
The NIMBY Backlash Against Amazon’s HQ2 - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-13/amazon-s-hq2-backlash-it-s-mostly-nimbyism
======
bradneuberg
I'm actually a YIMBY but I don't consider the Queens backlash against the
Amazon's HQ2 NIMBYism. Instead its a valid argument against why Amazon should
get billions in subsidies to essentially gentrify Queens -- what will the
actual inhabitants there see, other than landlords mostly getting higher rents
as they push existing tenants out? These kind of 'race to the bottom' economic
subsidies that states and cities compete on should be eliminated IMHO.

~~~
djrobstep
What's clear is that Amazon is an unstoppable force, the only question is, how
to handle that force.

Their business model is here to stay, because online retailing turns out to be
a natural monopoly due to network effects and economies of scale.

The best solution is to nationalize it. Instead of squeezing the public to
boost private profits, all profits would be returned to the public.

~~~
zorga
> The best solution is to nationalize it.

No, break them up. Governments are terrible at running businesses. Fragment
the market legally so competition can't be eliminated by a monopoly. A
competitive market is better than a government run monopoly.

~~~
djrobstep
> Governments are terrible at running businesses.

Pure ideology, and trivially factually wrong.

\- Nationalization means the government owns the business, not that it runs
it. Only difference is who collects the profits, Bezos or everyday people.

\- Norway and the other Scandy countries have high levels of public ownership
and huge public sectors. Their economies run great.

"Some of these SOEs are businesses often run by states: a postal service, a
public broadcasting channel, an Alcohol retail monopoly. But others are just
normal businesses typically associated with the private sector.

In Finland, where I know the situation the best, there are 64 state-owned
enterprises, including one called Solidium that operates as a holding company
for the government’s minority stake in 13 of the companies.

The Finnish state-owned enterprises include an airliner called Finnair; a wine
and spirits maker called Altia; a marketing communications company called
Nordic Morning; a large construction and engineering company called VR; and an
$8.8 billion oil company called Neste.

In Norway, the state manages direct ownership of 70 companies. The businesses
include the real estate company Entra; the country’s largest financial
services group DNB; the 30,000-employee mobile telecommunications company
Telenor; and the famous state-owned oil company Statoil."

Read more here: [https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/14/the-state-
ow...](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/14/the-state-owns-76-of-
norways-non-home-wealth/)

~~~
squish78
The US and Scandinavian countries are hardly comparable.

It's like saying, "Hey Ethiopia, you should just be more like Canada and that
would solve all your problems!"

~~~
djrobstep
Actually the comparison is fine. They're both similarly developed first world
economies.

The US isn't Ethiopia. It has ample resources to solve all its problems given
the political will. It just needs to overcome its irrational fear of the
welfare state.

~~~
zorga
It's not an irrational fear of the welfare state, it's an ideological
opposition to collectivism from the half of the country that are ideologically
individualistic.

~~~
djrobstep
You say potayto, I say potahto

~~~
zorga
If you can't agree there's a difference between an irrational fear, and a core
value, well then there's little point bothering to converse, you're too closed
minded.

------
PDoyle
Uh, that's not what NIMBY means. "NIMBY" means we all agree that something a
Good Thing™, but I want it placed in someone else's neighborhood instead of
mine. It doesn't apply to any possible objection to one's neighborhood.

~~~
zjaffee
No this is exactly what nimby means, tons of people who would support HQ2
being in manhattan are opposed to HQ2 being in LIC.

~~~
goldfeld
WHO would support Seattlification? It's boring, it's numb and on top of that
it's Amazon. Sorry about how offensive that is.

~~~
ummonk
> and on top of that it's Amazon.

That's what amuses me about this whole saga. Out of the successful tech
companies, Amazon has by far the worst reputation as an employer (mediocre pay
compared to other top tech companies, and poor work-life balance for engineers
- never mind work conditions for warehouse workers), yet all these cities were
bending over backwards to entice Amazon to move to their cities.

