21 ms·

NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job

346 points by samfisher83 8y ago

ppeetteerr 8y ago
It's a good deal for NY. Can't build a bridge for 1.5B.. and this will have perpetual return on investment + auxiliary businesses will flourish.
downrightmike 8y ago
1.2 billion over the next 10 years to receive 10 billion in tax revenue in the same time frame.
avip 8y ago
In 96', when Apatosaurus still roamed the earth and "Atari" was a thing, Israel granted Intel 600MM$ to build FAB18 in the desert. Over a decade later, an official government report concluded that the country lost some 400MM$ on the move. Bottom line, big-corps can extort states or cities and bid for ridiculous tax incentives that never pay off. I feel sorry for the residents of NY and the bad deal imposed on them.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Trying to understand your position... do you think Israel, a democracy, shouldn't have been able to decide to make that deal? Who was Israel harming by making that decision? Is a deal made freely and with complete information between two parties always "extortion", if it turns out with the benefit of hindsight not to have turned out to be in the best interests of one of the parties?
  - Fomite 8y ago
    They never said they shouldn't have been able to decide to make that deal - but rather that they shouldn't have made it. Presumably who was harmed was Israelis who could have benefitted from a government with more money to spend elsewhere.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    Was the information truly complete? Extortion is probably not the best label, "rip-off" might be more accurate.
  - avip 8y ago
    I must be really bad at phrasing thoughts. Isreal was "harming" itself and its taxpayers (normal people like me), same way NY taxpayers would undoubtedly IMO be "harmed" (in the sense of their hard-won money being ill-invested). Is it extortion? I guess not literally, only in spirit. It is just bad investment with negative long-term ROI. NY could have supported thousands of SMBs instead, and that builds more resilient, diverse and sustainable economy long-term.
- andy_wrote 8y ago
  I don't know anything about the Israel-Intel deal and have not decided personally how I feel about HQ2 in NYC. But I upvoted your comment because it emphasizes looking at other historical deals, and not just the projections and analysis on the current deal, and would love to read more of that in this discussion. This is a very large project over long horizons (10yrs) and it's hard to imagine being anything but extremely uncertain about projections; you have to look at history. I'm also a sports fan, and I've read about the dismal returns to taxpayer-subsidized new stadiums despite rosy promises of economic development, and tend to look askance at this kind of thing.
  - Fomite 8y ago
    Stadiums and convention centers are pretty classic examples.
vthallam 8y ago
It is over 10 years per job. That will ideally by tax by an amazon employee over 5 years. Doesn't reflect the passive economic growth and indirect jobs that gets created over the time. Also, Amazon and the new Google's expansion will invoke chain reaction in terms of tech activity and new start-up's.
- vdnkh 8y ago
  Do you really believe that there isn't a tech sector in NYC aside from FAANG? Google, Facebook, and Twitter have been here for years (to name a few), along with tons of other startups.
Roritharr 8y ago
This is like House of Cards levels of evil. So good at playing this evil game that I can't help but respect this move of skullduggery.
- del82 8y ago
  How? I mean, you can argue against tax incentives for corporations, but you can also argue for them. For example, you could say (as others in this thread have) that $48k per job over 10 years is a good investment, and will likely generate much more than that in economic activity. How is it evil?
  - Roritharr 8y ago
    To me it is evil in the sense that this is taking advantage of the public interest. For the community on a pure economic sense this might be seen as a good investment, but these kinds of tax incentives just further set apart the position of smaller companies and large corporates. Imagine a mom&pop bakery with a 20year history receiving a comparable pile of money per job created, soon enough they wouldn't be small anymore. To me the ability these deals have to further push for monopolys is simply unethical, but I'm german and have different sensibilities I guess.
    - somethingwitty1 8y ago
      You'd likely need to look at the local tax laws to state that they aren't getting similar incentives. I'm not in NYC, but I can speak to where I live and many of the laws, obligations and even taxes that apply to an Amazon-size corporation, do not apply to a mom & pop. For example, food labeling/testing is required (not cheap) for larger corporations. Healthcare options and covered sick days is tied to size of your corporation (again, not cheap). There are also numerous loans and incentives for smaller corporations that the bigger companies aren't eligible for. I'm not trying to paint this as being equal, but to call it evil is a gross mischaracterization of what is happening here.
britch 8y ago
It's unclear to me from the article is this a one time cost? Is it yearly? Monthly? edit: On reading a bit closer it's over $48,000 per job over 10 years.
- noer 8y ago
  One time cost paid over 10 years, IIRC
  - AlimJaffer 8y ago
    This doesn't necessarily sound terrible? If most of the jobs are going to be 6-figures, their tax rates will be reasonably high + they'll be contributing to the local economy in terms of buying goods and services. Am I missing something?
