2934

Come on man.

First, this isn’t even AOC’s district. The HQ would have been, but the expansion of the Manhattan office isn’t.

Second, this isn’t even close to the same kind of project. It involves no new construction or property taxes, and nowhere close to the same level of employment commitment.

It’s fundamentally dishonest to try and present this relatively small expansion of Amazon’s already existing presence as though it’s even remotely related to the HQ project which was cancelled.

Sure, if such things magically happened, and NYC got the same amount of economic growth as they would have from Amazon, without any tax incentives… That would be better for NYC.

But… There’s no reason to think that’s going to happen.

Again, the location we are talking about was a toxic waste dump. No one of gonna spend $100M to clean that up and make it suitable. No one else is gonna build a $5B campus in Queens.

And if they do? They’re gonna get tax incentives.

Because other cities compete for those things. It’s not one sided.

It’s not. It’s not the right decision.
You had actual economists and city planners put this deal together. It was going to be a huge economic boon.

There was no actual economic argument against it, just “feels” from people who don’t like corporations.

But this isn’t a realistic narrative.

The “little guy” didn’t win anything.

Of course they did. What do you think is wrong about that?

Cities have incentives to have giant corporations build their headquarters there. It would be foolish for Amazon to not consider such things. Why is that bad?

2935

It’s a bit of a dick move to ask cities to waste time putting together a package that will never be considered.

2936

Yes, all this bloviating about how stupid AOC is for running Amazon out of town is pointless because Amazon was never going to build HQ2 in NYC anyway.

2937

Eh, they definitely didn’t decide on NYC and Crystal City first though. The short list was definitely more than just those cities.

2938

Er… NYC actually had a winning bid.

2939

Yes, you’re right - they had a winning bid and going back there were real concerns about Amazon following through on their promises, while also not providing anything to the city in terms of infrastructure. It’s extremely likely they would have added the jobs they wanted to add, decided the area couldn’t support the full 25k at 150k/yr promised, and then received the incentives anyway.

2940

No, this is not possible, because the tax incentives were contractually linked to meeting those job creation milestones.

If they failed to do that, they wouldn’t have gotten the tax incentives, while still investing in the area, so NYC wouldn’t have lost anything.

Ultimately, this is all kinds of beside the point, because the issue of stupidity here isn’t the fight against Amazon. While i think that’s dumb, it’s fine if you don’t.

The actual issue of stupidity here, is AOC thinking that the expansion of the Manhattan office is the same as building HQ2.

Which isn’t really AOC’s first stupid misunderstanding… Like when Amazon cancelled the deal, and AOC said:

“If we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest $3 billion in our district ourselves if we want to. We could hire more teachers, we can fix our subways, we can put a lot of people to work for that money if we wanted to.”

Again, demonstrating that she didn’t actually understand how any of this works… because NYC doesn’t have that $3B. They can’t spend it on anything.

2941

You make excellent points. I want to add just one thing. I lived for three years in Long Island City, and the toxic dump you mention is a real problem. Other than the waterfront area, most of LIC could be described as an industrial dump.

The real objection that locals have is not that Amazon was going to fail to meets its obligations. That kind of reasoning is what you get when people decide they don’t want the deal, and so reverse-engineer weak arguments against it. Everyone in Queens knows that the real issue is that LIC has already been getting more and more expensive, just like Seattle got more expensive when Amazon moved in there. And so, a lot of the residents simply did not want to get priced out and have to move, even though there would probably be many more jobs for them, too. (Office spaces do not build themselves, create their own food, clean themselves, etc).

It is a classic economics problem. In aggregate, Amazon would obviously create more jobs for the city and benefit NY’s economy, and accelerate LIC job growth. But in these small poor communities, it would mean they would have to move out to cheaper areas, which is something that has already been going on in LIC.

2942

Yes, the idea of gentrification is a thing. I’m not sure how you avoid it, as it seems like a natural result of any economic growth. It could at least be a real argument though, because it would certainly happen to some degree.

2943

That worked out well in Wisconsin with Foxconn (and yes, before you point it out, I realize it isn’t a 100% analog).

She literally did not say that in the tweet you posted, but I know you choose to read everything from her in the worst possible light.

2944

If you realize why it’s not applicable as an analog, why did you bring it up?

In the case with NYC, they legally would not receive the tax incentives if they failed to meet the milestones.

Really man? You don’t think that’s what she’s suggesting, or that the tweet she retweeted suggested?

