business owners. They built NYC. They will be driven out by Amazon. Bezos can take his business elsewhere.
6
So I agree with this column on the merits. The amount of incentive spending has gotten out of control, and cities and regions should think about declaring a mural disarmament. Each community should decide on the level of infrastructure and education investment they think is warranted, and match that with a competitive set of taxation for all businesses. Companies can decide which set of costs and benefits they prefer.
And yet, this Amazon HQ2 competition felt different. Because it was at a scale rare for these decisions - announced as 50k high-paying jobs - it felt like the gold standard of economic development prizes. Metro areas around the country brought their A game, and most crafted a vision for how this investment would help their entire community, supporting many spin-off benefits for others. I know that the Detroit proposal was exciting to see, envisioning Amazon as a catalytic project and bringing rivals from city and suburb together. So while I understand NYC's decision, to many others across the country, there is an amazement of a city just giving up the prize that so many others wanted. Indeed, it is perhaps the only city strong enough to do so.
But at the end, people were worried about a housing market and transportation system that would not be able to cope. Then let's fix that - improve zoning and programs to create affordable housing and fix the subway, and improve the environment for business organically. Because no city should want to turn away jobs.
1
I have only one word - Foxconn.
8
Earlier today, there was an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin who was apoplectic about the outcome.
First, Sorkin pointed out that for the $3 billion investment NY is making into this project (in addition to Amazon's $2.5 billion) the projected economic activity is $27 billion over the next 25 years. That's a 9-fold return on investment, which will be the envy of any venture capitalist.
Second, the proposal creates 25,000 well paying, high tech jobs directly by Amazon in addition to over 65,000 ancillary jobs in Long Island City and neighborhoods.
Third, property values going up benefits the existing resident home owners.
Finally, incentives are only available if Amazon delivers on its commitments; otherwise they need to be refunded (read today's article about GE agreeing to reimburse MA over $80 million for downsizing its corporate headquarters).
So, my question is how do the opponents of this project propose to generate similar incomes to those in need of jobs living in LI City? Government hand outs only go so far. Education investment is a great idea but if there are no local well-paying high tech jobs, whey would those educated on our dime stay in NYC?
At some point, twitter is no substitute to common sense.
11
The problem with corporate tax breaks is that the money to pay for schools, infrastructure, garbage pickup, snow removal, etc. has to come from somewhere. If it doesn't come from corporate taxes, then it will come from individual income and property taxes. Yes, in the aggregate, enough new employees will put the money back in the state's coffers, but from the employee's perspective, individual income and property taxes will remain too high. Oh, and thanks to the cap on SALT deductions in last year's "tax cut" bill, the burden on individuals is even higher. As usual, the corporate bigwigs are happy while the individual wage slave is squeezed. I say it's time to make corporations pay their fair share of taxes. That is the only way to lessen the burden on the middle class.
2
This deal was dead before Amazon pulled out, and no, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez didn't make it happen. She raised awareness, but had no say as it isn't her district, though her public statements might make some think otherwise.
Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, a representative of the LIC community was a vocal opponent of the plan because Amazon is intensely anti-worker. Then Amazon went out and confirmed it at both a hearing and in a WNYC interview, meaning the plan was to pay 3 billion to wealthiest man in the world to hurt working New Yorkers.
Andrew Cuomo, Bill de Blasio, and Kristen Gillebrand, all worked out a deal with Jeff Bezos to circumvent local approval of the Amazon plan. As Cuomo stated, Bezos wouldn't agree to take 3 billion dollars if the elected representatives of those actually impacted by the decision had any say in the matter.
Only one entity was required to approve the Amazon plan, and that was the Public Authorities Control Board. The board was filled with Cuomo, de Blasio, and Gillibrand cronies, so it was a lock. The problem is that Sen. Michael Gianaris, the Queens rep, was just nominated by the State Senate to serve on the Board, and Gianaris immediately called for the deal with Amazon to be scrapped entirely.
That was the actual end of the plan. Bezos pulling out, Cuomo feigning anger, and de Blasio and Gillebrand pretending that the original plan was great for working people, but Bezos changed the terms, was pure theater, and a pack of lies.
2
@Robert B
No. Your conspiracy theory is wrong.
The author references a preliminary study that suggests that a state’s incentives are not highly correlated. The study ignores many other control variables, which might alter results.
Amazon bliinked? Ummm, no. Amazon got tired of the hassle of trying to bring 25,000 high paying jobs to an area of New York that is too stubborn to realize what a windfall they were receiving.
The tax incentives would have been far more than offset by the increased tax revenues from the purchases of the 25,000 highly compensated employees.
Long Island City residents will realize, too late, what their protests have prevented...growth, prosperity, and a brighter future. Short sighted-ness on the part of a few has now caused a more bleak future for many.
173
@F&B Guy
Clearly you've never ridden the subway into and out of Queens during rush hour.
58
@LB Arber
First of all. Not all of those jobs were "high-paying".
And what exactly do you know about the residents of Long Island City? -- it sounds like not much.
Do the research.
50
@F&B Guy
could you please do the $$$ math and share?
I see many comments about the offsets, but nobody shows $$ figures to confirm their opinion.
there is more than tax revenue from purchases that has to be taken into account, and it seems that despite the possibility of relying on facts we are still here discussing on opinions.
17
Good for you, NYC. It's about time a city said No to this unfair bargain. Amazon could easily have located there and provided the 25K jobs without the $3B of incentives. It's just that the word "taxes", as in paying a fair share of community support, is to corporations like garlic to a vampire.
352
@macduff15 --
But why would Amazon have said "yes" without the incentives when every city was offering incentives?
This is the problem, and there really isn't a solution. The only way that some places can attract businesses is with these incentives. And no business on Earth would leave billions of future benefits on the table just to be located in a particular city.
It's as simple as that.
16
@macduff15
Totally agree with JM.
Nobody leaves crumbs on the table.
1
@macduff15
“ Amazon could easily have located there and provided the 25K jobs without the $3B of incentives. “ Maybe, if this Amazon you’re talking about is a charity that is.
3
Tax breaks for companies should be reserved for small, new companies that may need some help. Certainly not for behemoths like Amazon. It´s past time to stop these "deals".
481
@S North
Small, new companies don't create anywhere near the economic activity that large companies do.
6
@S North
I wouldn't bet on small new companies to succeed. I'd bet on Amazon though.
3
@NYC
This deal was not sold as an investment - and that's what was missing. "Investing" in Amazon is a far better bet than "investing" in small new companies.
4
I'm a senior on a fixed income living in a modest home. My property taxes go up every year though my tax rate is frozen. The value of my home increases every year. I drive on roads that are falling apart and bridges that may not be all that sound. I have teacher friends that spend almost a $1000 out of pocket for school supplies for the kids that can't afford a couple of pencils or notebooks. Yet mega corporations feel that they are entitled to a tax break to relocate, this is the same scam that professional sport teams use to get what they want. The payback period of the tax breaks usually extends several generations and will provide little benefit to those taxing authorities that grant them. Give them a short break on taxes for a couple of years but no more, eventually the mega corporation needs to pay their fair share to the local governments.
463
Several generations ? Show us an example.
5
@Will Eigo Raiders. Oakland Coliseum Renovations. Still paying for it although the Raiders are long gone.
59
@Chuckw. In this case the credit was to be applied to the tax liability Amazon would have incurred - it wasn't $ x amount per year.
5
This is a lame attempt at putting lipstick on a pig. These are investments, and unlike stadiums, Amazon offered 25k+ high paying jobs. The taxes on them and the infrastructure would have more than offset the amount that was offered. But sure, go ahead and tell yourself that you won by sticking your fingers in the eye of the big guy. Standing on principle won't feel so good in the next recession, when everyone will want a good job.
NYC lost, congratulations.
245
@B
I am sadden by this but realize that that areas public housing should be abandoned. By that let them buy the apt and pay their own bills. They are subsidized greatly and that comes from tax revenue. Knowing that area from a crime ridden area to less crime ridden now does not change the fact that they cost us dearly and now that they have chased out a company which would have created over 100,000 plus jobs let them eat cake.
8
@B
I seriously doubt that they would employ 25K New Yorkers. Most of those workers would be transfers from Amazon's other locations. Also the idea of putting it in LIC is ridiculous when you consider how poorly served that area is by public transportation.
75
@B: We don't really know for certain that there would be 25,000 jobs, or how much they would really pay. An internal Amazon memo has recently circulated, stating that the highly paid Amazon executives who were told they would have to relocate to NYC rebelled, because they did not want to move their families from Seattle. That might be another reason why Amazon pulled out. So, it looks like quite a few of the best jobs would have gone to people from outside NYC, anyway, and the 25,000 jobs promised do not represent 25,000 new hires from NY The jobs were also promised over a period of ten years. As we all know, in the hyper-capitalist system that's evolved here, ten years is a lifetime. We could have another recession in a year and Amazon could just as easily decide not to hire anyone, or it could fire all new hires and close down its NY facility before the ten years are up. Corporate incentive packages are merely welfare for rich companies that could easily afford to buy as many buildings they wanted to, anywhere they wanted to go. But Amazon, which is rolling in dough and paid nothing in federal taxes last year, clearly doesn't want to pay taxes at all, so they demand tax breaks in exchange for jobs. How is that not extortion? If Amazon wants to move somewhere else besides Seattle, let them do it the way small businesses have to do it: by paying their own way, and not expecting taxpayers to make up for arrogant corporations shirking their responsibilities to a civil society.
168
The 3 billion in incentives offered to Amazon would have resulted in billions of dollars flowing to the city in coming years. Most forward-thinking cities woo large corporations because they realize the long term benefits far outweigh the short term costs of incentives. But then no one every accused NYC of being forward-thinking. How sad.
2
if amazon came bearing gifts -- funding for schools, mass transit -- they would have been welcomed as heroes
instead, they came as beggars and thieves
579
@true patriot Isn't that what taxes on $3.75 billion dollars worth of salaries pays for? Gone. All gone now.
38
@true patriot Isn't that what the income taxes would have paid for, or no?
25
@OneView
Amazon got the money. Sorry.
No greedy corporates.
Socially responsible and respectful ones will always welcome.
Set standards.
26
OK, I can agree that it may have been a really bad idea for NY to offer $3 billion in incentives to Amazon. So, who forced them? Why is Amazon the bad guy for agreeing to take what was offered? As the article points out, other sites offered even more in incentives so Amazon wasn't exactly holding NY up to demand it meet other offers. The villain of the piece, if there is one, is the NY politicians who offered the deal, not Amazon. What was Amazon supposed to do differently? Refuse the incentives freely offered?
I'm not saying that NY should have offered the incentives, I just can't see the justification in celebrating a victory over "Amazon greed" and blaming Amazon.
1
Sorry, I don’t share your view that corruption is only committed by politicians. It takes two to tango. Amazon, the wealthiest company in the world run by the wealthiest man, pits city against city to see who who will give them the sweetest of deals, but do all the negotiating behind closed doors, with little to no transparency. It’s greed, pure and simple.
How do the property owners in this area feel about this deal falling through?
Bryce Covert: "New York Finally Called Amazon’s Bluff"
Or... in this particular universe (admittedly one of the many possible universes) - Amazon told New York to pound salt.
The $3 billion is not money saved - it is imaginary money that will never be collected so that it can't be 'sacrificed'
And the approximate $1 billion per year foregone from new Amazon employees and spin-off employees - yeah that is real - and yeah - totally foregone
3
As usual the press misses the details that would give everyone the information necessary to better understand the trade offs between the tax breaks offered by NYC and the benefits Amazon might bring.
Are the people coming to NYC supporting Amazon's retail operations or its' computer/cloud operations. Most people don't know that while Amazon is best known for its' retail operations almost all of its' current profits and future growth will be coming from computer/cloud operations. If Amazon was planning for its' new HQ to support computer/cloud operations then the impact on everything including colleges and technology infrastructure would be immense in NYC. Can anyone name a leading tech college in NYC? It doesn't exist. NYC colleges are known for finance. FYI, computer science graduates from top schools start at $80,000/year and foster all kinds of innovative startups. Do you think Silicon Valley was a happen stance? Why was Seattle the birth place of both Amazon and Microsoft. Just look at the schools in California and the West Coast.
3
"Huge incentive packages are a burden for taxpayers. Other cities should follow New York’s lead."
Seriously? No thanks. I don't look forward to the increased congestion on I-395 and Route 1, nor to the increased cost of housing in an area where everything is already quite expensive, but I welcome the new jobs and opportunities to Virginia. New York's loss is our gain.
2
Don't blame amazon.
But what can NYC do? Because these kinds of enticement are legal, other cities will try to buy an Amazon decision with offers of money. If NYC doesn't play, other cities will make it lucrative for Amazon to move to their city.
NYC evaluates the Amazon move and decides that the tax payments by Amazon and their employees will bring a large amount of money to NYC coffers. Do they choose to forego this income? They made a calculation that the payments by Amazon and employees would be profitable even if they made an offer worth up to $3B. NYC would profit!
Now the issue is WHO profits from the arrival of Amazon. 25,000 employees making an average of $150,000 per year will spend a lot of money for taxis, restaurants, dry cleaners, clothing stores, grocery stores, and many other businesses. But they will also bid up rents and real estate prices. People who can't afford to compete with the Amazon employees will lose out and might have to move into other parts of town. These are the voters who are driving the anti-Amazon efforts. But the city can do something about the problems of these people. The city will have significant tax revenues from Amazon and their employees to work with. They can build affordable housing. Is that part of the Amazon plan by the city? The revenue to businesses should bid up the value of work for their employees. Restaurant and taxi owners whould have more money to pay their employees.