    - britch 8y ago
      I'm inclined to agree. I'm against it in principle (why should taxpayers be subsidizing large corporations at all?) but it isn't robbery. I guess it get fuzzier when you factor in in harder to quantify costs like further increasing the cost of living.
  - epicureanideal 8y ago
    That doesn't sound too terrible then. Even if the average job there paid $48,000, we're talking about 10% of the salary as a tax reduction. And the employees themselves will be paying money into the local economy, paying sales tax, and so on. It may not be a fantastic deal, but it doesn't sound like a net negative for NYC.
metildaa 8y ago
Perhaps the citizens should object, I hear one of their congress critters is shitposting on twitter to that end. If the locals don't want their lives upended by gentrification, Berlin has shown a good example of how to block uninvited expansion by tech giants: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45971538 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45971538
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > Perhaps the citizens should object Perhaps they like the idea?
  - metildaa 8y ago
    Don't presume consent or support based on lack of vocal opposition. Queens isn't as high income as Seattle or the part of Virginia that Amazon is in, and the people who live there may just be making ends meet, not paying attention to how gentrification of their neighborhood may eject them from it.
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      > Don't presume consent or support based on lack of vocal opposition. Seems better than presuming lack of consent and lack of support based on lack of vocal opposition?
    - magic_beans 8y ago
      Typical Rent in LIC is around $3200 for a 1-bedroom. It's an extremely high-income neighborhood in Queens. Go a little farther down the 7 and you start to see some of the middle class, but they're not really in LIC.
- cycrutchfield 8y ago
  They elected the people that made that decision. If they don't like it, they can vote them out. Citing an example of some Berliner NIMBYs is not really helping your argument.
amoitnga 8y ago
It implies only negative, doesn't it also has a lot of positive to it, like economic growth?
- praneshp 8y ago
  Well, each NYC resident pays 48000 one time to get back 30000 per year for 10 years is not something that HN would upvote into the front page.
  - GhostVII 8y ago
    $48,000 is the cost per job, not the cost per resident.
    - qaq 8y ago
      It's not a cost though it's tax break over 10 years and there would be no tax revenue if NYC didn't get the office in the first place.
      - InclinedPlane 8y ago
        This is true, nobody in NYC pays taxes currently and nobody there has a job already.
        qaq 8y ago
        At present there is N tax revenue With HQ2 there will be N+Y a portion of Y will be returned back to Amazon how is this exactly a cost for the city?
      - cglace 8y ago
        How do you know other companies wouldn't move in?
        qaq 8y ago
        Did I ever claim others would not move in?
rb808 8y ago
This is such a great deal for NYC As the article says, they give up $1.5B over 10 years, but then get "Projected incremental tax revenue of more than $10 billion over 20 years." I dont know where that comes from but the payroll and property taxes paid by 25k employees dwarves the incentives. The most important part is it cements NYC as the main tech center on the East Coast. That is invaluable. EDIT: I wonder if NYC with tax incentives, Amazon would still pay more tax than regular tax rates in FL, TX.
- giarc 8y ago
  That $10 billion likely assumes all new staff. There are going to be many current NYC citizens who simply switch jobs to Amazon. Therefore they won't contribute any incremental tax increase. Only if their previous employer rehires their position will a net new position be created.
  - slimed 8y ago
    Why would their tech sector employer not rehire for their position?
    - giarc 8y ago
      Labour shortage related to big new employer hiring everyone.
  - vthallam 8y ago
    Why wouldn't the previous employer rehire though? Unless the employee is someone who was just sitting around and not contributing to the company.
    - giarc 8y ago
      Unemployment is ~3% and Amazon comes in and sweeps up all the available (and non available) tech employees in the area. They may want to hire, but can't.
  - cddotdotslash 8y ago
jrockway 8y ago
I feel like each Amazon employee will pay way more than that in taxes over 10 years, so this is just basic investment. Pay $48,000 over 10 years to get $30,000 a year forever. Seems smart.
- qaq 8y ago
  It's not a payment it's a tax break. If HQ2 was not in NYC they would not get the tax revenue anyway.
pchristensen 8y ago
[disclosure - I work at Amazon, but have no internal information whatsoever.] This is over 10 years, so ~$5k/job/yr. For reference, economic development incentives for corporate relocations are commonly $20k-75k per job, and often for jobs paying much less than Amazon is expected to pay HQ2.5 employees. Also, I believe that Amazon will receive tax rebates based on the number of jobs created over time, which is better than many packages that don't have any accountability, limits, or clawbacks. I don't think economic development incentives are a wise use of funds, but this one is notably only for the scale and publicity. People are so mad because this the first time most people have heard of the practice. For more information (and many much worse examples), see the book "The Great American Jobs Scam" - https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Jobs-Scam-Corporate/dp/1576753158 https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Jobs-Scam-Corporate/dp...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