~~~
mrep
Totally, I don't know why anyone these days would accept a pitiful $140,000
total compensation pay as a new grad software development engineer these days.
That's practically slave labor... \s

~~~
goldfeld
People can still be taken advantage of with a mighty sum of money, surprise
surprise. Money doesn't make everything right always. It's all about
opportunity cost (how long does one's 20s and early 30s last?), the value this
young fresh labor provides, how much life is sucked out of their enthusiasm in
the process (i.e. jaded expectations carry on for a long time, emotionally),
and the naivete combined with ample time to devote to the Bezos cult that's
exploited with perks and status that amount to, sincerely, working for the
man, in the clearest sense possible (I mean you could up that game with
something like Palantir.)

If one's real happy working for Amazon though, I wish them luck and continued
prosperity, and a bit of willful ignorance to carry on. For sure it looks real
good on the resume for the next gig.

------
ummonk
As a YIMBY, I think it's unfair to label the backlash against Amazon HQ2 as a
NIMBY backlash. Not wanting to dole out arbitrary tax breaks doesn't make you
a NIMBY. Same for being concerned about the extent to which it will create
well-paying stable jobs.

The concerns about rent and displacement are really the only NIMBY complaint
(particularly the idea that building luxury condos for new workers would
shuffle out existing residents from existing apts / condos).

------
CoolGuySteve
This random reddit comment describes the situation with NYC subsidies pretty
well. It jives pretty well with what I saw locally when they built the Whole
Foods near me in Gowanus.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/9wploz/ocasiocortez_bl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/9wploz/ocasiocortez_blasts_tax_breaks_for_amazon_says/e9mdind/)

Overall, a much better argument against these subsidies is that they shouldn't
be needed at all. Everyone should be able to have the same streamlined
permitting processes.

~~~
marricks
This also jives really wel with the banking deregulation bill republicans and
democrats want to pass.

They used the excuse that small banks and credit unions got screwed a bit with
Dodd-Frank so we need to pass a bill to fix that, and oh by the way we’ll roll
back big player regulations along the way cause that’s all we actually cared
about.

My point is, small business get screwed all the time and it sucks and should
be fixed, but for the love of god don’t use that as a justification for why
Amazon should be able to shop around to dozens of cities to get a better deal
than anyone else could (or why we should pass banking deregulation).

Your framing of the argument, and that comment, seems like an intentional
misdirection.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
That's some nice whataboutism concerning Dodd-Frank.

With regards to uneven enforcement, you would have to be delusional to think
that these same tax incentives aren't being extended to every other large
development, be it Google NYC, Goldman's 200 West, or Jared Kushner's DUMBO
mall.

You can even download a list of NYC property tax refunds here:
[https://www1.nyc.gov/site/finance/taxes/property-
refunds-201...](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/finance/taxes/property-
refunds-2018.page)

The only reason you're hearing about this one is because of Amazon's
unconventional bidding stunt and its publicity.

The process is outrageous and benefits large developers the most. But it's
naive to think these companies won't always lobby for lower taxes, and cynical
to think that the same benefits can't be extended to smaller firms.

------
maxxxxx
I don't really understand that even booming areas like Northern VA and NYC
have to give a company subsidies to settle there. I can see this as a tool to
help disadvantaged areas but I don't think we should subsidize wealthy
companies to settle in already wealthy areas.

As an ex-small business owner I would much prefer if little companies got more
incentives.

~~~
xienze
> I don't really understand that even booming areas like Northern VA and NYC
> have to give a company subsidies to settle there.

Politicians see the chance for tens of thousands of high paying jobs to be a
net positive for their city -> politicians compete to bring said jobs to their
city. I don’t understand why this is so controversial. Even absent Amazon’s
explicit RFP process, which was a bit tacky, you were always going to have
cities falling all over themselves trying to gain Amazon’s favor. It’s no
different than if you were buying a car and trying to play multiple dealers
off each other, just on a larger scale. To think that NYC and DC don’t have to
compete to attract business is naive.

