from the What-else-could-you-do-with-$3-billion? dept.
"We know the game is rigged": NYC mayor slams Amazon HQ2 reversal
In a New York Times op-ed published Saturday evening, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned Amazon for its decision to pull the plug on its HQ2 expansion in Queens, calling it a byproduct of massive economic power concentrated in the hands of few wealthy corporations.
As the mayor of the nation's largest city, a place that's both a progressive beacon and the very symbol of capitalism, I share the frustration about corporate America. So do many of my fellow mayors across the country. We know the game is rigged. But we still find ourselves fighting one another in the race to secure opportunity for our residents as corporations force us into all-against-all competitions.
Amazon's HQ2 bidding war exemplified that injustice.
Previously: Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Headquarters
Related Stories
Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Headquarters
Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from lawmakers, progressive activists and union leaders, who contended that a tech giant did not deserve nearly $3 billion in government incentives.
The decision was an abrupt turnabout by Amazon after a much-publicized search for a second headquarters, which had ended with its announcement in November that it would open two new sites — one in Queens, with more than 25,000 jobs, and another in Virginia.
Amazon's retreat was a blow to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, damaging their effort to further diversify the city's economy by making it an inviting location for the technology industry.
The agreement to lure Amazon to Long Island City, Queens, had stirred intense debate in New York about the use of public subsidies to entice wealthy companies, the rising cost of living in gentrifying neighborhoods, and the city's very identity.
Also at the Long Island City Post, CNBC, CNN, and the Washington Post.
Previously: Amazon Said to be Close to Picking Crystal City, Virginia for Second Headquarters
Amazon Reportedly Picks New York, Northern Virginia for HQ2
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday February 18 2019, @02:20AM (3 children)
Fuck New York. Suck My Fucking Dick You Cock sucking Bastdids.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @02:37AM (2 children)
Sour grapes NYC, Amazon didn't need ya.
Get over yourselves.
(Score: 2, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Monday February 18 2019, @02:45AM (1 child)
Yeah New York! You do things slightly differently to us! You must be bad.
Also, you know how to spell bastard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @02:54AM
Obviously Amazon [nytimes.com] are the problem? [wsj.com]
Detroit has nothing on the stupid of today's liberal utopias. Fuck New York!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday February 18 2019, @02:57AM (10 children)
Funny how I hear the complaint only after NYC is no longer "in the cards", but not a moment earlier.
I s'ppose noone willing to take a bet what would have been their reaction if one of the Amazon HQ was actually established in NYC; it's not likely their reaction could have been any other than "We got it! Suck it, bitches, that's a proof the corporate America works!"
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Monday February 18 2019, @03:01AM (1 child)
That's how Mafia works.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 18 2019, @03:52AM
And the NYC mayors have always been careful how they work with Mafia, right?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday February 18 2019, @05:02AM (7 children)
What I hope someone can explain is: what is the point of blasting Amazon now? Did they sign papers and purchase land somewhere else? If not, isn't there still a chance to negotiate and try to win them back?
And even if not, what's the mayor of "the nation's largest city" doing talking this way? Is he somehow improving commerce, or society in general?
Boorish decorum, de Blasio - unbecoming of anyone supposedly serving the public.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday February 18 2019, @05:26AM
Maybe he does know that there's no more bridges to burn with Amazon, so let the flame free anyway?
Because if he already has nothing to lose, maybe he's trying to pose and win the title of "the leader of all cities betrayed by corporate America".
(It sounds like the only way to improve commerce or society in general is through having (one of) Amazon's HQ in NYC. You meant it this way?
Is there any reason to think he does not? (improve commerce or society in general)
Ummm... so... the "becoming behavior" is to be not-borish and... what?... maybe entertain the public Boris Johnson style?
Personally, I do prefer borish and predictable bureaucrats to the maverick ones (on the ground that the only bureaucrat that's more dangerous than a stupid one is a stupid and active bureaucrat).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @07:46AM (3 children)
He's talking like that so the voters of NYC hopefully won't blame him for Amazon walking away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @07:11PM (2 children)
Amazon should walk away from existence while they're at it. This practice of bribing corporations to get them to come to states and cities in the name of jobs is a clear example of corruption and cronyism.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday February 19 2019, @02:01AM (1 child)
I think they've gotten so used to it anymore that they forget to try and hide it.
But it brings up a the question of how much should government work with big corporations. Frankly I feel that some corporations have gotten much too big and have too much power in society. But how to fix it...
(Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday February 19 2019, @11:03PM
holy shit it's this guy again. well, this post finally explains it - I believe some autism or another type of brain disorder going on here. this dyslexic word barf is hilarious. don't no one know what the fuck you're saying. time to down the crack pipe and the beer bottle and take your meds. it's like a stupid angry little chihuahua trying to talk.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 19 2019, @01:11AM (1 child)
Boorish decorum, de Blasio - unbecoming of anyone supposedly serving the public.
According to whom? What makes you think that being boorish is unbecoming of an elected official? In a democracy, I would think that the People would make that determination, and here in America, we've elected Trump as our President, and he's way more boorish than de Blasio. So it seems to me that most Americans disagree with you about what is "unbecoming", and actually *like* elected officials who are boorish.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday February 19 2019, @01:51AM
According to me, and being a people in a democracy, I get to vote.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by goodie on Monday February 18 2019, @03:14AM (5 children)
sounds like my kid when he loses at a board game after he thought he was winning. My kid is 6...
In any case, you gotta wonder how much people were willing to bend over for Amazon indeed. It's a bit like the Olympics where we finally see some cities saying screw this we don't need the Olympics and their debacle. How many good jobs was this going to bring in anyway?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ilsa on Monday February 18 2019, @02:13PM
That's the real question. These megacorps bring "jobs", but how good are those actual jobs? Walmart brings lots of jobs too, and yet the employees are paid so poorly that they still have to resort to food stamps.
Now, whenever I see a company claim that they will bring thousands of jobs to an area, I become instantly skeptical of how much of a boon that would actually be.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @02:15PM (2 children)
The mainstream media is where the blame lies. They have put AOC on a pedestal despite the fact that she - by Bill DeBlasio's own statements - has no basic understanding of how things work. She and her ilk have been lionized by the media and the resistance against all things Trump without actually vetting her knowledge or abilities. Now she crows about the benefits of losing 25,000 good jobs plus all the feeder jobs. And the NYT is still gushing about how they dodged that terrible capitalism bullet. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/opinion/amazon-new-york.html [nytimes.com] You know the left has gone insane when uber-Leftist Bill DeBlasio rants about how unfair it was that Amazon decided they were not welcome and left for more warmer climes. Pull your head out dude, your sycophant lackeys ran them off. Didn't you get the memo? Amazon is the new capitalist Boogeyman of the left.
The media has gone full-on crazy. They place anyone on a pedestal that wants to be part of the Trump resistance regardless of their competence, experience, integrity or understanding. That's why we get nonstop stories on self important thought leader racists and imbeciles like Jussie Smollet, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Elizabeth Warren and demigods like the six month messiah Michael Avenatti. How did all that Avenatti worship work out for them? Still "bogus"? The media loves crazy so much that you would think that Trump would be their Gender-Neutral-Upright-Homonid-of-the-Year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @04:43PM (1 child)
Avenatti is getting his second wind from a fresh R. Kelly underage sex tape.
https://thegrio.com/2019/02/17/avenatti-third-sex-tape-rkelly/ [thegrio.com]
Maybe he fapped to the sex tape.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @10:06PM
Avenatti only faps to old VHS copies of Brewster's Millions.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Tuesday February 19 2019, @01:17AM
Not a good comparison.
Amazon, love them or hate them, really does do a lot of engineering work. Remember, they probably make more money with their web services (EC2 etc.) than they do their online shopping business. As I understand it, this location was an engineering center, and definitely not a warehouse. Engineering jobs bring a lot of money into the local economy, because they're relatively very high-paid. NYS probably would have made their money back pretty quickly, between taxes from employees and even moreso from all the new economic activity created (all those high-paid engineers will cause lots more service people to move into the area to support them).
The Olympics, on the other hand, are just a big money-waster that make some developers rich for building facilities that won't ever be used again. They cost an absolute fortune for the host city/country, they bring in some tourism dollars for a short time but that doesn't make up for the initial expenditure, and then when the games are over the city is left with a giant complex that isn't really useful for anything else. The Olympics should just be shut down if they can't do them cost-effectively, and the only way to really do that is to only have a couple of sites (summer & winter) which are used for ALL the games.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday February 18 2019, @03:58AM
There's one thing that tops getting the Divorce from Jeff Bozo. And that's getting the Annulment from Amazon. Congratulations N.Y.!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 18 2019, @04:05AM (1 child)
From the beginning, this was pretty much a non-story for most of us. If they didn't build a new headquarters, prices might stay stable for a little while. With a new headquarters, prices will increase. Phhhttt. . . .