ajiang 8y ago
We should never accept standalone numbers. They are incredibly deceptive and don't tell the whole story. 1. What is the return that NY is going to get from increased tax revenue? 2. What is the time period that $48,000 is going to be "paid out" over? 3. How many jobs does this bring to NY? What's the average salary of those jobs? Context is king, but doesn't make for sensational headlines.
- crispyporkbites 8y ago
  You're either for it or against it. Stop wasting time with questions and pick a side! Alternatively I will engage with you on personal / ad hominem attacks for as much as you like.
snek 8y ago
Amazon could have chosen anywhere, somewhere where they could make a difference, create jobs, kick-start the economy. Serious bummer.
- vdnkh 8y ago
  Why can't they create jobs and make a difference in NYC? Plenty of underrepresented developers and future developers in NYC who will benefit from these new jobs.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Amazon has created a lot of jobs and caused mind-boggling amounts of economic growth in Seattle, but it is very, very unpopular there. It turns out things are a bit more complicated than "a rising tide lifts all boats". A smaller city than NYC might not have been able to absorb the impact.
ocschwar 8y ago
It's time the Federal government passed a law treating these inducements as taxable income. If communities had to throw money at Washington, DC every time they threw money at Amazon/Foxconn/Apple et cetera, they'd be more redicent about doing it.
vdnkh 8y ago
1) Incentives are not given up front. They are given proportional to the results Amazon has achieved. Amazon must make a report each year detailing their progress before any award is given. 2) The city-level incentives are available to any business. State-level incentives (I think 300m) are not. 3) Amazon has pledged to invest in the local community as part of the deal. There are plans for an elementary school and tech education center. 4) The NYC tech sector is more diverse than SV. 47% of tech workers in NYC are immigrants [0]. Is there any evidence supporting the claim that Amazon will ship in majority groups to displace minorities or immigrants? 5) There is direct investment in tech education for minority groups in the city [1]. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that they will receive a chunk of these jobs in the future. If you support increased diversity in tech, it is inconsistent in your beliefs to not support 25k more tech jobs in NYC. 6) LIC built almost 2.8k rental units last year. [2] I think they have built 6k this year so far. 28k units were built city-wide last year [3] Please tell me what about this is bad. [0] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/our-immigrant-population-helps-power-nyc-economy/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/our-immigrant-population... [1] https://codenation.org/ https://codenation.org/ [2]https://licpost.com/long-island-city-had-more-housing-units-built-in-2017-than-any-other-nyc-neighborhood-with-biggest-pipeline-of-units-to-come https://licpost.com/long-island-city-had-more-housing-units-... [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/amenities-war-breaks-out-in-long-island-city-rentals-1519225200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amenities-war-breaks-out-in-lon...
- DevKoala 8y ago
  Thank you, this is a good list of clear benefits. I have yet to see such a document that states in an objective manner the negative impact, it's all assumptions.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    To be fair, predicting unquantifiable future growing pains will always be presented as an assumption. Also, whether something is a negative impact or not is rarely objective. So asking for contrarian debate on negative impact to be objective is unfair. But yes, there are clear, quantifiable benefits to economic growth.
- 8y ago
bwb 8y ago
These posts seem to always miss the big picture... like what do they get back in payroll taxes and other perks? How many other companies is this going to bring into the local eco-system over the next 20 years. What does this do to the local real estate and the increase in property taxes? If you were running a business and you had a client that had 25,000 seats, would you give them a discount to become a marquee client that could take your business to the next level? Why are cities any different? Is the end goal of the city to have a higher GDP and better services for the people living in it, or something else? In the USA it seems like the only conversation happening in politics is GDP.
maaaats 8y ago
Race to the bottom between states (and governments) to attract big businesses. Tragedy of the commons. It's also unfair for the smaller players, they never get the same kind of treatment.
jakelarkin 8y ago
the gentrification angle is predictable. people want a generous government sector but don't want the local economic growth thats necessary to keep it afloat. for Amazon its seemingly a PR nightmare versus just quietly leasing some large amount of office space in satellite locations. Hope the incentives are worth it. the interesting thing to me about HQ2 is its also a wealth transfer from future workers to Amazon the company which is facilitated/financed by the local government via taxes. They're selling future worker income/sales tax to the government.
gfodor 8y ago
