Facing Opposition, Amazon Reconsiders NY Headquarters Site: Report (washingtonpost.com) 173
Amazon.com is reconsidering its plan to bring 25,000 jobs to a new campus in New York City following a wave of opposition from local politicians, The Washington Post reported Friday [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], citing two people familiar with the company's thinking. From the report: The company has not leased or purchased office space for the project, making it easy to withdraw its commitment. Unlike in Virginia -- where elected leaders quickly passed an incentive package for a separate headquarters facility -- final approval from New York state is not expected until 2020. Tennessee officials have also embraced Amazon's plans to bring 5,000 jobs to Nashville, which this week approved $15.2 million in road, sewer and other improvements related to that project. Amazon executives have had internal discussions recently to reassess the situation in New York and explore alternatives, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the company's perspective.
Objecting to the give-away (Score:5, Insightful)
A billion here, a billion there-- it adds up
Re:Objecting to the give-away (Score:5, Informative)
...and not to mention that Amazon required a nondisclosure agreement [nytimes.com] from the cities bidding, so that the taxpayers actually couldn't know what their politicians were giving away.
Which was: 3 billion dollars. [democratandchronicle.com]
Re: Objecting to the give-away (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon needs a large, highly-educated workforce, and I'm not sure the people they need would be willing to move en masse to Amarillo, Texas.
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There goes the left thinking that people in fly-over country are dumb hicks. What a load of bullshit. You think people in Amarillo are stupid? This is what the left thinks people that don't live in big cities are dumb, low class, uneducated and possibly racists. They think the are so elite and better than everyone else. This is what the left thinks and believes.
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Not really the place to move your high tech company to when you need a highly educated workforce.
It's not that we think your dumb, it's just applying even the lightest common sense would have shown you why this was such an idiotic suggestion.
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Probably more thinking about the fact that Amarillo has about a 200k population with the majority having only a high school education or some college experience. But the vast majority does not have a degree of any sort.
Not really the place to move your high tech company to when you need a highly educated workforce.
It's not that we think your dumb, it's just applying even the lightest common sense would have shown you why this was such an idiotic suggestion.
Did you ever look at the statistics for New York City?
According to https://www.towncharts.com/New... [towncharts.com]
New York City has 37% of people with a bachelors degree or higher. Is that a "vast majority"?
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Actually the statistics demonstrate that people with higher educations tend to favor Democratic policies and ideals. ....
In other words, people who grew up sheltered, never had to work for a living, and had mommy and daddy around to pay for college?
Education != intelligence
Just look and the current Marxist bae of the left - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She's so "educated" that she had to 404 her "New Green Deal" off her web site in less than 24 hours [house.gov], because it was bog-standard election-losing leftist STUPID drivel like "everyone is entitled to economic security whether they want to work or not."
AOC is so fucking "educated" wi
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In other words, people who grew up sheltered, never had to work for a living, and had mommy and daddy around to pay for college?
You're thinking of richpublicans.
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Stop eating crayons.
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More like a repeat of 2016. The dems ran a laughably unelectable candidate, and now we have Trump.
If they roll the dice again in 2020 the result will be the exact same thing.
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Actually the statistics demonstrate that people with higher educations tend to favor Democratic policies and ideals. That's not "the left" that's a fact.
Democratic results by a democratic survey by a democrat college? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that they came away with the result they wanted. Search youtube or the internet and you'll find it has been debunked but you wouldn't know that by listening only to foul mouthed democrats.
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So people in Red States are dumb and uneducated. Wow just wow.. This is what the left thinks and believes. You type of people would march us into the gas chambers if it wasn't for our right to bear arms.
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90% of Americans would repeal the 2A if it ever came to a vote.
Re: Objecting to the give-away (Score:1)
Not based on gun ownership, you can always dream thou.
Also it would take a ridiculous majority to repeal that amendment so never going to happen.
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All it would take would be a treaty like the UN Small Arms Treaty to be signed and ratified by the Senate. Marbury vs. Madison does not cover treaties, so SCOTUS would not be able to strike down an international gun ban treaty.
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This is false. Treaties can not override the Constitution. They can only override laws (by effectively being a law).
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90% of Americans would repeal the 2A if it ever came to a vote.
Then bring it to a vote. It shouldn't be all that hard with such support.
Here's the problem, gun laws are largely unenforceable. There is no firearm registry, and there never will be. Canada tried it and they had maybe a 30% compliance rate. A group of people that opposed it had a "swap meet" where they had swapped firearms so that any existing database was useless in telling who had what. "But that's breaking the law!!!" Yes, it was a mass of people breaking the law, what are you going to do about it
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You realize the parties switched at one point in history right?