~~~
slededit
Because it’s an unfair playing field. Government is supposed to be a check on
corporate power - not guaranteeing it with unfair advantages.

On the non business side our tax dollars are going to support billionaires. At
the national level this is pretty close to zero sum. Every dollar Amazon
doesn’t pay is a dollar someone else has to. Discrepancies between regions
would be solved more efficiently with transfer/equalization payments.

~~~
cannonedhamster
Government is also supposed to create jobs. It's a double edged sword. While
it's been relatively lax on the oversight, everyone loves jobs. Unfortunately
not enough regulation can lead to the same outcome as too much regulation as
when there are too many monopolies like there are right now, it crowds out
small businesses which actually create most of the jobs.

------
shay_ker
Clearly there's a lot of deep, financial analysis that's done in determining
whether giving Amazon financial incentives is a good idea (i.e. bring enough
jobs & tax revenue to compensate for the tax breaks). It's probably not done
by all cities, but certainly the bigger ones.

I'm curious why we don't see those analyses in news stories about HQ2. It's
possible that governments don't publish them, but why? Some sort of NDA
agreement with Amazon? It feels like those numbers would make people more
favorable to HQ2 coming to their city.

EDIT - Found this NYT article, but it's light on the numbers:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/nyregion/amazon-long-
isla...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/nyregion/amazon-long-island-
city.html)

------
rayiner
To folks saying this isn't NIMBY: a lot of backlash to HQ2 is not the tax
breaks (most of which are coming from NYS), but Amazon's failure to engage
with local power brokers in Queens ( _i.e._ failure to give them the
opportunity to extract concessions based on hold-out value). _That_ is classic
NIMBY-ism.

------
detcader
Assistant professor from Long Island, now writing from LA, thinks we should
not reconsider entrusting billions in taxpayer's money to the richest man in
the world.

He should debate David Sirota, or Nathan Robinson.

------
purplezooey
I agree the tax breaks are absolutely laughable. We no longer have the
collective wherewithal to break up large monopolies, and sooner or later won't
be able to collect taxes from them either. Where's the line? We'll know when
the Congress starts to hack away at entitlements. Then everyone will feel it
and wonder wtf happened.

------
ConcernedCoder
1st of all, these sort of tax incentives are quite common, who wouldn't want a
giant company moving into their area and creating 10k's of jobs... it's worth
it to the local economies...

Just look at Wisconsin and
[foxconn]([https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/28/technology/foxconn-
wisconsi...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/28/technology/foxconn-wisconsin-
plant/index.html)) a taiwanese company getting 4 billion in incentives

Amazon will create 10k's of jobs paying on average above 100k/year and by
proxy of these wages the workers will then inject millions into the local
economies of these places right? ... it's win-win.

~~~
samfisher83
[https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/did-scott-walker-
and...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/did-scott-walker-and-donald-
trump-deal-away-the-governors-race-to-foxconn)

It was a pretty bad deal for Wisconsin.

------
morpheuskafka
Very disingenuous for Rep-elect Ocasio-Cortez to ask "Are there benefits? Can
people collectively bargain?" Virtually every full-time job in the nation has
benefits, and collective bargaining is enshrined for virtually all private
sector employees since 1935 with the New Deal Era NLRB. This is the world
(second) headquarters of a multinational corporation--do you think they are
going to somehow staff it with world class engineers at low-wage, hourly, part
time, no benefits...?

~~~
jimmy1
I don't mean this to side with any particular party or another and mean this
in purely objective fashion: She really seems to have no clue about economics.
She's had quite a few Gary Johnson "What Is Aleppo" moments when asked
economy-related questions.

------
pascalxus
You'd think the US was big enough to find a city or location where Amazon HQ2
would be welcome. But no, it has to be some impractical location that's
neigther wants nor needs HQ2, according to locals.

------
trhway
it was reported that condo buying shark frenzy has started in Queens several
days ago when the location of HQ2 became known.

------
adamnemecek
> Even factoring in the tax breaks, New York and Virginia will still benefit
> from Amazon’s expansion.

I wonder if Bloomberg owns a stake in Amazon.