No opinion on the actual policy, but it infuriates me when the weasel words "paid for" are used in contexts like this. Giving a company or a person a tax write-off is not a "cost" to taxpayers, unless you assume a) the alternative reality was 100% likely and these exemptions had no effect on the final outcome, which is obviously a positive net revenue expectation, and b) saying tax reductions are a "cost" to tax payers implies the taxman by default has a claim on all income and only by the graciousness of politicians do we earn the right to keep any of it.
edoo 8y ago
Going to New York is a political move. They could have set up in the midwest, paid everyone 75% as much as the going rate in NY or silicon valley, and the employees would have 50% more expendable income than they are used to. This wasn't for the employees.
- goobynight 8y ago
  You say that as if spoiled tech workers are just going to line up to move to Columbus, Ohio where the only company operating at that scale is Amazon. That is, you are going to be locked into working for Amazon to maintain your income level. Not everyone is that mercenary about optimizing their income. Amazon's hiring pool would be limited to midwestern Universities (e.g. Ohio State) + people looking to reduce their cost of living while working for Amazon + some people that prefer the scenery. Less people are optimizing purely based on compensation - CoL than you think. To me, that's why these locales were never really in the running. I'm a native midwesterner and I feel bad for anyone trying to recruit a national audience for a midwestern role. You have to have really good sales skills.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  > They could have set up in the midwest, paid everyone 75% as much as the going rate in NY or silicon valley, and the employees would have 50% more expendable income than they are used to. This wasn't for the employees. SDE's in Detroit, Madison, and Twin Cities are paid exactly the same as the SDEs in Seattle.
  - jorblumesea 8y ago
    That is hardly true except for a small select few. Where are you getting your numbers?
    - akhilcacharya 8y ago
      I'm an Amazon new grad. We only have 2 standard salary bands in the US - one for premium regions and one for everywhere else. I know this only because I explicitly asked recruiting and they brought it up in the midpoint intern brown-bag.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
Next time someone defending Amazon tells you that the internet is a level playing field... Point to this.
- throwaway427 8y ago
  Thanks for the advice patrickg_zill! It happens to me all the time!
nemo44x 8y ago
It's not so much that it's a "bad deal" for NYC but rather that this practice needs to be better regulated if legally possible. It's a policy that both the Libertarians on the right and the Social Democrats on the left can mainly agree on here and could work together to solve which is limiting corporate welfare that pits cities against each other.
m3kw9 8y ago
Or call it an investment as there is a future payoff.
lambdasquirrel 8y ago
Maybe some context would be appropriate. New York has been trying to diversify beyond finance for a long time. The cost per employee is amortized, as stated by others, but it’s almost moot — as if it were a hedge. Amazon has a rep for not retaining many of its engies beyond a year or two. Perhaps the hope is that those folks will go on and bootstrap a real startup economy. NY already has a Google and FB office. Two is interesting but three and you start to have a pattern. If you ask me, it’s worth the bet. $1-2B is cheap change on this level of macroeconomics.
NoblePublius 8y ago
It’s $4800 per hire per year over ten years. Average salary will be $150k. That’s $13.8k of NY state income tax per year and $2500 (at least) of sales tax per year. Seems like a great deal for the NY welfare state.
yumario 8y ago
This type of tax incentives should be illegal. A lot of people argue that NYC still benefits from this deal, but we should not be thinking at a city level. But a country level, does the country benefits from this? No. Has these type of incentives been illegal, Amazon would have to pick a city from the US and the overall US economy would be 1.5 billion richer. The problem with incentives is that presents a "prisoner dilemma" to cities. And overall drives taxes down. Sorry for my English.
trhway 8y ago
still beats the Foxconn deal - $300K per $50K/year job :)
microcolonel 8y ago
The representation of this is a bit extreme here, but this is NY we're talking about. If this is the first thing that you're upset about paying for in NY, you probably have not been looking at the budget.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Let's be clear, the free market this is not. It's yet another perfect example of government gone wild. It's one thing for to use taxpayer monies to create jobs and job opportunity (i.e., education). That's a reasonable expectation within the scope of gov's governing. However, it's another thing for gov to buy jobs - and thus votes - by effectively subsidizing some mega-corporation. If Amazon needs money, that's what Wall Street is for. If Wall Street isn't willing to give Amazon et al money then that's a red flag and taxpayers should naturally stand clear. Some might say, "But without such things Amazon would have to raise prices, and that's not good for consumers." But it's the consumers that paid the __higher__ taxes to supply the subsidy. The difference is, with the latter method the gov gets to skim some off the top. Bottom line: The taxpayer / consumer loses. Politicians and Big Inc win.
- NoblePublius 8y ago