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @04:37AM
I hear that it might affect prices in New York because some trucking infrastructure that was going to get built will be dropped.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @06:16AM
NYC didn't actually offer Amazon much at all. All that hand-waving about billions of benefits? Those things were already written into the law, Amazon would just have been able to avail themselves of that.
Amazon was ready to go, with broad support among the people of (especially) Queens, until the politicians got all huffy about it - and then they apparently shrugged and decided that they'd already dealt with that horseshit from Seattle, and didn't need it elsewhere.
What did Amazon do? What any rational company would do. They went where they were welcome. NYC's loss is Virginia's gain. And the good citizens of NYC have nobody but their politicians to blame.
Will they learn the lesson? Don't hold your breath, kids.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by stretch611 on Monday February 18 2019, @06:59AM (9 children)
Take the $3 billion in incentives to Amazon.
Use it to improve city infrastructure... Roads, Subways, Water System... if there is anything leftover, maybe make a small windfarm on the river or solarfarm on some rooftops.
Using that money will add jobs to the economy. It will improve the citizens quality of life. It will do much better giving back to the citizens instead of giving the money to Amazon.
And no one should cry for Amazon... it definitely is NOT a victim:
Amazon made an $11.2bn profit in 2018 but paid no federal tax [theguardian.com]
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: -1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @10:14AM (8 children)
The $3 billion was a tax break against projected tax revenue of $27 billion over 10 years. There is no $3 billion in cash for DeBlabbero to spend on subways. Did you go to the same "special school" as AOC and the other socialist retards who fail basic math and economics?
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday February 18 2019, @12:12PM (7 children)
Well, I don't know, maybe we can create a financial product that might help us then. On a whim, lets call it a "bond." Where a municipality can borrow money based on expected future tax revenues for projects of public interest.
And spending this money creates jobs, companies with contracts earn more money meaning more tax revenue, more people are gainfully employed also creating more tax revenue. With more people working, local businesses like shops and diners get patronized more creating more ta income and possibly even creating a few more jobs.
And lets face it, if Amazon liked the area, chances are other companies would like the area too. Having better infrastructure in the area adds to the incentive of companies wanting to move in.
Giving companies with billions of profit tax breaks isn't doing any good. In fact if you read the article that I linked to above, not only does Amazon not pay federal taxes, but the federal government gives them a tax rebate... despite $10b in profit... And that is PROFIT, not revenue. So, how many individual taxpayers are out there paying for Amazon's share of taxes that it is able to write off? (at 21% that is over $2b in taxes.)
Based on the data here [taxfoundation.org], the average taxpayer paid $10,299.41 in taxes during 2015. That means a little under 195,000 individuals are taxed to get the same amount of taxes that Amazon is forgiven to pay in 2018. Thats a lot of people that are paying taxes so that Amazon doesn't have to and can pass the profits along to the shareholders. (And the majority of shareholders are wealthy and don't need the extra money.)
And, while you may try (and fail) to insult my intelligence and academic experience, unlike you I actually have the balls to associate my opinions with my account. I'm not a whiny b!tch hiding behind an anonymous coward posting.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @04:16PM (2 children)
Hey Stretch, this is a different person replying to your post.
Just a logic tip: posting your opinions under the made-up handle "Stretch" in no way improves your arguments. Do you really believe that your handle automatically gives you +1 in an internet argument? That's a basic debate fail.
Signed,
Fruity Loops
+1 because I used a handle
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @04:45PM (1 child)
The site gave him a +1 for using his handle. Complain at the right person, you fucking autist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @04:33AM
Hey autist, he was claiming superiority in a debate because he used a handle and the other guy didn't.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday February 18 2019, @05:43PM (2 children)
The hostility of the prior commenter aside (having rightfully earned his -1 Troll) and your feeding him in your last paragraph....
"Maybe we can create a financial project," is not, "we have an inked deal that will be bringing in $24 billion in tax revenue." And using bonds as you suggest is directly equivalent to paying all your bills on your credit card without really knowing how you'll pay off that credit card. (As many cities which have gone into bankruptcy have now found out). You're counting your chickens before the eggs have been laid, where at least with the Amazon deal the eggs were in fact laid and expected to hatch, anyway. If all the peepul didn't stomp all over them.
You're also conflating the Federal government with municipalities. What Amazon gets from the Fed shouldn't matter in the slightest to cities competing for the tax revenue. I'd posit that most of the Phoenix municipal area as it is today has been built out thanks to Motorola and Intel over the last fifty years. And it's the cities which are in competition with one another in a fair imitation of the Hunger Games.
