I’m not as concerned about this specific deal. It probably works out. But it seems this behavior is part of a larger behavior that includes companies that aren’t Amazon. Just worries me given it’s got lots of characteristics of an inefficient market
Yep ohai got it. The idea that this is corporate welfare is ridiculous. Both sides benefit. Now if it was a poor person who has no value then that’s welfare!
Another factor they need to look at is if they are at capacity and need to build out further. If you are underutilized, then it increases the likelihood that’d you would offer more incentives since you want to maximize its value.
lets do some mental gymnastics
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/16/google-san-jose-campus-documents-no-subsidies.html
i am a big fan of gentrification. people who add little value in the city should be redirected to poorer areas. many that live in los angeles should consider moving to cheaper places like vegas.
What’s perplexing. San Jose has wonderful infrastructure and a big tech hub already. They aren’t trying to lure anything. NYC on the other hand…
I’m not going to say NYC is a great place to live overall, but it’s still the main concentration of business talent in the US. At the moment, you can reasonably only convince the top 10% of Harvard MBA class to go to two areas - SF Bay Area or New York. Amazon didn’t want to go cheap, I guess. Also realize that whatever subsidy Amazon received in the NY deal would have easily been cost savings if they chose a cheaper location - even NJ or something like that. They still effectively paid a premium to put their office in NYC.
but stanford imo is prolly better than harvard nowadays. the richest guy from my hs, isnt the dude who graduated from harvard, but sum dude who came from berekely with an architect major and sold his tech co to a unicorn for 90m 4 years ago (his cut prolly 10 to 20m). i have a fellow ucla/cfa undergrad who makes a mil a year. the harvard dude works for uber and prolly makes just 100k (according to glassdoor)
Good job liberal socialists.
NYC doesn’t really need to bribe corporations to go there – it already is huge, is the best place for tech jobs (Bay area is way too expensive) – why should the tax payers of NYC give welfare to the (formerly) richest man in the world?
Philly good for you financially, cuz you got that big cheese stake money?
Cuz it’s not welfare. Welfare actually means something, NYC pols presumably looked at the numbers and believed the benefits outweighed the costs. They were probably right. Show me a welfare queen who creates 20K jobs, deepens the tax base, and thousands of indirect jobs.
They’re going to build an HQ – Amazon is going to create 20k jobs, deepen the tax base, and create thousands of indirect jobs. This is regardless of the tax break. The question is, should we support cities offering as much as possible (bidding against each other) in some sort of weird competition to attract Amazon. It feels like a sweepstakes or something, where cities race to the bottom to offer as much as possible to Amazon for the prestige. If no city offered these breaks, the jobs would still get created and more money will be earned.
Why don’t we see this behavior for people? Take a single 30 yo finance bro – they pay more in taxes then they receive in benefits. Would you support NY offering 50K in tax benefits for every single 30 year old that will earn at least 150k? Taxes are necessary to pay for spending.That’s a poor tax regime and essentially giving a earned income tax credit to the wealthy. That’s what we’re doing with Amazon.