  Literally the opposite. The tax gains out number the tax breaks 3 to 1. Each one of these $150k jobs will net NY state $13.8k of income tax per year and (at least) $2500 of sales tax. The tax break per job is $4800 per year (the $48k figure you may have seen is over ten years).
  - peteretep 8y ago
    Plus the construction spend + attracting tech people et al
  - ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
    Still not free market though.
    - endtime 8y ago
      How is not free market for polities to compete for attractive employers?
      - airstrike 8y ago
andjd 8y ago
In comparison, over the next 10 years, the MTA is projected to spend 6 billion extending the 2nd avenue subway a mere 1.5 miles to 125th st. I don't know that I approve of the incentives to bring Amazon to NYC, but I suspect New Yorkers will see a better rate of return on that investment than on other government excesses.
SomeHacker44 8y ago
As a born and long time NYC resident... I am so unhappy about this, I cannot even tell you. Why can't we put $2B in the MTA's pocket? Or schools? Or healthcare? Or affordable housing? Or almost anything other than Bezos's pocket? I did vote against Cuomo even as I helped flip our one NYC Republican district to Democrat, so I did everything I could as a voter. We need a law/constitutional amendment preventing this sort of thing. Companies are abusing governments with these tactics and deals. I was also against our government's subsidies of the two NYC stadiums (Yankees and Mets) and arena (Nets).
- tim333 8y ago
  They are not putting $2bn into Bezos's pocket. Rather they are receiving several times that in new tax revenue and maybe out of that they will put some into the MTA or similar.
wnevets 8y ago
Seems way more effective for NY to just give these people the money directly.
refurb 8y ago
The only way you could say it costs NJ $48,000 per job is if you assumed that Amazon would have chosen them for HQ2 anyways, which is obviously not the case. Saying it costs $48,000 per job is no different than when production companies claim piracy costs $1B+ per year (or some other ridiculous figure). That assumes all the people that would have pirated the movie would have paid full price otherwise.
robertsd247 8y ago
I do not necessarily have a problem with the government shelling out taxpayer funds to attract employers, but this is highway robbery.
zeko1195 8y ago
I wonder what would make people happy. Amazon should have opened their HQ2 in Bangalore. They wouldn't face this much criticism there and people would welcome it.
musgrove 8y ago
This is such a disingenuous, low-insight, clickbait headline.
mychael 8y ago
The worst part is that people read headlines like this and think that this is what capitalism is. (Hint: this is not capitalism, this is crony capitalism and corporatism).
- htk 8y ago
  Worse yet is people making up their minds about a subject only by reading a headline. I don't know if you did this, but it appears so.
Dowwie 8y ago
Have you ever worked with a former employee of Google or Amazon? Evidently, they don't relocate every time they change jobs. The entire economy gains as new talent arrives and stays.
plasticchris 8y ago
They say the average is $150k - do they mention the median?
jdoliner 8y ago
The article is very disingenuous about this being a "cost" to tax payers. It's a tax break, it's not extra money that's going to be added to NY's tax bill, it's taxes that Amazon theoretically would have had to pay if they decided to build their offices there and didn't have the tax break. There are some other real costs to tax payers in the form of subsidies, but they're much smaller than the 1.5 billion figure quoted here. If you consider the fact that Amazon is going to probably pay much more in taxes over the lifetime of their offices in NY then it seems like a reasonable deal for their government to make.
- dang 8y ago
  Ok, we replaced "taxpayers to pay" with "state tax break" above.
  - iplusplus 8y ago
    If you're going to ban me permanently, I believe it would be fair to vouch my replies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702 I'm sorry things have deteriorated between us to this point, but you have been acting strangely and using your position in ways that do not fit the whole point of HN, which is pursuit of intellectual gratification. Someone had to call you on it. And predictably, you are now trying to frame me as if I have harassed you, when I merely mocked you.
  - shawn 8y ago
    My replies countering your arguments still are not vouched. Do you consider your position so weak that it can’t withstand a debate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702 (I would ask the community to please vouch them, but you’ve made it clear that you will vouch “the good ones,” not the community.)
- oculusthrift 8y ago
  in economics it’s considered the same thing. either way it adds to less net income for then govt.
simplysimple 8y ago
crony capitalism at it's "finest". What a joke, of course - it's ok when New York elites do it but it's evvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiil when Donald Trump wants to give tax breaks to all Americans.
- drchickensalad 8y ago
  Literally nobody has claimed giving tax breaks to the 90% of Americans is evil. Your comment appears sololy meant to be inflammatory and promote low quality conversation.
  - simplysimple 8y ago
    Wrong. Chuck Schumer called it a "one-two gut punch to the middle class". Nanci Pelosi called it "simply theft — monumental, brazen theft — from the American middle-class and from every person who aspires to reach it". And that is only if the tax cuts are not renewed in 2027 - which the democrats voted against making them permanent.
sxp62000 8y ago