Sure, then they switched back again. Funny how that works.
Re: Objecting to the give-away (Score:1)
Not quite right. What it shows is people with *post-graduate* degrees prefer Democrats, but in the aggregate, people with college degrees prefer Republicans.
So it depends how you parse âoemore educatedâ.
I helped my uncle Jack off a horse...
Re: Objecting to the give-away (Score:1)
Really? I work at a particle physics lab. Iâ(TM)m gonna guess that those red-state farmers will do just fine if we stop shooting neutrinos under their corn fields.
Iâ(TM)ll also guess we wonâ(TM)t do so good if they cut off our food supply.
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Correct. You won't find that in Amarillo. In Austin, yes, but now you're competing with several other hundred tech companies for talent.
However, in southern New Hampshire... in the Manchester area or south of that even, you have a very healthy brain bucket available within 60 mile radius in every direction.
If you keep it out of Mass. and its taxes, Amazon could make that work to their advantage. This isn't a sorting facility, which already exists in New England. This is HQ2, and Amazon REALLY needs to do so
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Well it is the catch 22 of today's economy.
Small rural towns, would love a big company to come in and bring in jobs. Because the influx of jobs would bring in more higher skilled people who would then require services which brings in more jobs. However these companies will not open in these small rural towns because they don't have the educated workforce, or the infrastructure to deal with the services they will want.
For the old factory jobs, this was easy for a small town to get a factory, and grow the ec
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Yet another one of capitalism's nasty positive feedback loops - left to its own devices, it would prefer to pack us all into stupidly expensive megacities like bees in a hive so that we can work ourselves most of the way to death for the privilege of living near the high-paying jobs that you need so that you can barely pay for that expensive real estate (further enriching the ownership class in the process)...
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What does Amazon do that requires so many people with a college degree? As a contractor I've done a lot of jobs that, on paper at least, "require" a college degree. As I get into many of these jobs I realize that most of what I do is something someone with a high school education and a bit of on the job experience could do. What college has become is a means to teach people what they should have learned in high school, and/or filter out for intelligence like a high school education would have.
This "leave
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Amazon is a technology company that creates new technologies, masters the use of existing ones and does some bloody interesting things with data.
People with the ability to do those things tend to go to college.
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Amazon is a technology company that creates new technologies, masters the use of existing ones and does some bloody interesting things with data.
People with the ability to do those things tend to go to college.
Assuming that a college degree is actually required then you can find those people in small towns too. You think small towns are just full of uneducated hicks? Lot's of people go to college and end up in small towns. Even if it's not the people there currently there's the children that would love to find a good job near family. It's also not like people can't commute from a nearby larger town, or move there for the job.
A dollar goes a lot further in a small town. Amazon could attract smart people that
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I was responding to the challenge that recruiting people with a college degree was necessary. It is, because there's only a tiny overlap between the desired recruitment pool and people with no degree.
None of that comments on small towns but since you've raised it, yes, you can find intelligent people with and without college degrees in small towns.
But take Amarillo. That's a large town of 200,000 people. Only 47% of the population in the US actually work, so that's a labour pool in Amarillo of around 94000
Re:Objecting to the give-away (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Objecting to the give-away (Score:5, Insightful)
A tax break is not giving them money.
It's simply refraining from taking it from them.
Be that as it may, it's still asking other businesses which are being taxed so subsidize Amazon who is getting preferential treatment. I think that high taxes are idiotic and usually counter-productive, but if some city or state wants to enact them, then they should be applied fairly and evenly to all who live and do business there. If those cities or states find that it drives out businesses, then they can vote to reduce the tax rates.
Re:Objecting to the give-away (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Objecting to the give-away (Score:4, Insightful)
And New York seems to consider it a fine idea to take from those who have most and redistribute to those who have less. They are one of the richer states, so shouldn't they be happy that more federal money is being spent on the states that contribute less? Everyone loves the notion of taking from those who have more, but most don't realize that they're quite far up the ladder themselves and there's a whole wider world that has much, much less.
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And New York seems to consider it a fine idea to take from those who have most and redistribute to those who have less.
Your claim is not supported by the facts at hand, these protests were provoked by New York taking money from those who have less and giving it to those who have more.
Also, what does this: "so shouldn't they be happy that more federal money is being spent on the states that contribute less?" have to do with anything? You're wondering off into your own world, with unrelated tangents and baseless assumptions.
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In terms of health care, why not just pay doctors directly rather that having the government as a middle man?
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... then they should be applied fairly and evenly to all who live and do business there ...