2
How many Republicans, who universally disdain government involvement in our lives, support these deals when they stand to profit in myriad ways?
2
Do Republicans have any say in the running of NY City?
People who are opposed to the Amazon deal, but who favor the Green New Deal, realize that the latter is going to involve taxpayer incentive packages similar to those offered in the former, right?
5
@Metaphor, actually they probably don't realize that - maybe they think the money will just magically appear out of thin air? What a foolish thing for New Yorkers to do - as another commenter said, NYC cut off its own nose to spite its face.
As long as municipal goodies for corporations can be questioned, could we not start questioning the billions that are given for sports franchises?
5
I cheered when New York said No to Amazon, but I tremble to think that Chris Christie's outsize $7 billion tax break offer may remain on Murphy's table. NO NO NO.
Such incentive packages should be discouraged, taxed, made unenforcible, or outlawed at the federal level. If some states or localities stop offering them, other states and localities will see opportunities. If some workers are willing to give kickbacks to get hired and others are not, the ones willing will get hired unless the unwilling ones can turn in those who asked for kickbacks.
Many employers will value incentive payments above better-trained workers or better infrastructure; part of the incentives are often worker training or infrastructure improvements directed towards them. Cities that want to compete without incentives should push for legislation that will make this happen and even the playing field not only between cities but also between businesses and the governments of their locations.
1
@sdavidc9 Why should these incentive packages be outlawed at the federal level? Cities and states should be allowed to compete for new employers...
1
@sdavidc9, cities that want to compete without offering incentives should attempt to compete without incentives and see where it gets them. If you start outlawing incentives, those businesses will go elsewhere, possibly outside the U.S. - is that what you want?
Besides, what is wrong with incentives that include improving the local infrastructure and improving local education? Do you think NY (or Conn.) is better off without improvements to infrastructure and education?
1
Giveaways and tax incentives should be made universally illegal throughout the country. A business should make its choice as to where to place its business, based upon infrastructure, availability of educated and trained personnel that will meet thrift needs, affordability and quality of housing, transportation and local schools. Bezos personally is worth $160 billion, why does he need a tax incentive.
6
New York doesn't need Amazon, but other cities across America could certainly benefit from the technological boost. Amazon should be wiser next time and look to the South, where economic development will lift all boats. Particularly, the Delta region, where workers are stuck at car plants with few paths to upward mobility. Amazon could create a new tech class and job boom in Louisiana, Mississippi or Tennessee, open doors for minorities and economically depressed communities. The South has lower housing prices to draw workers tired of congested cities; lots of open space and land to build offices; railways and airports for shipping cargo; as well as excellent regional schools to hire and recruit new talent. American corporations should stop concentrating wealth in the coasts, and consider spreading it to areas with infrastructure that have greater need.
2
@Shannon Humphrey
It's a company, not a charity. They have to go where they can get the employees they need, programmers and other such. Education needs to be solid, a good pool of college graduates, and where others will be willing to move. It needs to be friendly to the type of employees they need as well - and that is where all the social issue warfare badly hurts you guys. As a female programmer with daughters - I wouldn't move to any of the states you listed, for example.
3
@SusanStoHelit New York ranks #1 in population loss in the country. Lots of people in your state are leaving in droves due to congestion and high costs. I also live in Los Angeles County, California, and people are leaving here because the prices are not sustainable for retirement. You assume Amazon can't get the workers they need in the South because of "social issue warfare" or that a "good pool of college graduates" is lacking in the South, or that "charity" is necessary. There are excellent schools, universities, and professionals in the South. They go elsewhere- I am one of them- because of the glass ceiling and opportunities are limited. Bring in diversity of minds and backgrounds with a company like Amazon, and that will address the "social issue warfare". Amazon may be a burden for New York, but it's smart economic development in other regions of the country with more space, less people and lower costs that New York lacks.
@SusanStoHelit You assume Amazon can't get the workers they need in the South because of "social issue warfare" or that a "good pool of college graduates" is lacking in the South, or that "charity" is necessary. There are excellent schools, universities, and professionals in the South. They go elsewhere- I am one of them- because of the glass ceiling and opportunities are limited. Bring in diversity of minds and backgrounds with a company like Amazon, and that will address the "social issue warfare". New York ranks #1 in population loss in the country. Data proves that people in N.Y. are leaving due to congestion and high costs. I also live in Los Angeles County, California, and people are leaving here because the prices are not sustainable, particularly for retirement. You might not be interested, but plenty of people are. Amazon may be a burden for New York, but it's smart economic development in other regions of the country with more space, less people and lower costs that New York lacks.
The “progressives” have shown they can destroy jobs. Now let’s see if they can create some. Their transparent celebratory claims is a clear sign they know they cannot. They need others but apparently this one shrugged.
4
@Carlos D
they never did create jobs unless the government ones
Bryce Covert is absolutely right on this. And I am astounded at the arrogance of Amazon, and of the business group Partnership for New York City, acting offended because there were a lot of vocal New Yorkers who protested the arrangement. As always, Big Business wants people to kowtow, deeply, and with happy smiles on their faces and songs of praise on their lips. I am very proud of those New Yorkers who refused to do that.
2
If only the Wisconsin GOP and former governor Scott Walker had been wise enough to see the Foxconn was more con than sly like a fox, then the taxpayers would be stuck with billions of dollars of incentives and infrastructure for an ever-shrinking number of jobs.
1
"corporations just got a big handout from the Republican tax bill"
Only in Democrat World is keeping more of your own money a "handout." Are the millions of average Americans whose taxes were reduced now considered panhandlers? Democrats never learn. If you want to keep driving American corporations and manufacturing jobs overseas, keep the corporate tax rates high.
4
@Ed L.
Oh please. Anyone who can put two and two together and not come out with five knows that the Republican tax bill put forth by that Grifter-in-Chief in the White House and his crony Congress is solely to the benefit of the corporate elite and the upper 1%.
THAT's why the jobs aren't coming back to America.
Wake-up.
Great idea that nyc would’ve collected $20 billion in tax return. If such a sure thing, I’m confident Amazon would’ve happily agreed to pay its taxes to be put in escrow, paid out after only just $3 billion. Win-win!
The incentives only appear as taxes get owed. No taxes paid, no tax reductions.
And with 25,000 new jobs come many new residents living close in and far out. Subways, roads, utilities must be supplied. Who pays? Why in the world should the largest city in the U.S. have to pay any company to open offices there? Amazon should be ashamed of itself and so should NY's governor and NYC's mayor be ashamed of themselves. Amazon has driven bookstores, main street shops, and more out of business. They would be very happy to take similar advantage of NYC. Be thankful they were stopped.
2
Developers have been bribing politicians for decades to reduce the cost of progress on their books. Do you think Donald Trump got his buildings developed in NYC without bribing politicians? Read some of his biographers.
I agree that the habit should be broken. It benefits no one except the person at the top of the pyramid scheme. In this case it would have been Jeff Bezos. In the past it has been Trump (and his father).
1
The upended Amazon deal is reminiscent of another type of public boondoggle, the financing structure of billion dollar professional sport stadiums, primarily benefiting the plutocratic owners of these wealthy teams and generously subsidized by communities which have fiercely competed for the right to throw vast sums of money at this private entertainment genre. “Tails I win, Heads you lose”!
2
This is a shocking op-ed that offers little to no argument regarding why job growth and tax revenue to the city coffers are not a hedge against times of economic downturn?
E-commerce and the services sector provide a diversification of the job base which currently exists in the NY City and surrounding regions which is primarily finance based. Why is that being painted as a bad thing ?
Any incentives ought to be weighed using a net positive value proposition. Will the incentives provided balance itself itself out and provide positive income growth in an area of the metropolitan area, Queens, which has long suffered from neglect?
Rather than propose any of that, this op-ed instead sounds like a cartoonish argument written by say the cronies of the late Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro.
11
Funny that it takes the richest company in the world to try to pull this before a municipality finally says, “no”. companies have been doing this same thing through convention centers, stadiums, gas stations etc for decades. Bravo NY. but you will probably pay for it in the long run.
"...Amazon probably didn’t expect such a vehement backlash. After all, these kinds of deals are struck by American cities all the time…"
Agree, these kinds of deals are struck by American cities all the time. And, this being the case, it seems to me that Amazon doesn't really need NYC. So the question is, does NYC need Amazon? Sure NYC will survive without Amazon, but 25,000 jobs will go to Virginia. That, to me is the bottom line. NYC will sit and watch another city reap the benefits that HQ2 in NYC would bring. And Amazon? Amazon will be just as happy putting those 25,000 in Virginia. It won't hurt them at all. But NYC won't reap any of the benefits. NYC won't get any additional taxes from any other corp, nor will it benefit from lower unemployment with all of the benefits that would bring. All for the principle of not giving out corporate incentives. I doubt if this was a wise decision by NYC politicians.
7
@GR "but 25,000 jobs will go to Virginia" -- but does NY want or need these jobs? I am getting to the point of boycotting Amazon -- I will buy there ONLY if something is absolutely not available at local stores, even if I pay a bit more. Amazon has turned into a global alibaba/ ebay any way.
2
@Tamza I usually order our Christmas gifts from Amazon. This year I tried using other retailers - in one case my credit card was charged multiple times and it took several long calls, with long wait times, to straighten it out. In another instance the relative wanted to return the gift and ran into a lot of problems.
Back to Amazon Prime for me...
Not so sure. South Carolina gave away huge breaks to BMW in the 1990s to build a plant there. The Greer/Spartanburg plant has expanded numerous times since being built and turned a backwater into a large manufacturing hub as satellite businesses popped up in the region after the plant was built. Ask anyone in that state if the breaks BMW was given was bad. Just google BMW Spartanburg and tax incentives....
14
This is not the first time NYC got stung by incentives in LIC. There is an office building north of the Queensboro Plaza that was occupied by a company that shall remain nameless that was granted certain benefits. As it turned out, they reneged on the deal and left the building. The city could have gone after them, but never did. The site is now occupied by Jet Blue.
The studies that have come to my attention show that jurisdictions bribing companies and sports teams to come usually end up losing money on the deal. I realize the Amazon deal was "as of right" with current law, but perhaps it is time to change that. Then there is the 25 year tax abatement for new apartment towers---another area for reconsideration.
2
Why not just make the argument that it would be easier for states and cities to use that incentive money to hire workers directly, and thus avoid lining a company's pockets? And why is it so important to be able to boast about a headquarters anyway, when everyone knows where the company is really based? These are ego projects for politicians, the same as a highway or a sports stadium, not a direct offer of help to those looking for a job.
@Mark Lebow. Why would you want more government workers? What exactly do you think they do?
2
@Jackson ever had a fire in the neighborhood? your house? an accident where you needed the police? travel overseas - needed a passport? problem with a neighbor - needed a judge? know anyone disabled? Or over 65? Building ramps? Medicare?. Who builds roads? not individual businesses - but the community of 'government workers'. Where did you get your education? Or not. Genius.
I myself am tired of listening to the jobs gig and real tired of the - "its going to happen anyway" mantra. No its not if people finally stand up to corporations like Amazon. I watched the place of my birth, Washington state, change into a place I no longer recognize in part because of Amazon. Travel downtown and one recognizes nothing from the past aside from the family owned Nordstroms. Middle-class people cannot afford housing, the homeless numbers have increased, traffic has increased, and the old neighborhoods have been turned into gentrified condos. Is that really progress?
I thank the author for the candid look at the realities of companies like Amazon. I am proud of the people that stood up to them and the leaders that listened. Its too late for Seattle, not for NYC.
12
I've seen a lot of incentive deals. In fact, my last employer did that and I spent 15 years at the campus resulting from such a deal until it was used up and another state gave another sweet heart deal. However, there are good deals and bad deals.
My employer's was in the middle. There was state/city funded infrastructure improvement - an exit ramp was built next to the highway - and of course tax credits and/or rebates. However, the campus was bought from a tech company vacated after a merger. The presence of my employer attracted other private developers and tenants. A lot of employees relocated to the surrounding towns. I have used the local auto repair shops. We lunched out on frequently even though my employer had an in-house cafeteria. So all in all, it was a fair deal.
The worst are those hog farm type. They are the locust, consuming local resources and leaving behind run offs.
But Amazon? It has presence all over anyway. By picking NYC , especifically Long Island City (I never heard of the city until Amazon's announcement) and Virginia, it is not just a campus but a HQ2a. Mind you, NYC financial sector has passed its prime. NY needs to look at what has been happening to CT for its own cue.
Maybe AOC is a true believer but none of her constructive proposals make sense but folks embrace her destructive one. Some pols might have done so as a negotiable tactics. It is sad. Being Trump of the left might not work. Perhaps this is why people can't have nice things!
3
By the way, remember NJ Gov Chris Christie rejecting $5B from the federal government for the 3rd tunnel? Well, maybe this is the answer of that from the left. Funny how things work out!
Well, I have to be honest. Most of the people I have spoken to think that Amazon was a wonderful opportunity for NYC.
Personal Income taxes, Sales taxes, real estate taxes, misc fees etc. What a spectacular loss for New York City.
20
Some loud activists cost regular people better jobs.
And then declared a victory.
Welcome to the 2020 election. Those same activists will lead to Trump's re-election.
16
@Dan
That's not what happened in the midterm elections, or hadn't you noticed?
1
@N. Smith It was mostly moderates who won in the midterm elections....or hadn't you noticed?
