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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
(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.