Agree, otherwise small businesses are at a disadvantage, which practically puts them out of business if by chance they are competitors.
Incentives like city infrastructure or tax brakes proportional to created new jobs for any business - I am okay with, otherwise the same rules for all the players.
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A tax break *to a specific company* is picking a winner, which the government shouldn't be doing. If they cut taxes for *all companies*, that's one thing... that's not what was happening here.
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Very good point
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NYS had a 3.9% unemployment rate which is below structural (ie the minimum possible unemployment rate)
NYC is probably the most attractive place for a company to set up in the East Coast and has the easiest time attracting young educated people
It doesn't need to pay Amazon as everyone who wants a job has one and the available workforce is top of the line
Wisconsin paid 4 billion dollars for 1000 jobs (down from the 13K promised) because no one wants to move there, companies or people
NYS/NYC does not have tha
Re:Objecting to the give-away (Score:4, Informative)
That's why NY leads the country in population loss.
New York State is not New York City.
Upstate NY is doing very poorly, decimated by the same manufacturing sector ills that have hit the rest of the rust belt. It is suffering large-scale population loss, not because of taxes, but because there's zero reason to build a factory there. Why build your factory in a place famous for massive winter snowfall when Alabama exists? Or Juarez? Low taxes do not stop lake effect snow. If anything, low taxes would make lake effect snow worse since they would start to have trouble affording plows.
New York City is doing quite well, and attracting a lot of people....despite having an even higher tax rate than upstate NY.
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If it was taxes, then NYC would be doing worse than upstate, because NYC has higher taxes.
Pretend I'm looking for a place to build my factory. Manufacturing is more high-tech than it used to be, so I need employees that have at least a good high school education.
I'm trying to pick between Utica and oh, let's say Huntsville, AL. And let's pretend I've negotiated a sweetheart deal where I pay no state taxes so we take those completely out of the decision.
Why do I pick Utica for my factory? The weather's wo
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A person in Utica that makes only $30K will be paying state income tax at a rate of 6.33%. That same income in Huntsville will be paying 5%.
The person in Utica will be paying property taxes of 2.21%, while the person in Huntsville is paying 0.45%
Yet you're saying the transportation network, schools, and general infrastructure are worse in Utica. So what are the people in Utica (and upstate as a whole) getting for their ridiculously high taxes?
It's not just the tax rate, it's that the high taxes are paying
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It's not just the tax rate, it's that the high taxes are paying for things that people in NYC want the taxes spent on rather than things that benefit the taxpayers in Utica.
I'd like you to explain how spending taxes "better" will stop lake effect snow. 'Cause that's part of the problem with the infrastructure.
Also, the people in Utica weren't asking for "better" spending. They were asking for lower taxes as if that alone would magically create jobs. Heck, it's what the local politicians spent their money on: tax breaks for businesses. Not, say, making SUNY-IT competitive.
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Uh, yeah. That's why NY leads the country in population loss. https://www.democratandchronic... [democratandchronicle.com]
New York City’s population grew 5% between 2010-2018.
By your linked numbers New York State(not City) lost 0.25% of its population 2017-2018, and has only increase 0.85% since 2010... which more seems like the population is stable in the state rather than falling.
Suburbia is going to continue to collapse for probably another decade; this will probably be good in the long run for both NYC and NYS.
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What they're objecting to, of course, is not the jobs being brought in
It is unlikely many jobs would be created. The limiting factor is housing, and very little new construction is being permitted. The roads can't handle many more commuters, and there are already shortages of labor in the area. So all this facility would do is suck employees from existing businesses.
There would be little net economic benefit, which is another reason that the subsidies and tax giveaways were misguided. They are just replacing many small businesses that pay taxes and contribute to the commu
Re:Objecting to the give-away (Score:5, Interesting)
It may still be that the net effect doesn't result in much additional revenue for the state or city, but I'm not sure if I agree with the reasoning that you've used to arrive at that conclusion.
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The people that Amazon employs are likely to earn more than the people they displace,
can you support that claim? This is NYC not Fife, AL
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Misogynists are not welcome in NYC
There is zero evidence that tech workers are more misogynistic. I have worked in several professions, and tech is the least misogynist. Have you ever worked with salesmen, or warehouse workers? They make nerds look like saints.
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Re:Objecting to the give-away (Score:4, Insightful)
Gamergate.
So Amazon engineers are misogynist because some gamers once were?
Since when does playing games make you "tech"?
Right Way (Virginia) vs. Wrong Way (New York) (Score:2)
Let it be (Score:3)
Good. Quit blowing politicians who need your jobs but ride to power trumpeting how evil you are.