The writer needs a crash course in economics from her fellow NYT scribe Mr Krugman.
NYC wasn't handing Amazon $3 billion. It was reducing tax bills in the future by that amount.
In other words, there's no $3 billion check lying around waiting to be endorsed either by Amazon on the one hand or the NYC school system on the other.
There are negative attributes, no doubt, to beggar-thy-neighbor strategies employed by companies like Amazon. Playing cities off one another is a game that makes things worse for cities and better for the company holding the job/tax revenue cards.
But there are positive attributes to an increase in direct and indirect jobs on a scale that Amazon was offering.
Keep in mind it was NIMBY-motivated politicians who led the fight against this. People who are comfortable where they are, and fear gentrification for their neighborhoods. Okay, fine, just be honest about it. You'll try to fight gentrification, but as LIC shows today (not to mention Brooklyn!), it's going to happen anyway.
Yeah, you told Bezos he can't get a break on future bills he'd owe NYC. But it came at a very high opportunity cost.
18
New York will rue the day they turned away thousands of jobs and billions of dollars for their local businesses. Guaranteed.
To those of you who say this is welfare, grow up. This is business and New York just failed miserably at it.
19
@Mark
Get real. What do you know about the impact Amazon would have on L.I.C. and the rest of our city, while New York taxpayers are paying billions for them to set up shop here?
if you think it's such a good idea, have them come to L.A.
4
@N. Smith
Exactly. Most of the those whining on here about how NYC will come to rue the day, blah blah... seem to be from California or Texas. Two states that clearly didn’t “win” Amazon’s corrupt con game.
Sour grapes, anyone?
NYC does not NEED Amazon. Neither does Denver. When it became clear we didn’t make it to the top two, the collective sigh of relief could have been heard on Mars.
Maybe next time a city or municipality will have a "break up" clause before it starts negotiating with a big company in earnest.
We can be assured there was millions of NY taxpayers dollars and tons of political focus directed to "woo" Amazon, as if the company was unaware of NYC as a potential business center.
Would be really nice if the NYT dug deep and found out how much jet-fuel was burned on the governor's fleet of executive helicopters, how many NYPD officers acted as chauffeurs and how many hours political contingents spent wining and dining Amazon execs for naught.
1
NY is getting the city it wants and deserves, You made the bed now sleep in it. NY doesn't need Amazon and Amazon doesn't need NY. All is well.
14
Well Said Ms Covert. It's amazing though how many people including many so-called Democrats are brainwashed. Brainwashed by decades of corporate propaganda. We can thank Bill and Hillary Clinton and Gorege Bush's "New World Order" for that. Nafta, WTO etc. too. We could use FDR now . Amazing how the mainstream Democratic party morphed into the Democratic-Coroprate Handout Party. Thankfully we have more than a few NewDeal Dems in Congress now. A truning point i hope, for this country.
3
I notice all the opponents of the Amazon deal identify with this new Socialism infiltrating our governments.
Someone please explain how these Socialists aim to maintain our record setting employment numbers if they mercilessly bash the very companies that employ people in the tens of thousands.
10
Their main constituents are those who don't look very hard for jobs, preferring instead to hang out.
1
@Tuco Did you go to a socialist run school system? [public schools]. Do you drive on socialist made roads, or take public transit? Or fly in-out of socialist made and operated and managed airports. Socialism is NOT what you think it is -- it is a way to provide EVERYONE in society a level of protection while letting out performers make as much as they want.
1
The most powerful city in the world is laughing loudly at NYC tonight.
4
If AOC keeps this up... Crowley might get his seat back!
10
@Cletus Butzin
Spoken like someone who doesn't even live in her Congressional district.
If you need proof of a deal not living up to promises,I have one word for you,Foxconn.
8
All one has to do to understand where the power is in this world is to read Thomas Piketty.
But let's obsess about a multi-billion dollar wall to keep out brown people cuz they're rapists, murderers and drug dealers. Right.
Sorry, but we deserve the world we've got.
2
Great job AOC and socialist supporters, now let's go back complaining about lack of job opportunities
9
Did the New York Times feel the same way about the taxpayer subsidized development of Hudson Yards?
6
Well, a little podunk city like Reno, NV had more common sense than the bigwigs in NYC. It welcomed Amazon. And its REALLY booming!
4
Right on!
Brava!
Sorry, but your argumentation is all over the place.
Most NYT readers would agree that it would have been a great thing to embarrass Bezos out of accepting those tax subsidies in connection with his Queens move.
But celebrating the cancellationtion of 25k Amazon jobs plus possibly 125k secondary jobs because the arrival of the company would have increased rents??? Have you ever been to Queens? I had to go out there recently to a DMV office since Manhattan had no appointments available. Let me tell you: Poverty, slums, misery segregation, ghetto. Not one happy face in sight. Not one caucasion face either. I had entered the third world a mere 25 min. Subway ride away (ok, it could be argued my third world experience started with the Subway ride, but that's another issue...).
So you are saying: Don't bring in well paying companies. Let those minority folks out there dwell in their trash housing, consume their drugs and fast food. They deserve to stay there and be that way forever. Did I understand you correctly?
11
Bezos, a big lefty , should build without the tax breaks.
We though rich lefties wanted to pay more taxes.
Well go ahead pay your part.
2
This is shocking. NYC politicians outdid themselves and cut off their own noses to spite their face.
"We shouldn't have to give subsidies to mega corporations and to the richest man in the world".
Agree.
But go ahead and change the game, if you can .. at the national level. Until then, you better play the game with the cards you are dealt. Local senators, Union leaders and other grifters have just dealt the state (and the city) and big black eye and significant economic loss. I hope they are held accountable by their constituents.
88
@AP917 Change the game. And: it's not a game, it's real life with real consequences.
16
@AP917
It’s a bluff. If NYC does what it is supposed to do with its infrastructure and its human development, Amazon and other companies will move an appropriate number of jobs there. If not, all these incentives will do is invite outsiders in to work for a subsidized company.
For those who don’t believe it is really a subsidy, why not offer the same incentives to existing businesses? If the city can’t afford to do that, it can’t afford to do it for Amazon.
29
@AP917
I agree, but offer a related comment. It is one thing for a city to decide that it doesn't wish to offer tax incentives to attract a new employer to the city. It is another thing entirely to make a competitive bid to do so, and then once agreed to take actions contrary to the agreement. Unfortunately, the consequences to New York City will include not just the loss of the Amazon HQ2, but damage to New York City's reputation as a desirable location for other businesses. The politicians involved were indeed foolhardy.
7
Wonderful column, and not just because I agree with the writer’s position. I strongly appreciate the writer providing so many links to her assertions.
I wish more NYT columnists and reporters would take advantage of this valuable tool that web-based content offers.
While these are usually bad deals for the local communities I think Amazon might have been an exception. Certainly some 20,000+ Jobs paying six figures is nothing to disregard. And in additional jobs that would have come with it and even a city like New York would have benefited much more than it would have cost. Amazon obviously felt that New York was a good choice while it was going to get some breaks other cities offered more. What surprised Amazon was the vehemence and organized effort that was made against it. It certainly did not want to get involved in a political mess. So it opted out.
As for investing in Education I think NYC spends close to 20,000 per year per child in its public school system. I don't think the residents there get much back from it. NYC has a budget of almost 90B which works out to 10,000 for every resident it spends 25B on its schools. And another 15B on pensions. So NYC spends a lot of money that is supposed to make it more attractive .
3
Let New York city, be the giant I-Cloud that only exists in virtual reality. There are many great city's to build the spaces necessary for physical commerce. Hello Indianapolis!!
2
Good riddance! Its about time someone stood up to Amazon. Within the last few years Amazon has been reeking havoc in Upstate NY where I live. Sears, Office Depot, Macy's, JC Penny, Toys R us.The list grows each year. Another store closed by Amazon. The scope and depth felt by stores closing is huge. And the ripples are felt everywhere. Loss of jobs,shrinking tax base, rise in unemployment, etc... There needs to be a line drawn in the sand. Hats off to the politicians who had the strength and courage to stand up to the bully Amazon.
8
This Pyrrhic victory will do nothing to change the tide in the dearth of retailing in upstate NY or any where else.
9
@Charles. Enjoy your decline in real estate value.
@Charles
And those rotten light bulbs put all the lantern makers out of business.
Times change.
These public-money incentive deals are the financial equivalent of a sugar high. The pitch by politicians: "Look at the jobs we are 'creating'."
Ten years down the road the pols are comfortably retired or transitioned to the lobbying biz, the jobs may or may not still be there, but the hit to the public purse keep on going.
It's curious that "small-government" trust-the-market conservatives are all in on sending the taxpayers' money to the most valuable company in the world here. I don't get it.
7
Glad to see a pause in corporate welfare, if only for a minute. Hope my state won’t jump in line.
3
This plays right into the hands of Trump and McConnell.
We're going to hear "socialism" and "Venezuela" so much in 2020, we'll be sick of hearing it.
Listen, if you didn't like the deal, vote out the politicians who cut it.
But, NY has now lost all credibility when it attempts to negotiate deals with large employers in the future.
The folks getting apoplectic over the Starbucks CEO for increasing Trump's reelection chances have identified the wrong threat. He's as boring as cold mud sandwich.
AOC is much more of a threat.
6
@Didier- no way. It just woke up millions to the corporate lies that's been being passed as truth over these 25 years. A big win for sanity, common sense and the progressive movement.
5
@Didier
"We're going to hear "socialism" and "Venezuela" so much in 2020, we'll be sick of hearing it."
As you should
Excellent article. Thank you.
6
I am sick and tired of corporate welfare. The multi-million corporations will decide where they want to locate, whether or not incentives are offered.
It's time for 50 governors to decide that tax breaks aren't helping the economies in their respective states.
Tax breaks are bribes and graft.....there is no way to describe why they persist into the 21st Century: greed, bribes, unfair advantage, soak the poor who are taxed to death to make up for loss of corporate taxes. Disgusting and disgraceful, especially with large-cap corporations.
359
Senior citizens and veterans get tax breaks too. I could go on.
2
@Will Eigo Sure. Many seniors are on fixed incomes. I am very grateful that my property assessment was frozen when I turned 65. However, taxes do rise when millage is increased on the property that "does not rise in assessed value"
Not every state of municipality provides tax breaks to veterans. Mine was for three years only in another state.
12
@Will Eigo
Veterans earned that consideration through military service and sacrifice. I do not begrudge it to them. Seniors have paid their taxes for decades already. Why should they continue paying for schools their children graduated from 30 years ago? Time for younger people to pay their fair share. (And I say that as a 50-something homeowner who never had children).
10
The opponents of Amazon claimed it would bring "rent hikes and displacement." When neighborhoods get nicer, rents go up poeple. I suppose it'd be better if the neighborhood went to hell - then rents might even go down!! And no one would be forced to move!! Hurray!! Let's live in hell forever!!
10
When neighborhoods became crime scenes in the 1960s, neighborhoods went down and the city went broke.
Looks as though we might see those days again.
Liberals like to blame the demise of middle-class neighborhoods on the rich, but having lived through the miserable late 1960s, until better times more recently, I can tell you the cause: loud radios and shouting all night, brawling in the corridors, urine (and worse) in the incinerator closets, broken hall lights and shattered bottles in stairwells, cigarette and pot smoking and vomiting in the lobby, attacks and rapes, mugging, and murders.
There. I am wholeheartedly for gentrification, which helps reverse what those miserable decades did to us.
Amazon was going to bring 50,000 jobs to Queens, right? Not 50,000 well-paying union jobs with benefits, new low-cost housing, daycare centers and cafeterias on its campus, but 50,000 $15/hr jobs w/no benefits and widely-known brutal working conditions for most of its workers. Not long after, Amazon announced that the number of jobs wouldn't actually be 50,000 (oops!), but really closer to 25,000.
In exchange, New York had agreed to give Amazon 3 billion in tax breaks, breaks that would have come out of the pockets and programs of New Yorkers.
Now, today, unhappy with resistance it has encountered, Amazon has pulled the plug on New York for its HQ.
In time, I believe that the more New Yorkers come to understand about how pretty smelly this deal was, the more will join me in thanking the unions and politicians that resisted and breathe a big sigh of relief.
13
Do you have a clue on what Amazon planned to do? It was a corporate product and technical development center. The workers there would have made many times more than your $15/hour.
4
@Caryl Towner. The average salary at this location would have been $ 150 K plus...
Every single person talking about "our taxpayer dollars" should be required to answer a simple question. What are you going to spend that $3 billion on now?
Oh, that's right. You can't spend it, because it doesn't exist. It was part of an incentive package that is now moot.
13
To all those who think income taxes would have more than made up for the $3 billion in lost corporate taxes, here's some simple math: If the city got 8% of the income that went to the 25,000 jobs that paid on avg $100,000, it would take 15 years for the city to break even. That said, the city wouldn't get nearly 8% (this is the combined city and state tax rate) and this assumes that the 25,000 jobs all appear at once, which they wouldn't and companies have been known to inflate potential job #'s.
6
@Doug Zacker
Plus sales taxes, property taxes, and the gazillion other clever fees cities such as NYC dream up. A 10-year break-even would have been a cinch.
5
@Doug Zacker
There's construction jobs too. Not only for the the Amazon project but also for apartment buildings and condominiums. What about stores, bars and resturants and resturants. Alot of people could be making a living not anymore. Showed them capitalist. You got that right.
4
But the return on investment in your math example is infinite ( years 15- forever ) because there were no dollars actually invested in year 1. Get it ?
