
The Path Amazon Rejected - crazygringo
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/amazon-new-york-bill-de-blasio.html
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tracer4201
I don't understand the outrage towards Amazon.

1\. No one forced any of these states/cities to join this bidding contest.
They willingly participated. "How dare Amazon put cities against one another
in a bidding war?!" Yeah, I put five dealers against one another in a bidding
war to get my business the last time I shopped for a car. Amazon can do the
same thing.

2\. "Jeff Bezos doesn't need our tax breaks!" I bet he doesn't. I don't think
Jeff Bezos personally helped elect all the leaders who offered all these tax
breaks. At the end of the day, Amazon will create jobs. Will it gentrify these
cities? Yes, absolutely. So would Google, Apple, or Facebook moving into a new
area. "But those other companies didn't ask for tax breaks." They literally
hold hundreds of billions in wealth overseas. I'm not arguing in favor of tax
breaks for Amazon. I am saying, however, Amazon didn't stage a coup against
these mayors and governors and threaten to hurt them if Amazon didn't get tax
breaks. NYC officials (at least some) openly invited Amazon. Good on Amazon
for walking out. Private companies don't owe you anything.

The system is broken. Neither party has done anything to fix it. You have a
company taking advantage of the perfectly legal rules that the system set up.
OH GAWD better grab pitchforks. Yet, all the same lying Congressional leaders
get re-elected election after re-election.

This de Blasio character openly invited Amazon. Now that they've backed out,
he's angry that Amazon had cities bid against each other and that it was so
wrong? Are you kidding me? de Blasio is a prime example of what's wrong with
American politics.

~~~
_bxg1
"You have a company taking advantage of the perfectly legal rules that the
system set up. OH GAWD better grab pitchforks."

People aren't allowed to be upset about something just because it's not
illegal?

~~~
slowmovintarget
Reality doesn't allow people to have it both ways. Either be upset that the
system incentivizes the behavior, or be upset that the incentives failed.

In both of those cases, the blame lies at the feet of the elected officials.
Granted, the implication of that is the blame lies at the feet of those who
cast the ballots (George Carlin, we miss you). People always have trouble
blaming themselves.

Corporations are jello. They take the shape of the mold they sit in. If they
get big enough, the mold is the whole world's economy.

~~~
ardy42
> In both of those cases, the blame lies at the feet of the elected officials.
> Granted, the implication of that is the blame lies at the feet of those who
> cast the ballots...

Blame also lies at the feet of those people and organizations who twist the
imperfect rules and governmental systems to suit themselves at the expense of
others.

To put it another way: all software has bugs, and many of them get exploited.
While it might feel just to put _all_ the blame on the software engineer who
wrote the code (after all, wasn't he supposed to have done a perfect job?),
blame still lies at the feet of those people who chose to exploit the bugs to
enrich themselves and/or do harm to others. Hackers are not an impersonal
force of nature, they're people who made a choice.

~~~
slowmovintarget
Except the tax incentives aren't bugs in your analogy to software. They're
design choices. The system was given specific characteristics to produce the
results that occurred (before Amazon backed out). If the system is so
designed, then working in harmony with its design choices is not exploitation.

But I'll grant you, I'm just arguing the analogy.

The real problem seems to me to be that de Blasio is being a weather vane of
sorts. He was a cheerleader for Amazon, doing the work to get them into the
city. When that failed and political gain was to be had, he changed his tune
to "OMG! I can't believe how evil they are! I'm a victim!"

Amazon didn't twist the rules, they played by them (unsuccessfully, as it
happens). Nor was this at the expense of others. Whether Amazon got to build a
headquarters in NY or not didn't preclude others from doing so. Whether Amazon
got tax incentives to go to NY or not, didn't take money away from anyone
else. Additional tax revenue that might have been collected is not money that
_belongs_ to someone else.

It is reasonable to expect moral behavior from individuals. History tells us
that corporations almost never display moral behavior. Partly this is because
they permit decisions where each person in the corporation may assume that
someone else will be moral; a very ordinary human failing. (Forward thinking
beyond the framework of advantage for self and company is rare.)

