I guess I’m just going to embed AOC tweets for the duration, but goddam is this sweet. Those fuckers at Amazon tried to hold up NYC for $3 billion in tax breaks, cried like little babies when Mr. Backlash made them feel a little bad about themselves, and then they fucking caved.
Reader Interactions
64Comments
Comments are closed.
trollhattan
It’s a Festivus miracle!
Baud
That’s great but is it the same investment? The tweet doesn’t say.
TomatoQueen
Jeff figures with the hornswoggle he’s done in Northern Virginia, particularly with the City of Alexandria and to a lesser extent the People’s Republic of Arlington, he don’t need no steenkin’ sweet deals from NYC.
Major Major Major Major
Amazon pulled out of building a big 4-million square foot HQ2 in Long Island City. This is a lease of existing construction (itself financed with the same tax breaks), and about 8% the size. But you can call them doing something completely different from their original proposal ‘caving’ if you want to.
Roger Moore
This kind of thing is one more reason we shouldn’t fund local government from local revenues. Instead, all those tax rates should be set and collected at the state level and then the money should be distributed equitably to all local governments. It would prevent local governments from competing for businesses by dangling tax abatements, and it would guarantee that even poor areas could afford decent public services.
NotMax
I haz the vapors. You used a no-no in the title.
;)
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
Ok, that’s about what I figured.
TomatoQueen
@Roger Moore: Heh. State politicians are somehow less venal and more high minded than their local masters?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Is your fainting couch handy? Remember the clutching pearls too. //
Major Major Major Major
@TomatoQueen: NY state actually pledged more ($1.7b) than NYC ($1.3) for HQ2.
debbie
@Major Major Major Major:
I guess Trump’s trained us to believe “adapting” is for p*ssies. //
(Not sure what I can spell out and what I can’t.)
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
Pearl clutching is a daily ritual for TaMara, isn’t it?
;)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
If nobody in the US gave them tax breaks, companies like Amazon would have no choice but to build their headquarters to the same specification and not simply rely on other municipalities that did cave
mistermix loves your ass
@Major Major Major Major: I’ll call it “what would have happened even if NYS had kicked in $3 bln” if it went the same way as the tax break deals we see in Rochester.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I don’t understand what you are saying.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Someone fetch this man his fainting couch!
ETA – Dammit, Bill! You beat me to it!
Roger Moore
@TomatoQueen:
I’ll admit I’m thinking more about smaller businesses that play off several neighboring communities against each other rather than national competitions like Amazon’s. There’s no real benefit to the area, much less the state, if Big Business locates its local distribution center in City A instead of City B, but they can get a tax break because it may be a major difference for the cities involved.
gene108
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
but then local pols aren’t getting anything from businesses
Searcher
@Major Major Major Major: They’re two different things, but I’m mostly curious for the long-term development. Will this just be a tiny satellite office off of the new HQ2, or will it cannibalize the HQ2 before it is even built? Will they make people move from NYC to DC when HQ2 is finished?
If HQ2 had been situated in, say, Shitsburg, USA because they had given the best tax breaks, I could see the NYC office quietly growing to rival it, because NYC, but the DC metro area is nothing to sniff at.
hells littlest angel
She’ll be laughing out of the other side of her face when Amazon customers get hit with price hikes up to one-eighth of a cent per item.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Is that legal in Colorado?
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Major Major Major Major: what’s different, at least from an NYC point of view? They’re on the same f*cking subway train
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: I just got lucky, I’m updating my web-store so I check every few minutes.
debbie
I will leave this here for Sab, Ohio Mom, and others consigned to the Buckeye State: Rob Portman grew a pair and spoke somewhat forcefully:
You can listen to the forcefulness at the link.
NotMax
FYI, How the tiny town of Roundup, Montana, became a hub in Amazon’s supply chain.
Whatever your slant on it, good read.