2
Crony capitalism is bad. But every episode of crony capitalism has two equally despicable willing parties, most often motivated by their own selfish agenda. The end is a distortion of both commerce and governance. From sports stadiums to sweetheart deals like Amazon, we should call these out and put an end to them.
And the same goes for crony democracy.
3
Was there a guy in a basement office with a Swingline stapler that made this deal all by himself? Why wasn’t this all done prior to the deal being offered? You can’t tell me that NY citizens JUST found out the details.
@RoccoFan
In fact, negotiations were carried out by politicians behind closed doors, with no community input, no scrutiny by New York City Council, and complete lack of transparency. So in fact, what you seem to find so implausible, is exactly what happened.
Funny how swingline used to be made in Queens. ;)
Good riddance. While I am a frequent Amazon shopper I also know the inside scoop as my daughter worked there until recently. The corporate culture is cutthroat and nasty. The average tenure is 18 months. NYC does not need to give tax breaks to these people.
15
@dant My son has worked there for 19 years. He would not agree with your daughter. He also gets to spend plenty of time with his family.
.....oh, and he's not a VP or anything.
I’m not a fan of subsidizing new business expansion on the backs of the locals. However, NYC did not call anyone’s bluff today. They self-inflicted yet another laceration in their long journey to death by a thousand cuts. The cradle of capitalism is becoming a laughing stock.
4
NYC does have the (albeit obnoxious) distinction of being the place where their target labor pool exists and I suspect they will quietly continue to expand here.
3
Is this sour grapes? The deal was never any good, New York didn't really need or want it, and nobody else should either.
9
Socialist Triumph
Our Socialist pols, give thanks for our rescue,
Have driven out jobs - they threatened to sue,
So Amazon elsewhere will set up its shop
For Internet wealth – for New York, not a drop
Don’t build infrastructure, it’s not meant for us
We’ll ride dirty subways, ‘twas ever thus.
2
It is remarkable that the city’s, the nation’s, the planet’s paper of record has so many readers whose comments are ignorant. It is more than a handful, it is a disappointing quantity of posts that equate tax credit subsidies to an actual financial resource ( ie cash ) at hand to be used for civic purposes. The three billion dollar tax credit only exists when an incoming company invests, operates and eventually generates taxable income beyond the credit granted. This takes time , that is the price, just some time. In that same meantime , jobs and new peripheral businesses are formed. Penny wise - pound foolish, petty minded politics prevailed.
12
i'm really upset with you New York, now there's a possibility Amazon will try and weasel their way in to Atlanta. And we already have giant giveaway incentives for the movie industry.
3
Carolyn Maloney must be pretty perturbed right now.
She just lost 25,000 new jobs in her district and huge increases in property value that lead to better schools, roads and neighborhoods.
Oh well...back to the Bronx like look and feel.
4
@Erica Smythe
Congresswoman Maloney's District doesn't cover the Bronx , which by the way is doing very well -- maybe you should come and visit.
2
@N. Smith I know it doesn't cover the Bronx. It does cover Long Island City, however, which is where the Amazon HQ2 was going to be built.
It also covers a good part of the Lower East side of the island.
Do they have Google in NYC yet? It's very informative.
Somehow between Wall Street, Madison Avenue, Broadway, Silicon Alley, the headquarters of many of the Fortune 1000 companies, much of the top retail in the world, manufacturing of all kind, being the top hub of International trade one of the top ports in the country, 9,000,000 consumers, and more tourism than it can handle, I think New York City May survive without paying random for Amazon’s 25,000 jobs.
10
How brave of all these politically correct androids to "call Amazon's bluff".
Will they now cancel their Amazon Prime.
No way, Jose.
4
I never understood why a company like Amazon should get any incentives, let alone $3 billion! Boy somebody sure had their hand out for a share. It would be good to find out towh9om those hands belong.
2
I agree with the author of this piece. Corporate welfare is obscene and must be eliminated completely. Jeff Bezos ought to be ashamed of himself for asking for handouts.
1
What were these ruinous and predatory "incentives" Amazon was to get?
For the most part, a fairly slight reduction of FUTURE TAX PAYMENTS.
In other words, the 'extortion' the economics-challenged opponents were howling about was a small reduction of the windfall they were about to receive.
Its as if I wanted to fish in a pond in your political purview and offered to pay you ten pounds of fresh trout for the privilege.but you thought I should pay you 12 pounds, so I move on and your constituents starve. And believe me, that neighborhood could have used the fish sandwiches.
4
"New York finally called Amazon's bluff"
More like Amazon called New York's bluff.
9
Its a bad deal to let Amazon go. That area was known for crime through the decades and now there is a bright light it gets shutdown. Public housing is based on income and they pay no electric, gas, water or tax bills like most homeowners. On top of that you have plenty that abuse the housing and complain about it. Its time to get rid of public housing by letting them buy the apts and pay for their own expenses.
As for being anti union you have to take it with a grain of salt. There would have been indirect jobs that are Union but the politicians who oppose this are just too blind. As for those people who are complaining I challenge those who own homes to sell it at 50% of what its worth. Cat got your tongue?
2
@The Whole Truth your statement has no basis in truth whatsoever, that neighborhood is not only fine, it has like ten craft breweries. You don't know what you're talking about, don't sell out your state for a bunch of rich jerks who want to strip mine your city. Ranting about the people who get public housing, look at the towers on the water in LIC, won't somebody think about the rich?
Bezos pulled out now for no reason other than wanting to draw attention away from his junk mail.
1
Amazon will now go to Butte Montana, pay people to move there, give them free parking and housing allowance until they find a place, and create a hub there...
2
What a terrible blow to NYC and any future efforts to get companies to come here will be under extreme doubt. Hoping Amazon gets richer in neighboring states who incentives as a business necessity. The NY unions looks like the real deal killer here since they wanted to unionize Amazon and make the great company less efficient.
4
@Larry You are from NYC and you think there is a problem getting people to come here? You think Amazon is a great company, when they make their workers go through extensive screening before they leave jobsites that takes hours and hours and hours every year and they don't pay them for it, and they went to the Supreme Court so they wouldn't have to pay them. "The Great Company" ha, you'd root for the storm troopers.
“Why does a company with billions in profit need billions of New York’s money to bring 25,000 jobs to a city where it already has a significant presence?”
What she said.
I hope the NYT is looking into whether there was a promise of kickbacks from the politicians supporting this boondoggle. Follow the money.
1
"One man gathers what another man spills."
Now you see what Democratic Socialism has brought to Western Europe. My party would never turn down 25,000 jobs but there's AOC proud of her contribution to putting the American worker on the bread line. Is she secretly working for the Republicans?
2
I guess the good people of Queens, NY, didn't hear Cuomo and de Blasio's dog whistles.
What really amazes me is that "Empty-suit Andy" keeps getting elected. He really is the Democratic equivalent of Traitor Trump. He can name a bridge after his father, but I hope when the day comes, he gets a landfill site named after him.
1
"New York’s rage at Amazon’s sweetheart deal may finally signal a sea change in how the public reacts to these billion-dollar boondoggles."
Nonsense.
Politicians and local leaders from dozens of cities are shocked at their good fortune and currently planning on how they can draw Amazon with $3B of their own incentives.
2
Covert's is a startlingly unaware review of this deal. The balance in favor of New York City and State would have been huge. Until today, we stood to lose only future taxes while good paying jobs, averaging six figures, came in to build a future for the dilapidated streets in that part of Long Island City. No one is going to come in and do what Amazon, an economic powerhouse, promised to do. The loss for New York is immense, but don't tell this columnist who has all the insight of AOC along with the overweight idealism.
5
@David Stone "Only" future taxes. Please explain why this makes it any different? $3B that our state should have received, our state doesn't. Where do you want to put that $3B, Amazon saving up for legal fees when the NY AG would come after it for its business practices? "that part of Long Island City" is doing fine, have you even been there? Save your fond prayers.
When does NYc begin to use the $3 billion it saved to create new jobs?
4
An interesting headline about a 'bluff.' But when someone threatens to do something then follows through, it's not a bluff. :)
4
What is so sad about this article is the inability to comprehend how job creation ultimately helps working people. Cheap populism does not.
9
DOnald Trump is having a fit over this dilemma.
In order to criticize Ocasio-COrtez, he'd have to defend Jeff Bezos who he hates.
At least we get some fun out of it.
Seriously though? Stupid move on Dem's part.
3
The article mentioned, $3B incentive was nothing to Amazon. Amazon have left because of pressure of socialist politicians who could even sabotage Amazon operation in anyway in future. Good decision. But all major US cities are now burdened with traffic problem. So no major company should open office there? And on the other hand, if NY and NYC needs money badly, why do they spend avoidable dollars so much for the illegals, refugees and asylums who mostly are fake? They should spend the money for Americans only.
3
If NYC has the money to give those breaks, why aren't they spending it on fixing the subway, schools and community infrastructure? Perhaps its time to stop giving away money to lure corporations who have no interest in supporting local communities other than sucking them dry
@Penny. They were not going to be 'giving away money'. The incentives were a reduction of future tax income from Amazon that NOW won't be coming in at all.
I think the Times headline for this article should be just the opposite. It should be "amazon called NYs bluff". 25000 jobs at very very conservatively 80K /year comes out to 2B each year in salaries. Amazon gets to write off 3B over many years. There's good reason why every city wanted Amazon and now there's good reason why Amazon changed their mind. New Yorkers are known to be full of themselves just look at who occupies the WH.
3
One word to all you New Yorkers - Foxxcon.
Those 25000 jobs will still come to New York. Do you really believe all those people are going to live in Newark?
Amazon just tried to get free money and got caught.
2
Pulease, do you really think they will?
This is the job exodus to the south all over again!
I wonder where employees who move from the west coast to Newark would live.
1
Amen Bryce Covert, amen.
Can you look into the electeds who greenlight such swindles and then go on to work for the companies which get the bakshish?
1
I heard on NPR this afternoon, that real estate speculators who have bought up properties in Queens at above market rates are left holding worthless property. Now, I don't like coincidences. And it seems that it's an odd coincidence that donald trump is a real estate mogul, who just happens to have incurred the wrath of Jeff Bezos. Remember, Bezos' marriage collapsed when AMI/National Enquirer published some stolen emails between Bezos and a girlfriend. And we all know that David Pecker and donald trump are buddies, so it's not hard to connect the (two) dots and infer who was behind the 'leak'. I think Amazon's dumping of Queens as Amazon's HQ2 is, in part, Bezos' revenge.
1
Well lets look who brokered this deal,Andrew Cuomo. The guy who gave us the "Buffalo Billion" job making scam. Was supposed to create Thousands of jobs yet we only saw a few hundred. But on a brighter note several of Cuomo's insiders have been indicted and one has been convicted. So thank God this farce is over.
1
despite my hatred of trump, I will hold my nose and vote for him in the next election, democrats do not share my values any more
4
@Jon There is a growing number of people, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, who are going to vote for Trump or Schultz in 2020.
Amazon leaving NY is horrible and nothing to celebrate. NY has proved its hostility towards successful corporations and will continue to pay a high price. Corporations and wealthy individuals who generate most of the economic productivity and tax revenue of the area will continue to flee as they have for years.
Amazon offered nothing but benefits for NYC as much as some politicians think destroying economically successful corporations is socioeconomic justice, in reality nothing more then a pro poverty. Continue electing people like this and NYC/LA similar places will look like Detroit in no time.
These politicians targeting high tech will destroy the US economy and let China dominate the future economy and world. This is absolute nonsense.
65
@2-6 NYC is, and has always been, one of the wealthiest--if not THE wealthiest--city in the United States. A city of 9 million people is not going to go bankrupt because one company isn't going to bring 25k jobs. There are legitimate criticisms to be made about how this deal shook out, but panicking about the collapse of the US economy is not one of them.
44
@2-6
There are a lot of comments on here similar to yours, and all of them miss the point of this column. No one is saying they don't want jobs. The issue here is the very real "race to the bottom" where communities outdo each other in giving away tax benefits at the direct expense of their citizens, and the importance of taking a stand to stop this process. You have to start somewhere.
46
@2-6 Come on, there's nothing in this situation that reaches hostility. But there is the issue of taxation and who pays what and that issue is serious and long standing and addressing it is long overdue. New York City is congested and adding more jobs is not an answer by itself. These developments, residential or commercial, need to help fix the problem of what to do with many people in small spaces. Tax breaks -- not incentives but tax breaks -- are not helping. If you don't believe that come walk the streets here, take the subways and busses, and try to drive around.
20
It's the politician's loss by not being able to share the details of the deal with the community. Of course there was going to be a huge backlash from the neighborhood it was going to affect. If you'e a common taxpayer how would you feel that the richest company in the world, I think, who does not pay taxes was getting a huge tax break? Why aren't your elected officials giving you tax breaks?
1
Amazon should build in the Midwest, where wages are cheaper and the workers are excellent. We have airports, trains and highways here also.
8
Cities have been providing incentive packages to lure companies and other enterprises e.g. professional sports teams, automobile factories, for year. It didn't start with Amazon and it won't end with Amazon.
1
This news made me smile. That people spoke out against this terrible deal (giving actual breaks in taxes in exchange for possible jobs and revenue but definite traffic and noise and pollution exacerbation) and Amazon left means that people do have a voice and Amazon heard. I mean, come on: they refused to promise to be a fair broker with unionization efforts. Good riddance.
8
There's no reason for NYC to subsidize the richest man in the world with our tax-dollars.
302
@Simon M
No just spend it on the 40 or 50 percent who don’t even pay taxes.