Corporations as a whole don't have a conscience. That's why we regulate.
That's why we create laws with which the harm corporations might do to people
is reduced and minimized so that the benefits corporations can bring may still
be realized. Anthropomorphizing corporations is only useful for generating
anger, which, in turn, is only useful for political gain. (Discounting First
Amendment goggles.)

That lands things squarely back on the voter's back in the system here in the
U.S. If we go back to your analogy, voters are the ones hiring the designers
and not invalidating the contract when the design goes off the rails.

------
dvt
I don't buy de Blasio's outrage. If he was truly worried about Amazon being a
"bad neighbor," why did he have a _carte blanche_ policy until the very moment
they backed off? In fact, it took regular citizens asking the hard questions
for Amazon to back off in the first place. Aren't we electing mayors to fight
these fights _for us_?

~~~
blihp
It's not outrage, it's spin. He represents one of the two parties that was
prepared to engage in a deal that ordinary people get very angry about. (i.e.
massive corporate tax breaks) So if the media plays along with the spin, he
will succeed in shifting a lot of the outrage away from his administration and
on to Amazon.

~~~
bilbo0s
Well, in fairness, the outrage wouldn't be on his administration in any case.

One thing he's conveniently not mentioning is that he was opposed to giving
Amazon any tax breaks or other concessions from the start. The state
politicians overruled him.

Although his position, I suppose, is that Amazon should move to NYC, _without_
any concessions. Which is not altogether off the wall. That's how it should
work for _ALL_ companies and all places. Corporate welfare is out of hand in
this country. It's just a little idealistic on his part, that's just not how
things work in reality. He's gonna get overruled by the higher ups every time
on that one.

~~~
crumpets
>Corporate welfare is out of hand in this country.

That's certainly one view. Another is that these are just breaks on excessive
taxes by one government to compete with other governments that have sane
corporate taxes in the first place.

I don't understand how tax reductions are considered welfare. It's not money
the government has already being passed out to Amazon. The government _would
have still made money_ in this scenario, just less.

~~~
AJ007
It’s unfair to the companies that don’t get the tax breaks. Politically, I’m
not sure having an environment where special rules are granted or exempted by
government officials on a selective basis is healthy either.

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yalogin
Amazon screwed up when they made choosing a place into a reality contest. That
came off as egotistical and people took notice. They brought the attention on
to themselves. I think they finally realized that walking out of it and
letting it die down is the best way going forward.

~~~
trikonasana
That seems to be the popular opinion (that this is Amazon's fault) but I
disagree. Amazon coming to LIC would have been a net benefit for everyone. 25k
jobs that pay a minimum wage of $15/hour...who would reject that? Sure they
get a $3b tax break, but they would have paid far more than that in state
taxes over the long term. The people on the city council did not represent the
the best interest of the citizens, instead trying to spin this as a stand
against corporate greed. It's too bad they couldn't work this out. I think
this will hurt NYC in the long run.

~~~
perfmode
How much did amazon pay in federal and state taxes in 2017 or 2018?

~~~
greenyoda
Even if Amazon paid no corporate income tax at all, their 25,000 employees
would still be paying many millions of dollars a year in state and local
income taxes, real estate taxes and sales taxes. And both Amazon and its
employees would be buying lots of goods and services from local businesses,
generating even more taxable economic activity.

Some of these employees might even eventually leave Amazon and found new
startups in NYC.

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joemaller1
> Just days before, I had counseled a senior Amazon executive...

Can pretty much stop there. I think Amazon saw a mayor and governor who
thought they traded tax breaks for a say in how Amazon runs its business.

This was a huge loss for the city. LIC will be toxic to big business for
years. And now the mayor is passing the blame to the very corporations who
would come in and create jobs.