Dan B
Hello from HQ1. Amazon was here fir the cool culture and the lack of an income tax. Lower income folks and artists/creatives are leaving. Anazonians don’t seem to have a charitable mindset, at least not yet. The infrastucture expenses just for the electricity for the 50 or so new buildings is large. Growing too fast is a challenge for any community but especially so since we are a narrow isthmus. Good luck Arlington and NYC.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: Rob Portman must have gotten a bunch of calls from the Ukrainian-Americans in Cleveland, Parma, Brecksville…
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: Oooooo forcefulness! I’ll fucking believe it when he votes to RTMF.
Major Major Major Major
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: they’re literally more than an order of magnitude different. This is just some office space they’re leasing across the street from their current nyc office. It will employ an order of magnitude fewer people, provide no new office space or infrastructure, and be in a rich part of a richer borough.
chopper
@Baud:
well it’s not queens but it seems similar enough. dunno.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
I was so shocked, I forgot to post about it immediately!
Nelle
Speaking of deal making, some Iowa farmers are truly pissed. And they are making ads about it. It’s okay to gore someone else’s oz, but by god, leave my ox alone. https://www.facebook.com/IowaCorn/posts/3485601928179680/
Jay
A hot enough burn that you can roast marshmallows or hotdogs,….
Jay
Baud
@Jay:
I’m starting to understand why she endorsed Bernie.
Jay
Dodged a bullet there:
Baud
@Jay:
It’s not dodging a bullet when the gun wasn’t even loaded.
zhena gogolia
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m afraid your boring old facts aren’t getting in the way of AOC’s righteous burn.
glory b
@Major Major Major Major: I read that its 1500 employees in a leased office in Manhattan vs. 25,000 to 40,000 in Queens.
So yep, more than a bit different. I also understand that a number if Queens residents didn’t see this as a working class victory.
Jay
@Baud
this is why she endored Bernie:
Baud
@glory b:
AOC may have been right to oppose the original plan. That’s a valid call. This just seem like any kind of “cave.”
Mandalay
@Baud:
Uhh…not really, no. Not even close, TBF:: Amazon leases Hudson Yards office space less than year after HQ2 debacle
So if you were one of the many meanies here who was dumping on AOC originally, you can roll your eyes a bit at this. And if you were part of the Communist filth here, who were defending AOC (like me), you can smirk a bit.
It’s that rare beast: a win-win.
Baud
@Jay:
I still like her, but Bernie is no answer to any problem.
Jay
@Baud:
pretty sure Marianne was loaded a lot of the time,
had she stuck around longer, could have been a cabinet position with her name on it,……
or another campaign run,….
Baud
@Jay:
Not in a million years.
PJ
@Major Major Major Major: NYC doesn’t need more office space right now: (from an article on WeWork’s collapse): https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/10/wework-manhattan-real-estate-coworking-office-space-rental/599338/
Furthermore, the Amazon deal for LIC included nothing about new housing, and, if it had gone through, it would have made the most expensive part of Queens even more expensive: http://www.mns.com/queens_rental_market_report
Long Island City had been a hotbed of development long before Amazon looked its way, and losing Amazon’s “HQ” only means that commercial and residential rents in LIC won’t skyrocket that much more in the short term. https://ny.curbed.com/2019/11/15/20965527/amazon-hq2-long-island-city-queens-nyc-real-
estate
Amazon was always going to expand in NYC (and their Hudson Yards offices are not the end of that expansion), it was just a question of how much in tax breaks they could squeeze out of the city and state.
PJ
@glory b: There was nothing in the Amazon deal that required hiring locals, and Amazon was opposed in part because they are very much anti-union.
Kamala.Harris.2020
@Major Major Major Major:
Thank you for posting this.
It’s nice to try to stay reality-based when the cheerleading and self-congratulation start.
rikyrah
Five Myths About Black Voters
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-black-voters/2019/12/06/89195a7c-1788-11ea-8406-df3c54b3253e_story.html
Major Major Major Major
@Mandalay: I was lightly against the deal for many of the reasons @PJ outlines, I hope I don’t sound like a huge fan of it, it’s just that there are actual facts going on here…
Mandalay
@Jay: Some unfortunate wording from Williamson there:
Most parents actually want all children to be safe. It’s just the self-centered wackos who won’t vaccinate their kids who don’t care about children other than their own.