4
@Simon M this is not personal; its about future jobs and revenue and innovation for our city. big loss
5
@Simon M
No reason...other than getting the headquarters and jobs...
4
It’s not a bluff when they leave. It’s a bluff if you call and you win. Giving up thousands of high paying jobs and investment in the area is not a win unless you have a better proposal. What is the other option that is better and when will it occur?
12
There will be another community which will offer tax incentives to companies like Amazon. And many New Yorkers will thump their chests over "winning" over Amazon. Nobody has explained how they will replace the 25,000 jobs that an Amazon distribution center would directly offer or the 50,000 other secondary jobs that would surely have been created. And Amazon will not look back either. It will move on and bring this largess to other communities, probably right to work states, like Virginia and Tennessee, where the companies' labor views are respected. But hey New Yorkers you can stand tall and work continue to work at jobs that pay $25,000 per annum. You stared down Amazon.
10
@Christopher Rillo - And for the price of a "mere" $3 billion dollars. NYC could do a lot with that money with plenty of benefit for the city.
I think you missed the point of this column. The whole point is that these sweetheart deals to companies like Amazon (and casinos and sports teams and, by the way, Trump properties) deliver huge breaks for these wealthy companies and rarely deliver the goods to the communities in jobs and tax revenue. If it truly resulted in win-win outcomes for all, no one would object. But people are finally catching on to the scam.
6
@Jackson No I understand the point but this deal, with 25,000 direct jobs and 50,000 tertiary jobs, rises above other situation. And Amazon was being given $3 billion in a check. Rather, assuming that it met certain employment goals, it would be able to abate taxes. In return, the city and state was collecting enormous income and employment taxes from this new workforce. It would have lifted most folks incomes; a small business owner, such as a diner or a dry cleaner, would reasonably see a step up from the enormous economic activity. I don't think Amazon called New York's bluff in the end; New York called Amazon's bluff and it lost, badly.
2
So many cities are sold a bill of goods by bad politicians. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and FOXCONN is a recent example of a massive tax giveaway in a state that could not afford it. The massive dollars being spent by Homeland Security to have prison facilities built by private prison contractors across the country is another glaring abuse of tax dollars. The Trump admin has convinced naive, small town managers and city councils that these correctional facilities will bring jobs and infrastructure. The truth is, the salaries and benefits are poor and the toll on use of water, utilities, and sewage disposal exacts a toll on the local environment.
9
Corporate welfare was never a good idea. They don't need tax breaks, they should be pay for the privilege of being in NYC.
14
@Michael DuBois
Wouldn't they be paying for that? Salaries here are higher the COL is much higher. Picking NYC means having to pay higher salaries, I would guess. 100k in NYC isn't a huge income. In Las Vegas or Phoenix, it's a nice income.
1
Not sure I agree....
Seems more like a supply/demand equation to me.
Amazon is hugely in demand because they can supply something our local/state cannot create....that’s jobs.
There are 20 other cities lining up and sweeting the pot right now.
The Social Libs just let the biggest fish off the hook.
Who will you tax to pay for the Green Deal?
3
companies will come and go, NYC has been around for centuries and isnt going anywhere. While the prospect of missing out on 25,000 jobs sounds disappointing, the cons outweigh the pro's on this one. Taxpayer money fronting this move which isnt guaranteed to have a great ROI, over-crowding, negative aspects of gentrification. Many other areas of the country could benefit far more from Amazon. Heck the article mentions Newark, why not?
5
I'm sure that the long term benefits would have outweighed short term losses. Remember this when AOC comes up for re-election.
7
@turbo yeah she cruised to victory last year, I don’t think she needs to worry about re-election at this point.
1
I wasn't crazy about this deal--where's the money for subway improvements?--but the argument here is circular. It's bad because it's bad. Either NYC wants jobs or it doesn't. The $4 billion in 'incentives' means less tax money than it would get all things being equal. But remember, this isn't $4 billion less than it gets now, it's $4billion less than a future increase of tax dollars. It also doesn't include the tax money brought in by 25,000 highly paid employees. There's a reason most highly paid software engineers don't unionize--it's because they get stock options--not because they can't. The stock options these employees get make them millionaires. Amazon already has warehouses in the city. These should be allowed to unionize. They also have nothing to do with this deal.
4
Amazon chose NYC because of the local talent pool. So why offer tax incentives? There aren’t many places that offer the talented people or desirability that NYC does, isn’t that enough incentive?
7
@Ron Cagenello. I guess not. They left.
1
@Ron Cage
Obviously there isn't a local talent pool -- NYC is not a tech city -- and Amazon was willing to overlook that for the tax incentive.
The only benefit that a city should be permitted to offer is land. Tax holidays are unethical and should be illegal.
10
Land grants ? That is far more generous than a tax credit. It is real, tangible and permanent. Where do I apply ?
5
@Will Eigo
You apply right to Andrew Cuomo or Bill DeBlasio's office by sending an envelope with $40,000 in it.
1
Here is a financial incentive for Amazon and poor Mr. Bezos that makes so much sense I truly do not understand why it has not been discussed.
Have the nation (in effect, all American taxpayers) provide incentive in return for Amazon locating hugely in West Virginia and/or Kentucky, areas now reliant on coal-related employment.
You'd reduce unemployment; reduce Appalachian poverty; reduce the horrific physical after-effects of coal use on people and the environment; and provide a very high tech hub to the future where none exists now.
21
@traveling wilbury
The tech hubs normally are built in areas where there is already a population of young, highly educated potential workers, nearby world class universities/research institutes and appropriate supporting infrastructure. Another consideration is whether the company's highly educated current and potential employees would want to move to a particular area.
2
The solution is simple: ban deviations from tax law at the federal level and also by treaty.
7
States are sovereign and have constitutional authority to manage own taxes. The Feds can control the impact of those taxes on Fed taxes, e,g., SALT limit for deductions, but it does not police the states.
1
This author is right on the nose. We should strive to act like the New Yorkers. The mommonism, particularly in USA, will be an ultimate bane to us. Kudos is this article.
11
We have a lot to learn. What is the situation in other cities where Amazon is based? Word wasn't positive, as I recall. Most of the jobs were very very low-paying, not "high salaried".
There are a lot of myths about "big business" and "high paying jobs" and "a lot of jobs".
Not that the 19th or even 20th C provided high quality employment but it seems we're living in bubbles of unproven assumptions. Also, what are ppl here talking about - it was no graduated tax exemption, changing after 5, 8, or 10 years.
There would be massive congestion, poor housing, social problems created.
8
Amazon is “based” only in Seattle. Hence the 2 in HQ2. The comments from Seattle indicate the highly paid HQ staff are driving COL higher. That what you can learn.
I worked in economic development once. Tax incentives are a complete waste of money in most circumstances. The exceptions are:
1) The company is offering to build public infrastructure on behalf of the municipality. For instance, building a new airport terminal so a company can expand service. If the company is willing to put down money for the infrastructure, a financial incentive makes sense. The project becomes a public-private venture.
2) The municipality is seeking to promote a local ventures over regional or national competitors. For instance, it makes sense to provide financial bonuses to local fiber ISPs rather than paying Google. We want our local businesses to achieve scale in competitive and growing markets. We don't want to pay someone else to crowd them out of the market.
Other than that, you really shouldn't provide economic incentives from public funds. Particularly with jobs, the company is just going to turn the idea on its head. I witnessed one company get an incentive for manufacturing jobs. They expanded manufacturing and laid off a bunch of administrative and operations people upstairs. The overall payroll decreased. The company's margin increased.
32
@Andy
"I witnessed one company"
So your personal example determines what Amazon would've done? That makes sense to you?
1
This has nothing to do with incentives, and everything to do with the ultra left in the Democratic party (Democratic Socialists), creating a totally toxic environment for business. New York had a chance to become the leader in this industry - which it now has passed on. No doubt, more Democratic Socialist chaos will follow - now that they have their first huge success (other than electing AOC).
6
@Randy
Gee, Randy, have you ever even visited NY once? To call NYC a "toxic environment for business" is like calling a screaming mosh pit a "toxic environment for rock n roll."
NYC *IS* big business taken to its extreme. To call it a toxic environment is beyond ridiculous. THOUSANDS of jobs are created there every week. .
2
@Randy
Hmm, interesting point. But, isn't giving current or future tax dollars to a private company socialism too? That is, it is , socialism is that the means of production, distribution and exchanges are owned by the community as a whole? So giving money to Amazon is involving the community in the ownership of Amazon-- presumably Amazon would then give shares of the company to Queens? Or, am I missing something here?
3
Leader in what industry Randy? NY is already leading the way in many industries, and serving as a good example to the rest of this county on various social justice issues.
We don’t need Amazon tech bros to lead us anywhere.
NYC voters just have to elect leaders who have their heads in the right place, willing to utilize and leverage existing wealth more equitably, as well as efficiently.
1
It wasn't a bluff. They meant it.
8
@Just sipping my tea
NYC has the largest pool of tech workers of any city in the United States. Why should NYC give Amazon a sweetheart deal to come here?
2
@Jess
You are right Jess. NY should have demanded additional taxes for the privilege of investing here. Absolutely !
1
They do not need every tech worker. Just enough. They can find enough in other places besides NYC.
There is a basic lack of thinking here. Amazon was going to get subsidies (that I am not a fan of) for jobs created to a cap of ~$1.5B. They don't get a check for $1.5B upfront. They get the money for the number of people they hire every year. In the meantime those hired employees pay ~10% of income to NY state and local taxes. In addition they pay ~10% in sales tax on purchases. They also spend money on local business stimulating the economy and vibrancy of NYC. In ~3 years, the subsidy per job is repaid and going forward all the taxes and spending is free money for the city and state. And it gets to build an ecosystem of tech companies around Amazon that also benefit the city. There are so many multiplier effects here to benefit the city. Its a shame that the IdiotLeft don't seem to understand basic economics and math.
There is also the other $15B in property rebates that I am not too sure about.
16
@Sipa111
I’m guessing you don’t rent an apartment or run a small business in LIC. But hey: why should their elected representatives care about them? Why should their interests matter?
I think this is tragic. 70% of New Yorkers supported. It would have pumped the economy. New York would have been benefited far more than what it was going to receive in benefits. People have lost their minds!
8
@Mary
Long Island City is already an expensive, thriving neighborhood. After a certain threshold, increasing property values does not equate to a better quality of life. Somehow I doubt Amazon's presence in NYC would've decreased class sizes in Queens schools at all.
1
@Mary You see how Amazon said it didn't care about the bakshish, but now is leaving BECAUSE no bakshish.
Why do you think being forced to pay is a good idea? Are you aware of their sordid history of employee abuse?
1
I'm one of those who gladly says "Goodbye" to Amazon for all the reasons stated here; not only because the city could use that that billion dollar tax incentive in advancing other projects, but because of the impact that its planned 25,000 employees would have on an already antiquated and overburdened transit system, and diverse L.I.C. community that would struggle under the load of housing thousands of new workers at the expense of long-time residents.
And then there's the utter secrecy with which Gov. Cuomo and Mayor deBlasio went about procuring this deal without any input from New Yorkers or even the City Council.
That's why I have no problem seeing Amazon go -- and hopefully this time to Newark, New Jersey, where they would have a ready infrastructure, work force and proximity to the New York metropolitan area without saddling us with the expense and congestion.
And that's no bluff.
40
@N. Smith
Maybe you can't have both diversity and prosperity.
I live in downtown Manhattan. To me, LIC and Newark are basically the same (but I know Newark is in NJ). To me, Queens is as far removed as Newark. My pint is that you see fine with Amazon's deal, as long as it's not in NYC (it's fine in NJ). Since I don't really see Queens as part of NYC (To me, Manhattan = NYC), I was totally okay with the LIC location (because I see LIC and Newark as more or less interchangeable zones outside of Manhattan). I make no distinction between LIC and Valley Stream.
1
@Anti-Marx
I'm a native New Yorker and I repeat: Anyone living in New York who doesn't consider Queens a part a part of our city is either a transplant, a snob, or both.
Do yourself a favor and travel outside of your bubble downtown.
Amazon's decision shows how little it cared about NYC, or any city for that matter. But then again, the headquarters bidding circus already showed that -- Amazon played 200+ cities against each other, negotiating a better offer from New York by pretending to be interested in places ranging from Tampa to Tulsa to Topeka.
Amazon is a geographic mercenary: no place matters enough for them to put in the hard work of building community, and they'll happily pick up and move whenever a new place tosses them some tax incentives. It's likely they would have started threatening to leave as soon as they got here.
18
Why should Amazon “care” about NYC? It’s a business - a real wage paying, hiring business. It’s business is not “ creating a community”, it’s selling stuff. If you are looking to the cold, hard economy for those things, you need to rethink your expectations.
2
This makes me so happy. It's some of the best news I've heard in a while. It's about time that the people of New York spoke; they don't need to play Amazon's game.
28
If no one were willing to pay, where would this companies go? Time for governments to freeze the freeloaders out.
23
BIG BIG IF ,, and IF all the municipalities in the USA colluded to exclude any sort of tax subsidy treatment to any prospective company , then what ? Then the other 200 nations on the planet would sit on their hands too ?
4
@Will Eigo
Where would they go? They'd pay more taxes in Europe than in the U.S. China? Good luck with that.
2
I don't know if you could really call it "bluff" when a threat is actually backed up by action. If Amazon did go ahead with the HQ even without getting all the perks, then bluff-calling characterisation would have been apt. But as it happened, they just did not agree on the terms. No bluffing, just in-good-faith, albeit unsuccessful, negotiations.