You may not like it (I don't) but municipalities have to compete for such now and the successful communities and states will lobby very hard to keep it that way. Otherwise it doesn't matter how much infrastructure you build up for them - if you won't cut their business some slack they'll go somewhere else if they're big enough to be able to. Is it good for the whole of society to operate that way? Absolutely not. But can you stem the tide of greed? Amazon is proving that even the 15th largest metropolis on Earth (and 1st in the United States) will bow to the corporate will, when they can theoretically put their headquarters at any location on Earth. Or pay the price. Because as a nation we allow that.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Monday February 18 2019, @09:08PM (1 child)
I agree, I did feed the troll. I realize that is not the best reaction, but sometimes, they do deserve it. (essentially making me a troll as well.)
I do realize that the feds are different from the municipalities and their tax revenues are completely separate. (even though occasionally, the feds will put some money for projects to local areas, usually in the form of grants or matching funding.) However, the point I was trying to make was that if a company receives a tax break from the government someone will have to make up that revenue to the government instead. Federal or Local, they do need their revenue. By giving these breaks to highly profitable corporations that really do not need them, we are essentially extending corporate welfare.... and primarily the rich benefit from this while the people that actually need help, can end up paying for it.
I agree, I do not like municipalities competing on tax breaks. It is much better to compete on the concentration of your target market, infrastructure, or labor pool. It does tend to give that same corporate welfare to those that do not need it. I wish that maybe here in the US, voters will eventually get fed up with the whole thing and make it illegal like it is in the EU.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday February 19 2019, @10:22PM
I thought I had replied to this yesterday. Maybe better, because I can short it. I didn't know that such courting of corporations was illegal in the EU, that's interesting. Over there one can also establish VAT taxes such that there's some derived tax simply out of whatever the company does and it doesn't matter if they're a goods or service producer. While I don't think the system is workable (greed in general and American greed in particular will keep the system rigged as it is - and the mayors do their part of the rigging), I agree that a county/state/nation as a whole would be better off if municipalities couldn't give breaks like that. (While also penalizing areas that might benefit from the same. What if it were rural Appalachia - if that still exists - offering a tax break to lure a company that would otherwise treat the location as a flyover at best. Would that be ethically better than New York offering it? And why or why not?)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @07:15PM
Great idea, what could possibly go wrong? [usdebtclock.org]
What trickles down from 25,000+ new jobs via NY state income tax?
What you're edging towards with this line of thinking (and I would agree) is that a progressive federal capital gains tax would be more effective than increasing corporation tax or income tax.
Trumps SALT deduction limit has seen falling tax receipts in Blue states. Funny DeBlasio threatens higher taxes on the rich but that happened and the result is a $2.3 billion shortfall in NY tax receipts and this is economics 101. My barb was basically of the form that intelligent and educated people should know better.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday February 18 2019, @04:18PM (1 child)
NYC does not have a track record of refusing big developers. When they wanted to build the Barclays Stadium in downtown Brooklyn, the city steamrolled all the citizens and local politicians to do it. The same thing happened with the new Yankee Stadium. They laid out the red carpet for Google on the West Side of Manhattan. So why would they block Amazon now?
The location for the HQ was perfect for Amazon, and NYC. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, whose grandiloquent new slogan, "Democracy Dies in the Darkness," was fawned over by progressives for months, and which has served as one of the two standard bearers for the Resistance. Bezos bankrolls progressives. Progressives living in NYC themselves love Amazon, because the company happily and freely delivers child-labor produced goods from around the world to their doorsteps.
If they did in fact block this deal because of people like the Cortez girl, then man are they inviting the mother of all backlashes. Progressive extremists in NYC are vocal, but they are a distinct minority. They will get swept out of office in a thrice by regular New Yorkers who are, at the end of the day, practical.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @07:11PM
but just like in california the parasitic state socialists (or whatever they are) attach themselves to areas with private business success and try to extort everyone in the area. i was surprised amazon even entertained this fool hardy plan in the first place.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Tokolosh on Monday February 18 2019, @04:24PM
How can you claim the game is rigged if you are both the referee and a player? And throw a tantrum when the guy with the ball goes home?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday February 18 2019, @07:01PM
Is it any wonder you know the game is rigged when you, and every other mayor in America who stands to win out over your fellow cities in playing tax roulette, rigged the game? Nobody required y'all to start giving them concessions, but once the first of you did you condemned everyone else to start laying your bets down and spinning the wheel.
Sounds like somebody is sore that they thought the wheel was set to land on 32 and the ball decided to take a final jump over to 0.
This sig for rent.