And certainly for NYC. That money in tax breaks is badly needed in about 100000 different places.

Plus, (this won't happen, of course, but one can hope) LIC could be developed into affordable housing and/or a research center. The former is badly needed but the elites would more likely stomach the latter.

Obama had a job proposal the R's shat on. I didn't see outrage from you.

And lol at you treating like just adding 25k jerbs to a crowded area with already low employment figures is going to some magic cure all for ailments. You have to show your work that LIC actually benefits from all these new workers who probably would commute from other places around NYC/NJ anyways, and aren't Long Islanders to begin with and will spend their salaries elsewhere.

Also recruiting.

It's important for tech companies to have interns that can work and go to school at the same time because you need to make the most attractive candidates full time offers when they are Juniors, or even earlier in some cases, to basically lock them down and hope they don't go to someone else.

At they very least grizy, revots, tien and whoever else should come forward with actual economic analysis of the project by a variety of sources rather than just treat it as "moar jerbs = moar better for wherever we put moar jerbs"

I mean, the only logical endpoint is zero % taxes for corporations or perhaps a negative income tax for corporations, otherwise they just can't afford to do business and hire anyone.

Time and time and time again even well-meaning people fall for this ruse.

Rubes.

obviously, you're being hyperbolic. but i think most of us would agree that there are circumstances when businesses or industries should be subsidized, namely when they have large benefits to society beyond their own profitability (aka, positive externalities). renewable energy would be an example.

one of the policy questions here is whether amazon coming to nyc would generate meaningful positive externalities that wouldn't be realized absent a subsidy and how these externalities compare to the size of the subsidy.

The numbers just aren't even close.

25k jobs that pay 100k+ a year is definitely 100+ million (most likely 200+) in income tax to the city and state alone with any kind of reasonable assumptions (3% to city, 6% to state). That alone is almost enough to justify a 3 billion dollar package. This is to say nothing of more speculative stimulus effects that are harder to quantify.

Not a single Shake Shack in West Queens so obviously we have made a terrible mistake.

No. The logical endpoint is an arbitrator (Feds?) needs to step in and say "you can't offer this kind of ridiculous package. Compete on other merits." It's basic game theory.

As it stands, Amazon won't lose much because some other city will just offer an equally, if not more, generous package and now they'll even be afraid to negotiate.

Is that the analysis you assume the state and city governments did, before falling all over themselves trying to win the AmazonHQ sweepstakes? Does NYS and NYC just like giving away money to rich guys? Or do they think that the benefits far outweigh the cost of the incentives?

https://www.democratandchronicle.com...te/2003646002/

Link to full study

So $27 billion in new revenue in exchange for $3 billion in incentives to get them here. Obviously Gov Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio (not exactly a moderate or conservative) thought it was worth it for the economy of the city/state. We could argue that the 40k estimate was overly optimistic but there would have been an excellent ROI even at the minimum required 25k jobs.

This is you throwing numbers out of your behind.

Because they are dumb and like giving away money to rich guys? Or because the economic return will be well worth the investment in their opinion?

Again, it's a huge shame those $3B couldn't possibly be used for anything else that could generate revenue for NYC and NYS.

I wish money could be used anywhere, as legal tender, for all debts public and private, and not just Amazon or a bonfire.

27B in revenue over ??? years or, well, nothing. Nothing + the heat generated from burning the money. If a lot of them are Sacagawea coins we could probably keep the bums warm all through winter.

I have no doubt they would. NYC is having a really hard time keeping tech talents in the city because it just doesn't have a critical mass of tech entrepreneurs/computer engineers. Fresh engineering graduates are basically just looking at two options: Wall Street and moving to the west coast. I am exaggerating a little but really not by that much. Having a giant tech employer (instead of Google's basically advertising agency with some support engineers) in the area that can give legit year round tech internships and mentoring opportunities will dramatically improve NYC's startup scene and more traditional tech oriented jobs (IT consulting for example).

They'd have more than 3 billion to spend with Amazon around.

I wonder if there might be local businesses that could benefit from three billion dollars of state and city aid that might possibly hire local workers. I wonder if those businesses could generate more than the three billion dollars used.

Nah.

( twitter | raw text )

Well, I know they are recruiting engineers and tax lawyers. What do they do?

effen, can i play the dumb rhetorical question game too?

i wonder if $3 billion is the entirety of the state and city budget or if they actually have much more money than that.

Right. I've actually read studies that show commutes over an hour (I'm assuming has to be less than 2 since by that point you're cutting into sleep) actually don't add much to stress since people naturally use those times to rest in some way.

Americans (other than NYC) for the most part can't do that because no viable public transport is available.

Even more importantly, a lot of Americans can't afford the to commute without public transportation, limiting their access to jobs and educational opportunities.

how much free **** was amazon getting that its response to this is just "not the deal we wanted? ehhh we don't need an HQ2 anyway"

lol

NYC's annual budget for this year is 88.67 billion.

NY State collects about 30 billion in just income taxes from NYC+Westchester+Nassau (NYC suburbs in NYS basically) every year.

NY already has tax incentives for smaller businesses to open or relocate to the state. In fact the Excelsior credit that was being given to Amazon applies to companies that create as little as 5 new jobs. The reason Amazon's numbers were higher is because the total # of new jobs, and the average salaries, were higher.

But hey I'm sure Cuomo never thought of just giving $10k or so tax break to each existing convenience store and dry cleaner in the state - imagine the economic boom! He should have consulted with the economists of 2p2 before he started throwing money at Amazon.

Let me make it more clear. The economic analysis for LIC, not the state of NY. You were claiming it would improve the area. If I'm an elected official in a city and the governor wanted to make a deal for an Amazon type corporation to plant its HQ in my city, I would want to know how exactly it impacts the city, not the state. Which is why the "Onoes! Socialista subcommandante AOC hath destroyed our capitalist state by denying 25k jerbs to us!" itt is silly. I have yet to see how this project is good for LIC specifically. I'm not silly enough to deny adding jerbs in aggregate for a state or nation is good.


The study also shows the numbers flattening out after 2033 to 2043. Woopdeedoo. Short term spike in growth that levels off in a decade.