I was so sure Amazon was going to move to Hudson Yards in Manhattan, but Long Island City seems like a smarter decision. More trains.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
For those believing that subsidizing Amazon is net gain: "After the Retail Apocalypse, Prepare for the Property Tax Meltdown" https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/property-tax-dark-store-theory-retail-apocalypse-walmart/574123/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/property-tax-dark-sto...
rustcharm 8y ago
Compare that to SF's roughly equivalent payment per homeless person https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor...
bestbabysupport 8y ago
Amazon helps us to get goods but we need best reviews. I recently came across BestBabysupport (https://bestbabysupport.com https://bestbabysupport.com), which includes nice reviews of, say, different car seats or different strollers, and can let you know which one is a good. Every mother dreams that her child will grow up healthy and strong. But while this is only a dream you must take care that your kid has the right stroller. And what a happiness is to realize that your child is comfortable in the stroller that you have chosen for him.
dqpb 8y ago
The title here is curiously different from the source: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job vs NY taxpayers to pay $48,000 per Amazon HQ job I don't think those are equivalent statements.
candybar 8y ago
I think people are, if anything, underestimating how good this is for the tech scene in NYC and for New York in general, at least from a fiscal perspective. LIC is increasingly well-developed but mostly as a residential area. It's not Manhattan and doesn't really have top-tier employers. The tech scene in NYC is almost entirely concentrated in Manhattan, with the exception of maybe a tiny tech scene in parts of Brooklyn, which Queens (which Long Island City is part of) is not generally hip enough to have. This adds a top-tier employer with lots of high-paying jobs in a new location without displacing any of the existing tenants occupying prime office space in Manhattan. It also doesn't worsen the rent situation substantially where it's the worst. Rent is high everywhere but Queens has more supply, way more potential supply and is overall better positioned to deal with the additional demand than Manhattan or Brooklyn. Also, this isn't obvious to people who aren't familiar with NY but while LIC is easy to get to from most parts of NYC, it's just far enough that you probably wouldn't want to live in New Jersey, while that isn't as true of many parts of Manhattan. This definitely makes the location more attractive from the perspective of New York State, who doesn't capture the state tax from those that commute from New Jersey. Also, you can't usually hire that many people by poaching people from other companies and they need a balance of junior and senior hires so lots of them will have to come from outside, at least on a net basis. This will include highly-compensated senior transfers from their other offices (to maintain the corporate culture, etc), will include new graduates (many of them would have gone elsewhere) and new immigrants who would've gone anywhere for the job. This also creates additional economic demand which will boost overall spending, creates an upward pressure on tech salaries which will add to the tax base. Also because Amazon does churn through people, this has the potential to bring many more people than 25K that come to NYC for Amazon and stay around to do other things. Ex-Amazonians as a group are also probably a good group to have around for any tech scene. There's been a need for an alternative to Silicon Valley and this actually moves the needle in a significant way to positioning NYC that way. Combined with Google's plan for expansion, recent arrival of several SV tech companies and the natural advantage of being already the world's capital of finance, media, fashion, etc, at a time when tech is increasingly central not to its own industry but to every industry, this squarely puts NYC in contention.
- oculusthrift 8y ago
akvadrako 8y ago
This is a much better deal than Wisconsin gets with Foxconn. They are paying between $219.000 and $587.000 per job. https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/aug/11/melissa-sargent/wisconsin-offering-pay-taiwan-tech-firm-foxconn-1-/ https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/aug/11/...
deleted 8y ago
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twblalock 8y ago
$48k per Amazon HQ job is about the the annual federal income tax of a software engineer at Amazon, and it's 4-5 years of New York state income tax. This assumes an annual total compensation somewhere around $200k. Some people will tell you that such a compensation is not realistic, but at Amazon it is common for mid- to senior-level engineers to make at least that much. Altogether it is not a total sellout on the part of New York, at least not after 5 years. Ideally some of those Amazon engineers will leave Amazon to join other companies or start their own, which will be good for New York.
tantuyu 8y ago
Let us hope that the residents of the Queensbridge Houses housing projects get some employment opportunity out of their new neighbor AMAZON HQ2.... As one of the residents put it in the NYT: “Not everyone here has a Ph.D., but anyone eager to work should be able to get job,” he said. “It can’t be nothing but a plus.” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/nyregion/amazon-queens-queensbridge-houses.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/nyregion/amazon-queens-qu...
aussieguy1234 8y ago
If this isn't welfare, what is?

