No I don't since the whole point of their ridiculous 'public search' was to show NYC how many cities were willing to chortle their balls so that NYC would give them tax incentives. I know you probably live in Ohio or something but some cities are actually at max scale already, which is why big companies want to move there... because it's a market large enough to absorb a big project.

The flip side of that is that as the incumbents these places are constantly being bombarded with new business opportunities. For them it's about opportunity cost, and the Amazon deal was super stupid from that perspective.

I just see it as a huge f*ck up by Amazon who overestimated their ability to steamroll and expect Econ 101 to do their PR for them. Why have this huge pageantry if you're going to be picking basically between NY, LA, DC? Why not be a lot quieter, narrow it down, and then work with the city to create a bunch of PR 'give backs' to the population so that when the inevitable backlash to handing out incentives to extremely rich companies in a city with high housing costs happens you can point to more than Econ 101? It would seem like any PR firm that's ever dealt with a big construction/moving project would have foreseen this clusterf*ck

There is no sentence containing the phrase "how New York Magazine describes" that isn't going to be triggering. How much would I have to pay you to stop holding opinions (note that I am quite wealthy and also very tall)?

"Most NYers were in favor" is *highly suspect* btw.

If you ask something like "Are you in favour of Amazon HQ2 coming to NYC" how many people are going to say no?

If you ask "Are you in favour of $3b in taxpayer money heing given to Amazon to put HQ2 in NYC?" the answers would be different imo.

Wow the people whose property values were going to get bumped really hard at the cities expense were for it???? Say it isn't so.

Obviously every real estate broker in the city is sad, as is anyone who owned property in the area. That doesn't mean that losing the Amazon deal in exchange for those tax breaks spread over that real estate was a bad thing. It was pretty lousy deal.

Is this the AOC thread or the AMZ thread?

True she kind of became the face of the resistance though.

I actually enjoy most of her tweets but she was wrong on the AMZN thing. She wants to provide things like better funding for education, health care, environment... all good things. Those AMZN billions might have helped with all that. Now all we have is the satisfaction that comes from feeling morally superior, but that doesn't shelter the homeless or feed the hungry.

To extract the maximum of course... and perhaps they just misjudged the mood of the nation (or were taken by surprise how quickly it shifted) and they wanted the good PR of being a job creator.

That NYC didn't offer AMZN much in subsidies not available to anyone else and got AMZN to go to Queens is actually a pretty solid accomplishment (considering the counterparty) and is consistent with deBlasio's pledge to make NYC a 5 borough city (and not just finance/law in Manhattan).

It is just amazing to me people don't realize how important AMZN is. It would actually be the first giant employer with enough gravitational pull to bring some business out of Manhattan and develop an alternative industry in relative peace without having to compete with finance, fashion, and law for office space to reach a critical mass concentration of tech talents.

PS: mods... maybe purge/consolidate the AMZN posts... especially mine and put them in a new thread? Call it LolBezos got owned. NYC cut of its own nose to spite the face or some such thing.

Yeah, forum needs more dead excised threads.

This topic will go away next time AOC says something dumb. She's probably in a meeting right now, so give her a little time.

interesting take considering it's generally when conservatives say dumb **** like here that threads blow up. AOC dunking on people is a fairly streamlined thread.

I agree that this forum is a snoozefest most of the time.

hmmm, perhaps you could give an example of previous dumb things she has said?

Inso threadfall appeared in the sky so the dragonriders had to mount up.

( twitter | raw text )

Rekt

Imagine how dumb you'd have to be to call AOC dumb.

Because Amazon overestimates how many people actually like them. They think its universal. It wasn't and Bezos ego got hurt.

Even if its the norm, companies leveraging for tax incentives only looks good if you are some small business, not one of the most valuable in the world.

Apple is looking for another campus and Cook went out and said he wasn't interested in doing a beauty contest. Cook is at least smart enough to know the optics of mega corps getting tax abatements may not look good to some no matter how good the deal was.
The funny thing was he asked and privately got tax credits from Austin to relocate there.

Even if Amazon got 0 tax credits. There are still pockets of people that are anti big corp development.

There will always be folks worried about their rents going up as a result and they will vote someone to voice their opinion. AOC is that voice. She understands her constituency.

Just a little thought experiment. Suppose a billionaire was looking for a locale to move to and was setting them up against each-other to get the best deal. If the locale he moved to would tax him 1 dollar on his wealth, it would be better for that locale if he moved there versus if he wouldn't. However, it would be better in general if all the locales said "**** you, we're not gonna be part of your race-to-the-bottom game. Pay your fair share."

Hey look, becky "Nazi-dog-whistle" is back! This is a person who has claimed to be various personalities, one of them being a "mulatto" (thank you by the way, I now know what that part of "Smells like teen spirit" means). Just a little reminder for anyone who might think becky is arguing in good faith.

There was never going to be 25-40k jobs paying 150k+

Real estate locals try all the time to offer extra incentives or lower rents for higher quality tenants.

Now you are saying real estate owners should collude together to set a price?

Each municipality will offer what they think is the best deal they can give weighing what they get back in return.

They already are competing with each other for Amazons and Apples and facebooks. Its happening right now as we speak. Apple looked to enlarge their campus and Austin dolled out a nice tax break for them. Austin is doing pretty well no?

He could have called each of those cities privately and get the same kind of deal. Everyone wants an Amazon HQ.

There's nothing there that's remotely an answer to my question. I guess maybe you answered how it's good for Amazon.

Why stop at 40k? The upward amount of jobs Amazon would have created is limited only by ones imagination.

Foxconn went from 13k manufacturing jobs for Wisconsonites to 3k manufacturing jobs for Wisconsonites to ??? manufacturing jobs for Wisconsonites + however many Chinese nationals they can h1b over there for "research".

Surely Amazon wouldn't sign the deal and then "negotiate" down on the numbers and types and compensation!

****ing rubes. Dip****, moron rubes.

It's amazing that these old white dinosaurs still find these internet campfires to come and try to school the younguns and soothe each other about how the pretty young brown lady is dumb and the rich bald white guy with all the jobs is great; the whole time gleefully demonstrating an absolute refusal to acknowledge that their demographic is dying quickly and the young people are waaaaay past not buying it.

Please, Insoo, tell me how AOC is dumb again and Bezos's workers only piss in bottles because they're lazy millenials.