~~~
bogomipz
>"LIC will be toxic to big business for years"

You mean like Citibank, JetBlue, Fresh Direct and Steve Madden who all moved
to Long Island City years ago and continue to flourish? Or like Ralph Lauren
who just signed a lease for 19K square foot of space and Cornel University's
building of their Techion campus? Yeah right.

I'm amazed on the number of people who appear be not only unfamiliar with Long
Island City as a neighborhood but also of NYC and it current economic well-
being in technology jobs. And yet these same folks feel compelled to make
comments about what a "huge loss" this is.

~~~
pathseeker
Those companies pay garbage.

~~~
bogomipz
Your comment as is as uniformed as it is absurd. Many of those are fortune
500/publicly traded companies. That not withstanding, the comment was that
that the business environment would somehow now toxic in LIC which has exactly
zero to do with salary ranges.

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dangban
de Blasio tweeted this after Amazon cancelled:
[https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1096110674613358593](https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1096110674613358593)

"working with the community" is code for "bribe" among the community organizer
types.

~~~
dtrailin
That's an incredibly uncharitable insinuation. Do you think community
organizers do it for the money? There are a lot of reasons people choose to
advocate but regardless of weather you think they're right they generally do
it because they actually believe in something. It's unlikely fighting Amazon
is a very profitable venture.

~~~
pathseeker
They certainly do it for the power (the majority of them). Very few people put
themselves in that position without an eye for moving into politics to
continue their power growth.

Remember, the vast majority of people do not do things long term for
altruistic reasons.

------
jedberg
Why would Amazon try to make things right in NYC, when they can just go
somewhere else that welcomes them with open arms and no complaints? NYC didn't
offer them anything of particularly great value that they couldn't get
elsewhere. I wish they were being better about helping the communities they
are moving into, but I can see why they would just leave.

~~~
bogomipz
>"NYC didn't offer them anything of particularly great value that they
couldn't get elsewhere."

You mean like access to a very large and very skilled labor pool? A 24 hour
transit system, 3 major airports? 1 million square feet of available office
like they were going to take in Citicorp tower that has a train stop at the
bottom of the building? Sure.

~~~
jedberg
Amazon doesn’t need a large local labor pool. They get far more applicants
than they need and plenty of people willing to move to work there.

There are lots of cities with empty office space. And in most cities parking
isn’t a problem so the transit isn’t necessary.

You gotta think like Amazon — most of those things weren’t huge benefits to
them. They were benefits to their future employees but only in that city.

The main things they are looking for are tax breaks and rapid development
without a lot of red tape. NYC was proving that rapid development was out of
the picture and so was the lack of red tape.

~~~
bogomipz
>"Amazon doesn’t need a large local labor pool. They get far more applicants
than they need and plenty of people willing to move to work there."

Nonsense. It's far more efficient to be able to tap a local labor pool.
Google, FB, et al set up shop in NYC for this ver And there are always people
who don't want or can not relocate. Or who simply do not want to live in New
York City.

>"And in most cities parking isn’t a problem so the transit isn’t necessary"

Please name just one top tier city where parking isn't a problem and mass
transit isn't necessary.

~~~
jedberg
Dallas.

~~~
bogomipz
Sorry Dallas is not a "top tier" city. Not by any measure - population-wise,
ethnic diversity, diversity of industry or culturally. Nobody sets up shop in
Dallas as a selling point to attract the world's top talent.

------
aristophenes
Basically, a plea for everybody else to make it more difficult to do business
in their local community, so NYC can be more competitive. I'm sure there is a
tragedy of the commons somewhere in the "pitting cities against one another"
as he mentioned. But perhaps it isn't ideal to think that a large corporation
needs to come to your city and fix your problems either, and that it's not
fair that they don't want to.

With a corporation the size of Amazon, US cities aren't just competing against
each other. The US is a whole is competing against other countries. And these
companies are competing against other global companies. Of course they are
going to want the lowest hassle, highest efficiency, and largest margins
possible.

Surely helping the poor and encouraging business don't need to be
diametrically opposed. One might think the two go hand in hand.