Jay
@glory b:
might have been a Qualcomm or Super Sonics after all,….
while the taxpayer “gifts” are “guaranteed”, the Corporate “promises” are not. There’s 170 acres of prime Office Industrial not far from here that’s sat vacant for over a decade, with 3 abandoned ( not when the land deal went through) warehouse/office buildings. It was quite the deal for Dow Corning, and they will make a bundle when they sell it off in parcels, when the taxpayer subsidies and tax breaks expire.
the City was supposed to get a multi hundred million dollar investment, 3,000-5,000 jobs and a new tax base. Instead, they lost a couple hundred K in taxes, 200 jobs, and massively subsidized a Fortune 100’s foray into real estate speculation.
ola azul
@Baud:
Williamson 2020: Go motherfuckin crazy!
———–
Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called “life”
Electric word, life
It means forever and that’s a mighty long time
But I’m here to tell you there’s something else
The afterworld
A world of never ending happiness
You can always see the sun, day or night
So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
You know the one, Dr. Everything’ll-Be-Alright
Instead of asking him how much of your time is left
Ask him how much of your mind, baby
Cause in this life
Things are much harder than in the after world
In this life
You’re on your own
And if de-elevator tries to bring you down
Go crazy
"Low Information Voter" Ken
So much for all you losers who were criticizing Mayor Bloomberg’s run for president. He got this deal for NYC, and he’ll bring the same kind of success to Washington.
PJ
@Mandalay: The 25,000 jobs Amazon promised to supply in the LIC deal was over a 10 year period (for which they would receive $2.8B in subsidies). Those 25K jobs were not going to arrive all at once, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon’s total office workforce in NYC is at or above that number in NYC ten years from now.
mistermix loves your ass
@PJ: This. The promises made by the companies looking for these tax breaks are some giant multiple of what will actually happen. Also AOC is right to take a victory lap considering all the shit she took on this in the Spring.
dww44
@Roger Moore: Valid points. But also true that if one’s legislature is totally controlled by the other side, majority to minority cities not only get the short shrift, in this state they get way more supervision from the capital than is deserved.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
Try bypass_paywalls_firefox (change underscores to dashes) on github. Not giving a direct link to give less for automation looking for it to find.
ETA be sparing about using it. Not least, it’s easy to embed links that others can’t access by accident.
EthylEster
@zhena gogolia: I find it hard to believe that the average salary was going to be $150K. That will probably be true for this scaled down effort but lots of the jobs in the original plan had to be in the warehouses.
PJ
@EthylEster: The local Amazon warehouse is in Staten Island. I don’t know in what detail it was specified in the agreement with NYC and NYS (prob not much) but LIC was talked about as being coding/management positions, but probably there would be a lot of lower level staffers, HR, etc.
ET
Wonder how the pols in Virginia read this. Amazon was always going to northern Virginia and they basically gave away the keys to the store.
Tyro
The 25,000 jobs already included the 5,000 Amazon jobs that were already in NYC. Over 10 years I expect to see a steady increase in Amazon’s footprint simply because they have to compete for talent with Google and the Fintech developers.
remember that with every large company moving in there is an opportunity cost. Those developers are not working for another company. That office space is not being used by others. HQ2 would have displaced construction and development that would have been built for other purposes without a tax incentive.
Cathie from Canada
@Major Major Major Major: From what I read, the original proposal was 25,000 jobs, and this new one is 1,500 jobs. So yes, it seems to be quite different.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
I was just catching up with the threads and was going to say that Hudson Yards got a 6 billion tax break. How the hell is Amazon getting subsidized rent a progressive win. Holy hell we need progressives to stop falling for gimmicks.