If that’s your interpretation, i guess that’s fine, but i think you are being a bit more than charitable.

2945

I said it is not a 100% analog. Surely you can understand how a massive corporation getting tax incentives and subsidies for promising X jobs at $Y/yr, and then scaling back and still getting incentives and subsidies is relevant in this situation.

No, and I provided my interpretation already. Amazingly, it turns out that Amazon’s requirements for 25k more centrally located jobs may not have been completely truthful, since they decided to not open another HQ site and instead decided to add additional jobs to existing locations, including the one in Manhattan - all without additional tax incentives.

2946

But it’s different, because in this case (and the crystal City project), the tax incentives are directly tied, contractually, to the milestones.

Amazon legally cannot get those incentives unless they meet the requirements.

Man, this doesn’t make any sense.

Those are different jobs. And the benefit to the city is nowhere near the same thing anyway.

Of course Amazon was was going to keep growing their existing operations in NYC. They would have done that even if they built the HQ. It’s NYC.

The HQ would have been another, massive investment in the city.

The continued growth of their existing operations isn’t Amazon “caving”. And they already have tax incentives set up for those operations, so it’s not even that they are doing it without tax incentives.

Again, if you can’t see how AOC’s statement here is misleading at best, and stupid at worst (or maybe that’s better? I dunno.) then you’re probably gonna back anything she says, no matter what. Like her suggesting they should now spend the $3B on other stuff.

But I think her statement is dumb.

2947

This is shocking and totally unexpected.

2948

This seems like an awful lot of supposition on your part, considering you’re saying that several news article on how the media has been covering this aren’t true. It seems to me the situation is more subtle and you don’t know how things would have gone for sure either way.

And this seems really naive. Here in Kansas City, businesses hop back and forth across the State line between Kansas and Missouri all the time to take advantage of both States’ tax incentives for moving so that they never have to pay taxes in either place. And sometimes they don’t fulfill their obligations, but they still get most of their incentives because of the intense competition between the states. You think that after every State in the Union got Amazon to try to move their HQ to their locale, the strength of the contract and the advantage would be in the City/State’s side and not Amazon’s side?

2949

This. It’s perfectly reasonable to decide that the jobs aren’t worth the price, whether in gentrification and/or the amount of the tax incentive.

Once you make that political choice, live with it. This BS we had our cake and got to eat it too false victory lap is just the liberal version of Trumpian post-fact spin.

Make the hard decisions and then stand by them.

2950

When they cancelled their HQ expansion, they actually said that they would be continuing to grow their existing NYC presence organically.

Because of course they would. Right? Why wouldn’t they?

And the articles making the suggestion that Amazon caved somehow? Yeah, those are bad articles. They are examples of liberals saying and doing stupid things.

You can just read the facts yourself and see this.

It was literally in the contract.

How would they have gotten those incentives without meeting the requirements?

They would have already built a $5 billion headquarters.

It’s not like they would just abandon it. That’s totally insane.

The HQ would have been a massive, permanent tie to the city.

Exactly this.

Amazon didn’t cave. NYC isn’t getting the huge HQ.

Crystal City still is… so we’ll see if it benefits them or not. It almost certainly will, but we’ll get to see what actually happens.

2951

I just don’t see things going “back to normal” even if we get rid of Trump. We’ve crossed some sort of threshold as a nation.

2952

I have that “crossed a threshold” feeling sometimes too, but I think it has more to do with rapidly-changing, information-age technology like social media, Fox news, gerrymandering, in-game micro-transactions, lootboxes, etc. than Trump himself. (Not to mention, we’re getting pretty damn old. Aren’t we supposed to be feeling confused and scared by modern life?)

I see Trump as an aberration, not a new species. All he knows is that conflict makes drama, drama means eyeballs, and eyeballs make money. It’s all ratings. Heck, I bet most of us here kind of liked him on Letterman or The Apprentice. He’s a bizarre, perfect storm of celebrity, charlatan, bully, narcissist, playboy, and troglodyte moron.

My version of getting back to normal is just any president who understands and performs the role of a leader. Uniting the states of America. It’s so dreadful not having that.

2953

Oh, I agree, but I think there are going to be voters who would vote for Biden solely because they think he can bring back 2015 and they can stick their heads back in the sand.

It won’t work, but I know a lot of Americans are just tired of it all.

My true worry is a smarter Trump. We were lucky Trump is such a moron. I just wish the Dem establishment weren’t like the Bourbons- they seem to learn nothing and forget nothing.