346 points by samfisher83 8y ago

It's a good deal for NY. Can't build a bridge for 1.5B.. and this will have perpetual return on investment + auxiliary businesses will flourish.

downrightmike 8y ago

1.2 billion over the next 10 years to receive 10 billion in tax revenue in the same time frame.

avip 8y ago

In 96', when Apatosaurus still roamed the earth and "Atari" was a thing, Israel granted Intel 600MM$ to build FAB18 in the desert. Over a decade later, an official government report concluded that the country lost some 400MM$ on the move. Bottom line, big-corps can extort states or cities and bid for ridiculous tax incentives that never pay off. I feel sorry for the residents of NY and the bad deal imposed on them.

umanwizard 8y ago
Trying to understand your position... do you think Israel, a democracy, shouldn't have been able to decide to make that deal? Who was Israel harming by making that decision? Is a deal made freely and with complete information between two parties always "extortion", if it turns out with the benefit of hindsight not to have turned out to be in the best interests of one of the parties?
- Fomite 8y ago
  They never said they shouldn't have been able to decide to make that deal - but rather that they shouldn't have made it. Presumably who was harmed was Israelis who could have benefitted from a government with more money to spend elsewhere.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  Was the information truly complete? Extortion is probably not the best label, "rip-off" might be more accurate.
- avip 8y ago
  I must be really bad at phrasing thoughts. Isreal was "harming" itself and its taxpayers (normal people like me), same way NY taxpayers would undoubtedly IMO be "harmed" (in the sense of their hard-won money being ill-invested). Is it extortion? I guess not literally, only in spirit. It is just bad investment with negative long-term ROI. NY could have supported thousands of SMBs instead, and that builds more resilient, diverse and sustainable economy long-term.
andy_wrote 8y ago
I don't know anything about the Israel-Intel deal and have not decided personally how I feel about HQ2 in NYC. But I upvoted your comment because it emphasizes looking at other historical deals, and not just the projections and analysis on the current deal, and would love to read more of that in this discussion. This is a very large project over long horizons (10yrs) and it's hard to imagine being anything but extremely uncertain about projections; you have to look at history. I'm also a sports fan, and I've read about the dismal returns to taxpayer-subsidized new stadiums despite rosy promises of economic development, and tend to look askance at this kind of thing.
- Fomite 8y ago
  Stadiums and convention centers are pretty classic examples.

vthallam 8y ago

It is over 10 years per job. That will ideally by tax by an amazon employee over 5 years. Doesn't reflect the passive economic growth and indirect jobs that gets created over the time. Also, Amazon and the new Google's expansion will invoke chain reaction in terms of tech activity and new start-up's.

vdnkh 8y ago
Do you really believe that there isn't a tech sector in NYC aside from FAANG? Google, Facebook, and Twitter have been here for years (to name a few), along with tons of other startups.

Roritharr 8y ago

This is like House of Cards levels of evil. So good at playing this evil game that I can't help but respect this move of skullduggery.

del82 8y ago
How? I mean, you can argue against tax incentives for corporations, but you can also argue for them. For example, you could say (as others in this thread have) that $48k per job over 10 years is a good investment, and will likely generate much more than that in economic activity. How is it evil?
- Roritharr 8y ago
  To me it is evil in the sense that this is taking advantage of the public interest. For the community on a pure economic sense this might be seen as a good investment, but these kinds of tax incentives just further set apart the position of smaller companies and large corporates. Imagine a mom&pop bakery with a 20year history receiving a comparable pile of money per job created, soon enough they wouldn't be small anymore. To me the ability these deals have to further push for monopolys is simply unethical, but I'm german and have different sensibilities I guess.
  - somethingwitty1 8y ago
    You'd likely need to look at the local tax laws to state that they aren't getting similar incentives. I'm not in NYC, but I can speak to where I live and many of the laws, obligations and even taxes that apply to an Amazon-size corporation, do not apply to a mom & pop. For example, food labeling/testing is required (not cheap) for larger corporations. Healthcare options and covered sick days is tied to size of your corporation (again, not cheap). There are also numerous loans and incentives for smaller corporations that the bigger companies aren't eligible for. I'm not trying to paint this as being equal, but to call it evil is a gross mischaracterization of what is happening here.

britch 8y ago

It's unclear to me from the article is this a one time cost? Is it yearly? Monthly? edit: On reading a bit closer it's over $48,000 per job over 10 years.

noer 8y ago
One time cost paid over 10 years, IIRC
- AlimJaffer 8y ago
  This doesn't necessarily sound terrible? If most of the jobs are going to be 6-figures, their tax rates will be reasonably high + they'll be contributing to the local economy in terms of buying goods and services. Am I missing something?
  - britch 8y ago
    I'm inclined to agree. I'm against it in principle (why should taxpayers be subsidizing large corporations at all?) but it isn't robbery. I guess it get fuzzier when you factor in in harder to quantify costs like further increasing the cost of living.
- epicureanideal 8y ago
  That doesn't sound too terrible then. Even if the average job there paid $48,000, we're talking about 10% of the salary as a tax reduction. And the employees themselves will be paying money into the local economy, paying sales tax, and so on. It may not be a fantastic deal, but it doesn't sound like a net negative for NYC.