9
@David: We in NYC call this a "win" - we do NOT need Amazon, full stop!
2
This author thinks that "so many more high-income residents moving to the city" is a "race to the bottom". Has the world gone mad? She indicates that there was "rage" in New York about the Amazon deal. Really? The large majority of people supported the deal. One needs to read partisan ideologues with a grain of salt since it seems real obvious that most cities would be happy to be receiving 25,000 high paying jobs. And its well known that NYC's infrastructure has been having issues long before Amazon showed interest. Maybe their arrival would have put positive pressure on the city to get going on infrastructure updates. Think of all those 25,000 high income tax payers that NYC will not now have....
24
@Victor
"Maybe their arrival would have put positive pressure on the city to get going on infrastructure updates."
I doubt it. Wall street has tons of money. Even the stations that serve them aren't all in great shape. And Amazon is going to do better?
"Think of all those 25,000 high income taxpayers that NYC will not now have...."
Think of the $3 billion dollars it would have cost.
If, as advertised, those jobs all paid $100,000, unlikely in my opinion, that comes to $2.5 billion/year. The city could hire a lot of people with that money to fix up and clean the subway and more. And NYC would get the benefits, not Amazon. And those employed would also be taxpayers.
8
@Betaneptune
Where are all these unemployed, highly educated, experienced tech workers? These people already have jobs.
5
@Victor; No, the "large majority of the people" DID NOT support this stinkingly bad deal! Most of us in NYC are smart enough to know when somebody's trying to pull a fast one on us, as Amazon was.
As to your statement "Think of all those 25,000 high income tax payers that NYC will not now have...." I can only tell you that I laughed OUT LOUD at that, b/c it tells me you don't have a clue about NYC and who lives here and how much they're paid. We are not short of people who earn over $100,000/year in NYC.
In fact, we have MILLIONS of highly-paid people in NYC and do not need Amazon's freaky "let us help you" attitude. We are not "Nowheres-ville, USA," thanks!
9
I was amazed that NY politicians agreed to play this game in the first place. The deal was reminiscent of the scam NFL teams have played decades. Poor St. Louis, is still $144 million in debt for a stadium built for a team long gone.
57
Houston is still paying for renovations to a very empty Astrodome because the NFL team moved to Nashville. Of course the current team demanded and received its own taxpayer funded stadium next door!
1
"Why does a company with billions in profit need billions of New York’s money to bring 25,000 jobs to a city where it already has a significant presence?" Very simple. This was a nationwide competition where many cities wanted the jobs, tax base that would come from the jobs, and all of the additional business to both small business and large that would flow from that investment. Amazon was free to take the best deal offered and once the deal was struck, not be threatened with renegotiation. NYC is a very high cost place to operate and to be competitive, incentives were necessary. If you want to blame someone, blame those who made the deal without support, but don't blame Amazon. This notion that Amazon is a rich company that doesn't need the incentives entirely misses the point. There are other cities that have the infrastructure, talent pool, and supporting businesses that can compete quite nicely with NYC. Don't criticize the incentives unless you can say with confidence that the direct and indirect economic would not justify the deal. I suspect most in opposition don't really know the outcome of that analysis.
12
@PT "Don't criticize the incentives unless you can say with confidence that the direct and indirect economic would not justify the deal. I suspect most in opposition don't really know the outcome of that analysis."
I doubt the analysis is right. Who conducted it?
I heard a proponent on the radio this afternoon say that we would not really be giving Amazon $3 billion; we'd just be cutting their taxes by that much. Sounds the same to me! Disingenuous, no?
2
@PT: I cheerfully criticize the "incentives" b/c NYC does not need to offer incentives (and certainly not billions of dollars of incentives) in order to be overrun by a very entitled corporation that has a history of behaving like an 800-lb. gorilla.
Amazon knew in advance that "NYC is a very high cost place to operate" - so they should have looked at lower cost places.
But, ah, who can resist the lure of getting NY to PAY YOU to come to their city? Bezos has a big enough ego that he wants his company to be "wooed" and competed over. Sorry, Jefff, this ain't a beauty pageant, and we are VERY happy to have your "HQ2" go anywhere else.
3
I think you misunderstand the situation, Ms. Covert. It was New York's bluff that got called.
The city is already stuck in a cycle of rich getting richer, poor getting poorer and the middle class moving away. Get ready for that to accelerate.
26
@Jason: Why is it always people in Texas or elsewhere - people who have NO idea what actually goes on in NYC day-to-day - who are pontificating about what terrible things are going to happen in NYC? Let me give you a clue: We are doing FINE here in NYC, thanks!
Now, how about if I tell YOU all the bad things that are going to "accelerate" in Texas?
4
Good riddance to the notion of overburdening New York City's infrastructure at the expense of those who would suffer the consequences.
New York and Amazon are not a good fit. New York is for artists who treasure social compression, and the ultra-rich who can afford over-priced living. Amazon is for nerdy techs and the nouveau semi-riche who thrive best in sunbelt metropolises.
3
@AynRant
"Nerdy techs?" I suspect you have no idea of the amount of creativity that goes into creating new technology.
1
New York city is busting at the seams with the cost of apartments out of sight, and the subways overwhelmed. Its added about 500,000 people since 2010. It really doesn't really need to fuel growth further through incentives to huge companies. If this deal was for upstate which has been loosing jobs and people for decades, then it might make a little sense.
24
As someone who managed economic development for years for foreign nations as well as US localities, the most devastating aspect of this is the high profile damage done to NYC as a center of business. When America's most successful corporation walks away, the world of business watches and learns. Nothing is more important than a high degree of certainty in business planning and NYC has proven, in spectacularly fashion, it cannot provide that.
30
@peter: You are yet another person NOT in NYC who doesn't have a clue but thinks you can "diagnose" what we're doing "wrong" here.
Let me enlighten you: NYC is doing fine; in fact, we are doing BETTER THAN FINE! And the end of this Amazon fiasco does not in any way "damage" NYC as a very desirable business center, regardless of your delusions on this issue. What Amazon could "offer" NYC (other than disruption) was only a drop in the bucket as far as NYC is concerned.
9
It's not a bluff when Amazon walks away. That's not what bluffing means.
25
Maybe there will be 25K Green New Deal jobs, paying about $100K per that AOC is bring to make up for this loss. If people are willing to work for the jobs.
13
@TED338
You’re joking, right?
@TED338
yes Stella, you guessed it
This isn't Amazon vs. the common man. It is Amazon vs. all the businesses already in New York (and those that might move there without subsidy) that would have to pay for Amazon's subsidies with higher taxes of their own.
Subsidies always distort the economy, and thereby reduce the common good.
136
@Jonathan Katz. Is it possible that because Amazon would have paid into the tax pool, that all businesses would benefit?
1
"The best way to compete is to invest in the attributes that make them attractive to employers — like education and infrastructure — and let companies make their decisions on the merits."
This is what I find most vexing and surprisingly absent from our understanding of the role of major corporations here in the US. Why exactly do we need to bend over backwards for companies who need us and our talent, infrastructure, and consumer markets more than we need them. They were born from us, not the other way around. And if they were to leave others would simply rise in their place to meet the demand. Why sell ourselves so short?
67
In San Francisco, Twitter and others were given huge tax incentives in exchange for community enhancing measures, most of which they never followed through on. Incentives are cheezy moves on the part of local politicians to court voters.
82
New York was always going to get less out of this deal than Amazon. And it's not just the 3 billion in "incentives." According to their early announcements, they wanted to "tap into" the base of technology-savvy talent.That's the one I choked on. This city is filled with many young people starting or running small innovative companies. So Amazon wants to drain from them?
Why not take the company to a city that really needs them, one that can benefit from the development of its local talent. How about Detroit? St. Louis? Newark's out for the reasons the article states but there are others.
Why can't they create a mutually beneficial partnership, one that helps the company and helps the nation?
Oh I forgot. Jeff B.
He's the "visionary" who put brick and mortar bookstores out of business and just opened an Amazon Bookstore on 34th St.
47
@Walt
Sorry but you are making no sense whatsoever , NYC was getting back $24B net in taxes and that is lost now, let that sink in, and no tech talent will go live in a high crime city and neither they should as the safety is priority
2
Bryce, should the public stop building airports for carriers to operate out of? Every business I know of is the beneficiary of incentive packages of some sort or another.
Loud does not mean right. Roughly 70% of the population favored Amazon. A few loudmouths scuttled something the vast majority of the population favored.
11
@Texas Duck
The majority doesn’t know the facts and largely believe the media hype which pretty much sums up the US from top to bottom. The country is already flush with unaffordable cities where people commute for hours everyday. Or leave. It is not sustainable. The only beneficiaries are the top tier of society.
10
@Texas Duck: You say " Roughly 70% of the population favored Amazon." I say to you: PROVE IT! Cite specifics that can be confirmed independently, or else stop claiming fake numbers that you pulled out of thin air.
3
The author notes that thousands of sweetheart deals are made every year, and goes on to guess that it was because citizens don't recognize how bad of a deal they are.
No, it is because elected officers of the city or county suddenly get a big head, think that growth is the ONLY marker of how successful their city is, and abandon all common sense in asking if this is indeed a good deal.
Take the 3 billion and use it to correct economic needs, avoid trying to pull in an additional 30,000 workers for minimal wages, and see how good the deal looks for the people, not one guy who just happens to be the richest in the world.
I only hope that every sports arena or stadium request gets the same response until far more significant problems are deal with.
24
I would say that Amazon called New York's bluff rather than the reverse. What was the purpose of all the complaints about the deal except to get a better deal. Well, now there is no deal.
Amazon will survive just fine. New York probably will too, slightly poorer but also less congested. Probably better for everyone.
6
The richest man in the world, on the planet couldn't or wouldn't allow union organizing ? Fair pay, fair work rules, healthcare and pensions are something he doesn't want his workers to have through good faith bargaining ? BTW the workers who he built amazon on their backs. Those workers. Yep that to me is a sign of bad faith. NYC doesn't need Amazon.
74
Bryce Covert has declared a Pyrrhic victory. New York has successfully canceled a 3 billion dollar tax incentive by preventing the receipt of more than 10 billion dollars that Amazon would have paid New York in taxes.
16
It's all about worker's pay. The offer was dropped because of the threat of Amazon having to face unions.
New York City protects unions and their employees, other states and cities actively fight unions.
When the issue raised it's head, Amazon realized it wasn't assured the 3 billion in tax payers money without potentially becoming a union shop.
No price tag is worth paying for that, because once one chapter of the Amazon worker's union exists — the potential to spread to all other locations increases. Amazon is committed to keeping labor costs as low as they possibly can be. Their full time workers in other states are often need SNAP and welfare to survive — even while working full time.
American corporations do not have their employees best interests at heart and they never will. That is why, however checkered with the good, the bad and the ugly, unionization's history may be — we still need Unions to avoid our society becoming little more than a minimum wage work camp on a giant scale — the way Amazon likes it.
204
@Arthur
Down with the corporations. Unite the workers who do not anything to lose other than their chains !
4
@Arthur
These were high paying salary jobs, >$100K/year. Pretty unlikely to unionize. There are no anti-union laws in Washington state, and there is no union at the Headquarters in Seattle.
@Arthur This is the crux of the situation, isn't it.
It's mind boggling that New York turned down high paying jobs that would raise the standard of living for the entire area. Instead, NY can keep the lower paid jobs and their short sighted politicians while other areas benefit.
9
@Tim it is hard for people who live in areas that have wide open space for more development and reasonably priced, affordable housing, to understand what areas like NYC and SF are going through right now. Housing is expensive and there are plenty of people who can afford it--meaning they already have high incomes, without Amazon HQ2. I would love to see Amazon HQ2 go into an area that could benefit from their economic growth. NYC does NOT need Amazon. It is already doing well.
14
@Tim: Feel free to invite Amazon to move their "HQ2" to YOUR neck of the woods. I'm sure anywhere in Texas could use the economic boost Amazon would theoretically give you.
3
@Tim
It's mind boggling for you because you live in Texas, a state that operates differently, taking the side of big business over the citizens in all conflicts. NYC was offering a 3 billion dollar bribe. Amazon liked that, it just didn't like having to obey city laws about UNIONS. That is why they left.
5
For the billionty-billionth time:
Amazon WAS NOT being "given $3 billion of NY taxpayer money."
They were being given a tax credit that they could use against $3B of future tax liabilities. Once those credits were used up, Amazon would have been paying the standard taxes.
And all along, the city and state would have been receiving the payroll taxes from those 35K employees. And local businesses would have been receiving the benefit of having 25K well-paid white collar workers in the area.
Instead -- NYS and NYC now get ZERO DOLLARS. No future taxes from Amazon. No income taxes on the workers' pay. Nothing.
Still think this is a "win"?
54
You can pick the nit, but in budget reconciliation it’s the same thing. And, if you’re so concerned with tax revenue and drumming up business, who says Amazon won’t hire and build here? Their employees will demand it at the highest level.
6
@JM
What ultimately is the difference between a tax holiday and a handout? Seriously JM, I'd like a clear explanation from you on that.
It's 3 billion U.S. dollars - that's 3 thousand million dollars - of tax that they would be let off the hook for. For a corporation whose leader is the richest man on earth. Maybe this helps to explain exactly why he is the richest man on earth - he's an unparalleled welfare case. I read somewhere that amazon paid no federal taxes last year, if true that also helps to explain Bezos' wealth.