~~~
Vehemental
One way to get Amazon to contribute to fixing a cities problem would be to tax
them but they aren't paying any taxes.

~~~
crumpets
That's a problem with the government. Amazon isn't evading taxes. It's using
standard government legislated tax deductions and rebates:
[http://www.newser.com/story/271410/amazon-banked-11b-in-
prof...](http://www.newser.com/story/271410/amazon-banked-11b-in-profit-year-
and-paid-what-in-taxes.html)

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unreal37
Mayor of New York: You gotta be tough to make it in New York.

Businesses with lots of money: Let's go where it's easier

~~~
geuszb
Not all businesses with a lot of money... For example, the financial industry
is not going to leave New York anytime soon, as New York is their talent hub.

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DLA
Virginia thanks NY for those extra jobs. The issue here is NY’s leaders are
idiots and don’t understand the fundamentals of economics. Deferred or reduced
taxes on Amazon (investment) in exchange for many thousands of good paying
jobs (return) and all the down stream economic benefits as those employees pay
taxes on good salaries, buy houses, buy cars, and participate in a plethora of
other economic activities in the local environment (further returns). Keep
electing clowns that want to keep raising taxes, adding regulation, and are
unfriendly to business and you get a free market result - companies leave or
don’t come to NY in favor of other more business friendly locations. Brooklyn
loses a set of very good jobs due to political blundering yet people people
want to blame “evil” Amazon. Sorry, that’s not how this works. Good for
Amazon.

------
skilled
Big Corp: We don't need to pay taxes, our employees do it on our behalf.

------
narendranag
As a non-American, I have a question about two things that stand out for me
(and do correct me if I'm wrong): the first is that Amazon pays no federal
taxes. The second is that corporations seem to expect locals to pay for things
that they can then make money off — Amazon's installation in this instance but
also American football stadiums stand out as an egregious example.

What responsibility (if any) do American companies have towards the
communities/societies they exist in (beyond delivering value to shareholders
-- wherever they may be)?

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kevmo
This is just a face-saving op-ed by a guy who wants to run for President. The
fact that they only gave him an hour's notice shows just how gullible he was
and how little respect Amazon had for him in the first place. All of those
things he counseled them to do - hire people from the public housing projects,
meet with labor organizers, etc - should have been concessions extracted
_before_ he signed onto the deal.

~~~
ndespres
> All of those things he counseled them to do - hire people from the public
> housing projects, meet with labor organizers, etc - should have been
> concessions extracted before he signed onto the deal.

Exactly my thoughts. Though Amazon should have done this in the first place
instead of doing that awful HQ2 search spectacle.

Another thing that jumps out when reading this editorial from the mayor is how
strange it is to see him acknowledge Amazons behavior with the min wage tax
increase in Seattle that they threw a tantrum about, and yet still he invited
them to come to NYC with the tax breaks on a silver platter.

~~~
kevmo
What really blows my mind about this is that we are talking about _New York
City_.

NYC is absolutely stuffed with America's best talent. Amazon needs NYC so much
more than NYC needs Amazon.

The entire HQ2 shakedown was always just Amazon seeing how much they could
fleece NYC. It's ludicrous New Yorkers are having to do the bargaining they
elected a mayor to do for them.

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sheeshkebab
Amazon wanted public money to setup their operations - well they got it
together with all the rest that comes with it. If they ever take federal money
(and going down 0 tax rate is that path), they’ll need to pray they won’t be
nationalized.

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my_usernam3
I'm skeptical of the article. I most want to see a more descriptive summary of
"the agreement we struck with Amazon back in November".

Is it public?

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zavi
Being a sore loser is always a poor strategy. Reflect on mistakes made and
opportunities lost and move on.

------
org3432
I think SNL had a good point, Amazon isn't the worst company in NY, the Trump
Organization is also there remember.

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jmpman
How much was AOC responsible for this?

~~~
parrellel
Minor bandwagonning at the end by all sane accounts, but she's a convenient
face for it, I guess.