~~~
favorited
What? Of course NY and VA will benefit. Otherwise they wouldn't give Amazon
the tax breaks to attract them.

~~~
lotsofpulp
That is some specious reasoning. The politicians are betting that NY and VA
will benefit more than the tax breaks cost, but those calculations involve a
lot of assumptions such as the politicians using rosy numbers to get votes in
the short term or indirectly benefiting from Amazon after their political
career is over. There’s a million ways the process could be corrupted.

~~~
zdragnar
That's literally how all government budgeting works, because there's never an
audit with consequences. Or, as is the case with pensions which assumed 8% no-
risk annual returns, the consequences are decades down the road.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Exactly, that’s also a huge problem and it needs to change.

------
hcg
A yes, it's the NIMBY's.

Got nothing to do with billion dollar giveaways to trillion dollar
corporations. Amazon is just such a benevolent force that they deserve, and
Jeff is a philanthropist now.

Got nothing to do with the corporate rule and oligarchy that controls America.
That this is perhaps the most blatant example of the casual corruption that we
accept, and to be fair it is just capitalism in action.

Got nothing to do with the absolute farce of a process. I'm sure that the
biggest tech hub on the east coach and Washington DC put in the best bids. I'm
extremely convinced of that.

It's all just a bunch of uptight people who don't want Amazon so close.

------
timr
Nonsense. I'm in tech, and I think it's a ridiculous waste of money to give
Amazon billions of dollars in tax incentives to do something that they were
likely going to do anyway.

It isn't a "NIMBY backlash" to acknowledge that this was a sweetheart deal for
Amazon, and that it doesn't make a lot of economic sense. Moreover, at least
in Queens, there's very little chance that it actually benefits the people who
live in the neighborhood today.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
> here's very little chance that it actually benefits the people who live in
> the neighborhood today.

If we make the assumption that everyone who lives in the neighbourhood rents
instead of owns, then yeah, probably.

But why are we attaching any value to the needs of renters? Economically, if
your only concern is the benefit of renters then it never makes sense to
enrich property values in an area because rent will rise.

I understand it's not compassionate as renters are typically much poorer, but
this line of thinking that we should coddle renters leads to a lot of
completely regressive policy decisions like rent control that leads landlords
to poorly maintain property and public housing projects that tend to cluster
crime altogether.

~~~
goldfeld
Because the needs of renters are pretty much the needs of young working people
and the needs of landlords are the needs of the entrenched? 70's line of
thinking doesn't work anymore, the world's vastly changed.

~~~
CoolGuySteve
What a backhanded dismissal.

The cost to buy is not much more than the cost to rent in NYC for most
property. NYC's regulations around coop and condo ownership are also fairly
progressive.

The only real barrier is the traditional down payment size, which is typically
20% here.

We should be encouraging more young people to buy and build their wealth.

~~~
tropdrop
There's nothing wrong with encouraging young people to build wealth. However,
as we saw in '08, the housing market is a less sure bet of wealth than was
previously thought - not to mention changing climates make the value of some
properties highly questionable (rising coastlines - maybe? How fast?)

Further, young working people frequently move from city to city to even a _new
country_ every couple of years, and quite casually (the kind who could, in
theory, afford to purchase a property in New York, who are a very small
percentage indeed).

So OK, I purchase a property in New York. But my job now calls me to San
Francisco. I have to manage that condo (Maybe I'll Airbnb?) in addition to
paying a new equally pricey payment of rent in SF. And because of my demanding
work schedule at a tech company, I won't be able to physically check on my
property very often. I might have to hire someone to do it for me. Oh no - I
now also have to have both home owner's AND renter's insurance. And next year
I have to work for 6 months in Berlin, so I'm going to have to find someone to
sublet from my 1-year lease in San Francisco... I'm now spending all my free
time just trying to manage 3 properties instead of trying to build my own
company/find a mate/obtain a higher degree.