I applaud NYC for standing up to the unbelievable greed of this corporation and showing some respect for the average people whose taxes would be used to support this deal which would undermine their quality of life.
I'm not anti-business, but corporations need to stop their unchecked and anti-social greed. I've never before seen a corporation so publicly playing off one city and region against another searching for the largest handout they could get.
28
The difference is you do not get incremental taxes to reduce unless the company builds and hires. No company action - nothing to reduce. Instead if 85% of billions, you get 100% of $0. Feel better?
16
NY shouldn't offer any company deals since they all want to come anyway, given the attraction in NY in terms of transportation, cultural events, entertainments, restaurants, and etc.
Besides, Amazon will find out soon enough that locating the 2nd HQ in other places it will have a hard time in finding enough qualified employees.
Amazon should be paying NY for having the 2nd HQ...
11
Amazon will still be able to pay the SAME high wage in the other city with the fat incentives. Programmers and others will depart NYC to get the nice Amazon salary where ever it lands.
4
@paul
It's just nonsense that Amazon will get its employees locally. In Seattle that's not the case. Amazon employees come from all over the country just as employees do for every big tech company. And if you haven't noticed virtually every state has the universities to train young people to do high tech work. Does NY have a monopoly on tech training? Does it have a Harvard, Stanford, or Caltech? What is it that makes you think Amazon can't recruit 25K high quality people?
1
@Will Eigo: GOOD! Good riddance! It'll give us a little more elbow room around here. (And we are not short of programmers in NYC, BTW. You should look at how many millions of square feet of office space GOOGLE alone has in NYC.)
1
It is not the "incentives" that were the bad deal. Amazon is not responsible for terrible infrastructure. That is the fault of elected officials who can't even manage to get congestion pricing passed, let alone some repairs for the subway or protective labor laws. Perhaps it is also the fault of the media which sensationalized the kvetching of a few loud voices over those who really wanted Amazon. Did anyone use plain English to explain "tax incentives" to the public? How sure are we about who was really behind those objections, and who will now gain at the expense of NYC?
7
"Huge incentive packages are a bad deal for taxpayers. Other cities should follow New York’s lead."
They already knew. The DC-area incentive package is less than half of NYC's -- for the exact same thing.
Further, the DC agreement already allows for up to around 40,000 employees, just short of the combined DC/NYC total. That means that Amazon doesn't have to keep looking to get basically what it wanted.
7
It is not the same thing. Operating a large and expensive staff in Northern VA is a lot less expensive than in NYC. It sounds like NOVA ran the numbers and calculated the minimal incentives needed to have a better NPV vs. NYC. The more that NYC politicians carped and whined, the better the NPV in VA. While people in NYC may actually believe that baloney that you have to be in NYC, numbers say otherwise. The leaders in NY should have known Amazon lives and dies by the numbers, not unmerited municipal boosterism.
1
@Michael Blazin
I'd disagree that it's that much cheaper in NOVA. It's the tech capital of the East Coast, formerly the world. Not a cheap area.
1
@Michael Blazin
Crystal City is directly across the river from downtown DC, in the same way that Long Island City is directly across the river from Manhattan. The costs are very comparable.
1
Indeed, if Amazon ran its bidding competitively, as it did, the winning bid will be equal in dollar amount to the economic gain Amazon would bring to that city. All of those gains will be captured by Amazon in the form of subsidies and other perks, increasing inequality and ensuring that social services suffer. A great deal for Amazon is a bad deal for the American people.
10
I love New York. Great place to visit. The City has a superb newspaper, too!
Sorry, but New York City is also ranked as one of the worst places to live in the US by US News.
Just a small thing, but a helipad is taken for granted in most cities. My local NFL stadium has one. Why should it be hard for one of the biggest corporations in the world to get a helipad so that they can deal with intense traffic?
I haven't even hit taxes and cost of living.
4
@New York Visitor I doubt many workers will be arriving via helipad landings.
1
@reid
Yes, but the people whose time is worth more per hour for a for-profit organization than the total cost per hour of the helicopter will sometimes need one, which they will probably not be able to get all the time due to scarcity. Fast transportation is most profitable when there is a major problem. A helicopter is not to give rides to all workers to commute in any organization that I have ever heard of.
Other cities will do just the opposite. They will gladly have Amazon and all the jobs and tax base it will bring. NY really lost out on this one.
I guarantee all the people cheering this terrible loss for NY buy from Amazon all the time.
7
This is a win for overburdened NY taxpayers, who would have been forced to fork over Amazon’s $3 billion while Bezos sits on a $150 billion pile of cash. New Yorkers will do just fine without Amazon. Let’s see if the chumps in other cities have enough guts to tell Amazon the days of corporate welfare are over.
11
@LIChef
To be clear, and as stated in other comments, New York was not "forking over" $3B. It was forgoing collecting corporate taxes. It would still have collected income taxes from the 25,000 jobs that Amazon would have brought in.
3
Games. New York would rather build sports arenas or casinos. Strange, since is seems we were unwilling to up our game on this one.
3
Beautiful!! Our brilliant elected officials, who propose such a nutty plan as the Green Deal, blithely turn down a deal that would not only inject billions of dollars in tax income for our always short of cash city but would be a huge stimulus to making NYC a technology center.
Hey, I don't like the shameless was states & cities vie to entice companies to bring jobs to a given location; but lets be clear - it's the way the world works today. Also let's make sure everyone knows what we are turning away: The state & the city were not paying Amazon a nickel; they were forgoing taxes on future earning (that now will never be earned), plus of course taxes on all earnings beyond the first $3billion worth.
We will be forgoing immediate taxes on the earnings of 25,000 thousand well compensated new employees & on all the businesses that would have done business supporting the huge Amazon venture (that will now never materialize).
So once again Ms. Covert, explain to me, speaking slowly so I can understand, just how NYC call Amazon's buff.
25
@Richard Huber
It is all going to work out. There will be 25,000 new jobs for people to change light bulbs, insulate windows and doors and put grbs (gas recovery bags) on bovines at the Bronx Zoo which will, in time lead to the installation and maintenance of bpgrbs (bi-pedal gas recovery bags) and much, much more. These jobs will pay 100k and up. With free health care, free education and everyday will begin with rainbows and lollipops. Don’t listen to the naysayers who want to drown your dreams in numbers and facts.
It’s all just “fake news”. (It’s not trademarked). Progressives are entitled to our own reality just like those other guys.
2
Hooray for NYC!
I've seen this tax break scam before.... a nearby school system was persuaded to give a five-year tax exemption to an IT outsourcing company for the new data center being built. They were assured that there would be a couple of hundred jobs associated with the data center.
No one on the school board thought to drive by the building site and see that there were less than 30 parking spaces. Yes, there were in fact hundreds of jobs associated with the new data center - almost every one of them was in India.
Our new Republican World Order... socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us.
36
@Bob from Sperry I don't understand the naive belief that tech companies have the best interests of their workers or the broader community at heart. It's pure propaganda that elicits a cynical response when made by energy companies but is somehow more convincing when claimed by tech giants. Making billions requires a ruthless disposition and deals that favor the corporation. Why must people have to continually relearn this fact?
2
In the long run, a city with well maintained roads and sidewalks, reliable public transportation, and affordable housing and good schools, will attract good enterprises.
After all, enterprises require qualified employees, and they in turn will consider their quality of life an important aspect of their employment conditions.
Spending public money to bribe industry to move in, shortchanging the city's infrastructure will end up proving very short sighted.
27
Now what are the naysayers job creation solutions for at least 10,000 of those lost 25,000 jobs. Have they created new jobs in their district or for the city?
Who will want to come to NYC after this debacle?
8
The thing is, those of you spouting off that 'the $3b should be used to buy more teachers and fix the subway' don't really seem to understand that the city is pretty much broke already with budget deficits and unfunded liabilities...The incentives granted to Amazon aren't monies they have in the bank, they are based on Amazon developing the area, paying taxes, and hiring thousands of new workers that would also be paying taxes. Amazon isn't perfect and I'm not a big fan of incentives either, but to think that this money somehow magically exists without Amazon is wrong.
19
If the incentive deal had been worked out in a smokey back room instead of on the front pages of the NYT and WSJ, then all involved would charged under RICO. These deals are corporate bribery with the tax payers footing the bill. Surely Amazon is rich enough to pay its fair share of taxes and be a good corporate citizen.
8
@TC. The taxpayers would not have been 'footing the bill'. The incentives would have been credited against Amazon's tax obligations. Now $ 0 will be coming in.
1
Amazon has a long list of cities that have already put in bids with large tax breaks. Amazon will go back to the list and pick their second choice.
6
Having just read that Amazon is not paying any federal taxes, I find this unacceptable. Is the CEO of Amazon among those whose stock compensation is used as a deduction to result in no net taxes? Although the services Amazon provides are convenient, I plan to try to limit my purchases from Amazon going forward, because I don't think a company should function without paying corporate income taxes, and I am enabling this firm's thriving if I regularly patronize them. It seems to me rational to consider whether one wants to enrich a company which doesn't pay taxes, and furthermore, which seeks financial incentives from taxpayers to relocate in their city. I have also read elsewhere that Amazon invested, I believe, in government debt, the income from which may also be tax exempt. I'm making my choices accordingly. Think about what you want to support.
8
@LW
If Amazon doesn't pay any Federal taxes, it's because it is using provisions in the tax law that enable it to do so. It is not the fault of Amazon, per se, to take advantage of what the tax code offers them. Would any of us gladly pay more tax if the law said we didn't have to? I think not. So patronizing Amazon or not doesn't solve the problem of them paying tax or not. Better to direct efforts to change this to the politicians who write the tax laws to change the law so that they do have to pay a fair share.
8
@LW
The tax codes and laws are controlled by Congress. While they are sometimes seemingly unfair, they are designed to incentivize investment, mitigate risk, or to encourage certain business practices. That all has nothing to do with this situation. In fact, your retirement savings or retirement fund probably is invested in many companies that pay little or no taxes of some types.
There is nothing wrong in leveling the playing field somewhat by offering incentives for a company to move to an area with a high cost of living. It has worked before. I am old enough to remember riding the subways in the 1970s reminiscent of the New York depicted in the HBO series "The Deuce".
2
@LW
You are mixing apples and oranges. The fact that Jeff Bezos is heavily under taxed at the federal level and in Washington state where he has his residence has nothing to do with this deal. Hit him with the wealth tax and hit him with the inheritance tax. And take the jobs his company was bringing to NYC. Or you can rely on Bernie and AOC to create the jobs. They both have such a great track record doing that, don’t they?
3
Good for NYC. Huge corporations always looking for someone else to pay for promises that often never happen has gotten old. Amazon of all companies is quite able to pay it's own way and be a good corporate citizen instead of looking like a penniless beggar. The beat still goes on in New York with or without this corporate laggard. Maybe they could actually move to a city where the economic activity would be a godsend and do it without the carrot and stick approach. They are quite capable of paying their way instead of holding taxpayers responsible. Signed, sick and tired of the 1%.
31
As a former NY resident I think the 3 billion dollars in incentives should be used to fix the subway, and feed and house the poor. NYC does to need a catalyst to increase the homeless population. Instead of being so greedy, Amazon should have offered to help fix these problems instead of increasing the gap between those that have and have-nots.
9
@Climatedoc
NYC doesn't have 3 billion dollars available that it was planning to give to Amazon. The 3 billion dollars were a credit that Amazon would apply against its future tax obligations in NYC.
1
When I first heard of the Amazon move to NYC I thought it was insane. The housing and transportation systems are overburdened there as it is. What a curse to visit on the city and the Amazon employees. The same might be said of the VA location that materialized too. I'm not in TX but moving to some spot between SATX and Austin or Austin and Dallas on readily available land seems to make a lot more sense. TX is much more business friendly than NY state and there is no shortage of capable people, universities and airports there also.
I think Bezos is a genius and Amazon an amazing company. I've had a Prime membership for years and when they promise 2-day delivery, they get it done. Unprecedented service, for sure.
3
@Economy Biscuits When the worlds richest man will not allow his workers(who btw he built his company on the backs of) go union ???? Go for it Texas.
@LaLa
The union, blue collar folks put Trump in power.
I've belonged to unions in the past. I stopped having sympathy for unions a long time ago.
1
This notion that a huge company will somehow benefit the little guy when they move in is laughable at best. Take Seattle as an example: once Amazon moved there, the rate of homelessness exploded, the employees that Amazon brought over shifted politics to the right, and the influence that Bezos and his Big-money friends have was able to crush the head tax (which was supported by the majority in Seattle) and anything else that would make him pay his fair share.
A company as big as Amazon is far too big to exist. If it continues to buy and sell politicians and astroturf public opinion, it should be broken up or nationalized.
93
@Jeremy: Nationalized? Give me a break! And in order to break it up, a case would have to be made for a monopoly; a monopoly of what? The only thing I know for sure is that Amazon is driving bricks and mortar stores out of business, and there are many more empty store fronts in downtowns and malls across the country. It is difficult, however, to compete with their almost infinite selection and usually better; plus, of course, Amazon does not collect sales tax. Another perk they wrested out of the government, to the detriment of American communities.
10
@Jeremy
We should start this by nationalizing the banks and other financial institutions. Then the whole economy. Then we should take away the big houses these big ,ugly , fat capitalists own. Revolution is the way !
Rest assured Bryce Covert that other cities will be lining up for Amazon. It's a competitive world, a competitive society, and we are all the better for it. There will always be people who don't win in a competition. This event is a dangerous signal to other companies considering NYC, and weighing the location with incentive packages provided by non-NYC locations. This was not good news.