Let the voters weigh the relative importance. That's why the pols are huffing and puffing in the first place.
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Let the voters weigh the relative importance.
That's why Amazon required a non-disclosure agreement - they knew most voters would balk at the massive scale of the give-away the company was looking for.
GTFO of Virginia, too. (Score:1)
Crystal City is the absolute worst place to put Amazon. Commuting there by any means is already a disaster.
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AWS is making heavy plays into government contracts. You have to be in the DC area for that, so there's no way they're leaving Crystal City.
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> I was personally surprised they didn't pick Reston
I'm going to guess "Acela" is the reason. Acela's current route (and the NEC) ends at Union Station... but AFAIK, Virginia is about to electrify the CSX tracks from Union Station south to Richmond (and effectively extend the NEC further south, eventually all the way from Richmond to Atlanta). Those tracks pass through Potomac Yards. Likewise, Long Island City is along the same tracks as Sunnyside Yards, and the route Acela follows to reach Boston.
Fast f
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2.3 billion looks big and scary until you realize that NY State's total population is 20 million. That's about $115 per person. Total state budget is $168 billion, so that's about 1.3% of total budget.
The real problem downstate is that Albany controls NYC's purse strings. The subways would run much better if they were run by the NYC Department of Transportation directly, not subject to authority of clueless bureaucrats from Albany.
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Jobs created with, wait for it -- state funded incentives!
It reminds me of what my old bolshie Uncle Ivan used to say back in the 60s: "Kid, nobody believes in a socialism. Nobody believes in capitalism either. It's always 'socialism for me, capitalism for you!'"
Money (Score:2)
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What does the 2nd Ave line have to do with a theoretical Amazon entity in Long Island City? Is that to help the maybe one or two people who might commute from the lower East side to LIC for work?
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Why, to transport Amazon nabobs from their pied-à-terres on in the East Village, of course!
$2500/month will get you a 1 bedroom apartment with kitchenette, plus access to hip neighborhood businesses catering to bohemian 1990s New Yorkers. It's almost as if EPCOT opened a New York pavilion.
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If more people are paying income taxes
In the US retailers generally let people pay small sums on credit cards because they are encouraging more people to come to their store. This seems to be working. Couldn't government get some mileage out of the same strategy? Deferred collection, etc?
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Sounds like a company town. Will it come with "jumper nets" for overworked employees, like Foxconn's factories in China do?
And, BTW, "techies" tend to like to live around other smart people, not in a company campus surrounded by frack fields and coal-rollin' pickups.
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Techies tend to live where the jobs are, not where they want to. So many techies like to live rural when they can remote in for their jobs.
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Amazon is so large they'd be surrounded by other smart people anyway. Techies tolerate living in campers to get jobs. They tolerate long commutes in horrific traffic to get jobs. They tolerate never being able to afford a home to get jobs. They tolerate having low disposable incomes to get jobs.
If you are rich enough to be picky by all means do so, but never confuse yourself with anyone else.
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Techies will follow the jobs.
Only to a limited extent.
I lived in upstate NY for a while. The area was a former manufacturing center that has been economically destroyed by the same things that hit the rest of the rust belt. The local politicians were sure the techies would follow the jobs, so they had several programs to try and recruit companies to the area. And hey, housing is really cheap so cost-of-living is low. So clearly techies would flock to the area.
It failed. The area is just too shitty now. The schools are awful, the
They should just change their name (Score:3)
to Omni Consumer Products and move to Detroit. /s
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TN has cheap land, it's a good place for a warehouse, but it lacks many of the aspects that attract techies to NY.
That depends on where in TN you are. If you're near Nashville, then it's got much of the same stuff; food, culture, relatively liberal politics. Neither one has reasonable cannabis laws, though. (Neither does California any more, oddly, but at least they are less unreasonable.)
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California is probably as good as it gets in the US, since they allow home-grow for personal use. NYC's laws aren't reasonable, but there's progress towards reform and (frankly) weed is extremely available.
Nashville doesn't have: functional public transport, the same concentration of world-class research universities (other than Vanderbilt, what is there?), the same cultural diversity, easy access to beaches, etc.
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California is probably as good as it gets in the US, since they allow home-grow for personal use.
California left it up to the counties, most of which have fucked it up completely. They want licensing and registration, there's all kinds of places you can't have it at all, you can only use it in a private residence in almost every county...
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How big is the AMI Hq? (Score:2)
Jeff can probably pick it up for a song after he destroys the company and the management goes to prison.
Moving from Seattle to New York is Pointless (Score:2)
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Reality TV (Score:2)