11
New York City did not call Amazon's bluff - to the contrary - Amazon called New York City's bluff. After offering to provide 25,000 job paying $100,000 each, the company met with considerable hostility from people who object to both the change that always follows rapid economic growth and to the tax incentives initially offered in return for the jobs. Rather than live with the hostility, Amazon left. So to paraphrase a line from the soap operas - You didn't walk out on me - I walked out on you.
NYC now will lose the taxes those 25,000 employees would have paid in return for the assurance that the economic displacement that accompanies such growth will not occur.
NYC made its choice, but that is no reason for other polities to follow. Here in Texas; Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Houston all border large vacant spaces that will make a fine home for the new operations. The company will be welcome.
43
@Quiet Waiting How about switching this around: Any big corporation wanting to move to a city should "buy-in" to that cities' infrastructure. The infrastructure was bought and paid for by the common taxpayers already living there. And what about the existing companies that pay wages to the populace, shouldn't they get a bonus/kick-back for not moving out of New York, just to keep taxation/competition even? Further, are you really sure those 25,000 jobs are going to pay $100,000 to each of its employees? Where did you get that information and why do you believe it?
Here in Santa Clara Valley ( I live just south of it) the San Francisco 49's don't want to pay their share of the Real Estate taxes and have taken the Assessor's office to court and won!!! Wow! What a great day it was when the city and county of Santa Clara gave away their infrastructure in order to gain Peanut Sellers in the stands. Cities and schools now have to pay back millions to a sports team/corporation.
Do you really trust big business of any kind to deal fairly with their fellow citizens? You know, "Corporations are people, too, you know?"
8
First, New York didn't give Amazon $3 billion cash to come to New York. New York just wasn't going to collect$ 3 billion in taxes from Amazon for doing business here. Now, with no Amazon, there's nothing at all. The 25k potential Amazon employees would have paid, New York state, local income and sale taxes along with the expanded local economic activities it generates.
52
@KJH
Yup. Nobody gets this. The state it like NYC was going to give Amazon money. I'm a liberal, but few of my fellow liberals are good enough with numbers/math/econ to really understand much about business. They just want to punish rich people. They don't have any sense of how revenue is generated.
31
@KJH Three billion divided by 25000. That's $120,000 per employee. How much would they make and how much would go to taxes and how long would it take to be worth it?
16
@Robert David South Tax incentive is one time. But the employees would be drawing salary and paying tax for decades and their salary grows and then their stock options. In long run, its a win for the hosting city. Other cities are no fool and thankfully not caved in to communist ideologies.
4
I'm just wondering why the big corporate tax cut wasn't enough of an incentive for Amazon to expand its headquarters.
5
@TC Fischer
Because Seattle's City Council is already made up almost entirely of AOC types.
They were about to pass an Amazon oriented city tax and lo and behold...the day before construction came to a crashing halt on the expansion of Amazon's Seattle headquarters sending a very powerful signal to knock it off.
Seattle is tapped out. Too expensive and too hard to get to.
NYC was always the spot they wanted to go. Now..look for them to go across the river to Jersey City or Newark. They'll get the same employees but those employees will have to take a train from Queens to Newark..or hop on the Amazon Fairy Boats crossing the Hudson to Jersey City..which is looking more and more like Manhattan every day without the squeegee men.
7
@Erica Smythe -- Amazon has already said that it is not going to "rebid" the NYC location. Instead, they will expand plans in Virginia and Nashville.
New York didn't call Amazon's "bluff" because Amazon wasn't bluffing. We know that now.
61
@Wednesday Morn
Yes, whoever wrote that headline doesn't know what a bluff Is.
Here in Boston, with the world's greatest universities and research centers, we can do the math, unlike our self-destructive New York cousins. Come on up, Amazon.
6
I will bet you that plenty of companies could provide plenty of good jobs if the city and state lavished them with the incentives offered to Amazon. How about, instead of dancing to Amazon’s tune, NY city and state actually put the same level of effort into creating a welcoming business climate for EVERYBODY?
40
@Roy and add to that..supporting small businesses already living and working and paying taxes and rent in NY..
It's sweetheart deals to mega-corporations like this, that need no help whatsoever, that is gutting true entrepreneurship and forcing small businesses all over the country to fail.
4
I got the feeling that Amazon wants NYC to be a "company town." That is not who we are. If that is what Amazon thinks or feels, I am happy to see them go.
14
I hope the politicians and unemployed activists have a plan to replace this lost opportunity that would have paid huge dividends, now and in the future, for all New Yorkers. The failure to see, or even understand, the big picture is a sad commentary on the NYC progressives. Can't wait to see what and who they go after next!
54
@Margaret SL
Don't worry....I think the people who were against them coming to NY are probably the same ones who will line up for money for "people who don't want to work".
What is 3 billion over 10 years time?
Amazon and the spin-offs and peripheral businesses would have swallowed this pittance up big time.
O well. Maybe Sears or Penneys will open a store in one of the dying malls....
O. Wait a minute.
Never mind.
2
@Margaret SL
They likely won't have an opppportunity to go after someone else. Companies will now think twice before setting up jobs in NYC
2
Progressives are the ones who see the big picture. Why don’t you study what happened to Seattle after Amazon. It’s not pretty.
This article is the justification for actions that can't be justified. New York lost 25,000 good paying jobs that could last for decades. Lost wages. Lost income taxes. Lost business taxes. Lost ancillary jobs to Amazon's business. Pay out that $3 billion in unemployment benefits and social services for the unemployed as some on the left prefer.
New York: Closed for Business!!
109
@dudley thompson
So long as NY has the financial services and East Coast entertainment business, we will be fine.
I work in financial services, despite being a card-carrying lefty, and I can tell you that the experience is a pleasure.
Can't say that about working at Amazon, at any level - and if you don't believe me, go review the NY Times's reporting on the work culture that Bezos has created.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html
31
@dudley thompson
says he who lives in Maryland....
NYC lost nothing...and saved a neighborhood.
Why did they want to come here? Because that's where the talent is already living. The only jobs that would benefit locals would be service jobs, and we already have plenty of those.
22
NY has 3% unemployment the last I looked. Why doesn’t the city offer 3 billion in tax subsidies to the many small businesses that have been a part of the Long Island City community for years.
What goes around comes around, Mr. Bezos. You advised everyone over two years ago that Amazon would be searching for a second corporate headquarters. Cities and metro areas responded with their pitches accordingly.
Then, out of the blue, you declare "Surprise! There will actually be three corporate headquarters!" That's called "Bait and Switch." And, P.S., no one likes that.
5
NYC cut off it's nose to spite its face...
The three billion in incentives would have been returned when NYC collected 20+ billion in eventual tax revenue.
AOC should be proud...
77
AOC is proud because she fought for her district which did not want Amazon.
@Matt Carey
When would that be?
I think you have to be a certain type of company to succeed in New York. You need to be willing to overcome the assaults--small and large-- that NY throws at its denizens on a daily basis. The reward, if you are able to succeed here is that you become a New Yorker. I think there are several good songs about that.
Amazon is an amazing company in many ways and has won accolades for many of the things they have done.
But they have demonstrated that they are still not capable of being New Yorkers, able to stay in the fight, overcome the obstacles and prevail in the face of anything.
Oh well.
The good news is that New York City isn't going anywhere. One Amazon, more or less, isn't going to mean much here. In fact, If there is a next time, with Amazon, perhaps they will have learned what it takes to be a New Yorker.
40
@LKF Thank god there's a New York City. For people who believe this sort of nonsense. Long may it last.
3
@LKF
Wow, I'm so impressed by that fighting image. It's as if Amazon begged to come, and tough-guy NYC said "get outtaa here"!
Enjoy not getting 25,000 new jobs, oh-so-tough New York!
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@LKF
What makes you think any new-to-the-area company is going to want to set up in New York after this?
10
40k people could have had a job.
Ocasio-Cortez and her cadre made sure they did not.
Well done liberals, well done. You are making sure people remain unemployed and dependent on the state
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Corporations are people, my friend. They don't need welfare any more than the "those people" do.
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@AutumnLeaf
Whoa. I am a liberal but not that way. AOC is bad for this State and Country. Sorry I worked full time and paid for College. At that time I paid for a double fare zone. People need to work save and stop whining because most have done nothing but hang out their entire lives!
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@AutumnLeaf
And Trump will make GOLD out of this that even 3 billion could not buy.
Municipal and State "incentive" packages are nothing more than corporate welfare at its worst.
For such corporations, employee welfare never enters what passes for their thought processes.
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@Fred
what does "corporate welfare" even mean? The only things that matter are overall tax revenue and overall employment. it's okay to made offerings to Mammon, if Mammon makes sure everyone has a job.
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@Anti-Marx
You should investigate the long term effects on local economies of such tax give-a-ways.
With alarming regularity, the corporate welfare recipients hang around long enough for the tax breaks to effect their bottom line and then leave for greener pastures.
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@Fred
Nobody leaves NYC.
Also, I have a problem with the phrase "tax give-away." What will fill the void of Amazon's tax revenue? Right now, LIC is a wasteland, in terms of businesses. What people fear is that rents will go up.
4
New York is a unique city in the United States. Other cities should do their own math and decide if the tax incentives make sense. Sometimes, in some places they do. And it seems to me that it was Amazon that called New York's bluff.
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The City of Toronto was also an Amazon HQ2 finalist and offered zero financial incentives. Too bad every other contender didn't do the same. These taxpayer corporation giveaways should be outlawed. It is doubtful how often they actually influence actual decisions.
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@TinMan Well pretty clearly they influenced this decision.
@Greg Reed It's not so clear, actually, considering how the nationwide hunt for a location turned into a predictable win for New York, a huge and thriving metropolis full of the type of workforce Amazon wants. Other cities offered more. Why didn't Amazon pick them? The only reason Amazon isn't following through now is the backlash, but they will probably continue expanding in New York without fanfare for the foreseeable future.
1% Welfare is awful public policy.
Let the Grand One Percent corporate welfare queens move to Arkansas and Oklahoma for their greedy fixes.
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@Socrates
Arkansas and Oklahoma are not headquarters for major companies. However there is not shortage of such operations here in Texas and Amazon will be quite welcome to join their ranks.
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@Socrates They will go elsewhere and they will create jobs, invest in the community and create enormous fiscal benefit to the area where they land.
It won't be Arkansas or Oklahoma (not my favorite places but I don't need to denigrate them), but it will be an area with a highly educated population and the willingness to invest in the future.
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@Mark Some areas that come to mind - LA, Chicago, Austin, Pittsburgh, Virginia out near Dulles Airport, Boston suburbs...
6
To be very clear, NY was not "handing money" to Amazon. They were agreeing to take less of it in the future than the might. So, NYC instead of getting 75% of the pie, is getting no pie. No money for schools; no money for transit; no money for housing; no new jobs. There's no $3b they can "spend elsewhere".
It would be great to get the whole pie, but Amazon could strike a better deal elsewhere, so they did.
Not so sure how that is win for anyone.
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@OneView But I still don't see why Amazon should get even 1% less. The company and its employees would be using city infrastructure, the least they can do is pay full price for it, just like everyone else.
Also, the number of jobs is not a given, and NYC is hardly a one-company or one-industry town.
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@OneView
First comment I have seen from someone that knows what they are talking about. Incredible. these commentators think it is like a city building a stadium for some privately owned sports team. Not the same at all.
Big mistake by the Queens politicians who thought let me scream and get myself on TV and the radio thinking Amazon would not cut bait but Amazon saw the writing and said they do not need 10 years of this nonsense and got out early before they spent any more money.
1
Well done New York. It has set a standard for itself.
Be like that girlfriend or boyfriend who allows cheating, and guess what, you get what you allow.
Only allow companies that want to contribute to the public purse to pay for things like liveable wages for say, public school teachers who teach the workers their shareholders get rich off.
Set standards.
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@EC
Those 25K workers would have contributed many tax dollars that would go to the local schools, etc.
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@angelina
NY does not have a job problem.
It has an affordable housing problem.
We, the community of NY, love the people who are already here. We have the luxury to fight for affordable communities for those already here.
We'll be okay.
5
No, it is more like the boyfriend that won’t buy roses for his girlfriend and take her to a nice restaurant for Valentines Day because that would succumbing to marketing ploys. He is above that ploy. He can take that high minded attitude, but his former girlfriend will likely be with someone else.
2
Yes, thanks for this. Also, what kind of jobs, minimum wage warehouse work? No thanks.
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@Tai L. Not minimum wage, warehouse or fulfillment center. These were professional and technical jobs that would have averaged $ 150 K - plus Amazon was going to offer training to locals...
1
The Wisconsin-Foxconn deal shows that Republicans won't hesitate to throw public money at Amazon. I don't think they will follow NY's lead because driving up rent for the poor isn't really a concern for them.
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The author makes the common mistake of believing corporations in the modern era will stay in a place even when being taxed at full value. The reason so few consumer brands are located in New York State is because of high taxes that corporations routinely pass along to customers -- the very customers who do not like to buy the more expensive items caused by the higher taxes. Perhaps she lives in some virtuous neighborhood where everyone wants to pay their fair share of taxes and, when making purchases, desires to support businesses who pay tax in their state or municipality. But that's simply not how the rest of the world operates. Amazon got to where it is by having low prices and good service: not because it paid its fair share of taxes. Don't blame Amazon. Blame us.
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@Emmett Hoops
No. The system is flawed. And Amazon has a chance to help chance corporate culture. It chooses not to do so. Let them go.
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