metildaa 8y ago

Perhaps the citizens should object, I hear one of their congress critters is shitposting on twitter to that end. If the locals don't want their lives upended by gentrification, Berlin has shown a good example of how to block uninvited expansion by tech giants: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45971538 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45971538

chrisseaton 8y ago
> Perhaps the citizens should object Perhaps they like the idea?
- metildaa 8y ago
  Don't presume consent or support based on lack of vocal opposition. Queens isn't as high income as Seattle or the part of Virginia that Amazon is in, and the people who live there may just be making ends meet, not paying attention to how gentrification of their neighborhood may eject them from it.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    > Don't presume consent or support based on lack of vocal opposition. Seems better than presuming lack of consent and lack of support based on lack of vocal opposition?
  - magic_beans 8y ago
    Typical Rent in LIC is around $3200 for a 1-bedroom. It's an extremely high-income neighborhood in Queens. Go a little farther down the 7 and you start to see some of the middle class, but they're not really in LIC.
cycrutchfield 8y ago
They elected the people that made that decision. If they don't like it, they can vote them out. Citing an example of some Berliner NIMBYs is not really helping your argument.

amoitnga 8y ago

It implies only negative, doesn't it also has a lot of positive to it, like economic growth?

praneshp 8y ago
Well, each NYC resident pays 48000 one time to get back 30000 per year for 10 years is not something that HN would upvote into the front page.
- GhostVII 8y ago
  $48,000 is the cost per job, not the cost per resident.
  - qaq 8y ago
    It's not a cost though it's tax break over 10 years and there would be no tax revenue if NYC didn't get the office in the first place.
    - InclinedPlane 8y ago
      This is true, nobody in NYC pays taxes currently and nobody there has a job already.
      - qaq 8y ago
        At present there is N tax revenue With HQ2 there will be N+Y a portion of Y will be returned back to Amazon how is this exactly a cost for the city?
    - cglace 8y ago
      How do you know other companies wouldn't move in?
      - qaq 8y ago
        Did I ever claim others would not move in?

rb808 8y ago

This is such a great deal for NYC As the article says, they give up $1.5B over 10 years, but then get "Projected incremental tax revenue of more than $10 billion over 20 years." I dont know where that comes from but the payroll and property taxes paid by 25k employees dwarves the incentives. The most important part is it cements NYC as the main tech center on the East Coast. That is invaluable. EDIT: I wonder if NYC with tax incentives, Amazon would still pay more tax than regular tax rates in FL, TX.

giarc 8y ago
That $10 billion likely assumes all new staff. There are going to be many current NYC citizens who simply switch jobs to Amazon. Therefore they won't contribute any incremental tax increase. Only if their previous employer rehires their position will a net new position be created.
- slimed 8y ago
  Why would their tech sector employer not rehire for their position?
  - giarc 8y ago
    Labour shortage related to big new employer hiring everyone.
- vthallam 8y ago
  Why wouldn't the previous employer rehire though? Unless the employee is someone who was just sitting around and not contributing to the company.
  - giarc 8y ago
    Unemployment is ~3% and Amazon comes in and sweeps up all the available (and non available) tech employees in the area. They may want to hire, but can't.
- cddotdotslash 8y ago

jrockway 8y ago

I feel like each Amazon employee will pay way more than that in taxes over 10 years, so this is just basic investment. Pay $48,000 over 10 years to get $30,000 a year forever. Seems smart.

qaq 8y ago
It's not a payment it's a tax break. If HQ2 was not in NYC they would not get the tax revenue anyway.

pchristensen 8y ago

[disclosure - I work at Amazon, but have no internal information whatsoever.] This is over 10 years, so ~$5k/job/yr. For reference, economic development incentives for corporate relocations are commonly $20k-75k per job, and often for jobs paying much less than Amazon is expected to pay HQ2.5 employees. Also, I believe that Amazon will receive tax rebates based on the number of jobs created over time, which is better than many packages that don't have any accountability, limits, or clawbacks. I don't think economic development incentives are a wise use of funds, but this one is notably only for the scale and publicity. People are so mad because this the first time most people have heard of the practice. For more information (and many much worse examples), see the book "The Great American Jobs Scam" - https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Jobs-Scam-Corporate/dp/1576753158 https://www.amazon.com/Great-American-Jobs-Scam-Corporate/dp...

deleted 8y ago
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ajiang 8y ago

We should never accept standalone numbers. They are incredibly deceptive and don't tell the whole story. 1. What is the return that NY is going to get from increased tax revenue? 2. What is the time period that $48,000 is going to be "paid out" over? 3. How many jobs does this bring to NY? What's the average salary of those jobs? Context is king, but doesn't make for sensational headlines.

crispyporkbites 8y ago
You're either for it or against it. Stop wasting time with questions and pick a side! Alternatively I will engage with you on personal / ad hominem attacks for as much as you like.

snek 8y ago

Amazon could have chosen anywhere, somewhere where they could make a difference, create jobs, kick-start the economy. Serious bummer.

vdnkh 8y ago
Why can't they create jobs and make a difference in NYC? Plenty of underrepresented developers and future developers in NYC who will benefit from these new jobs.
umanwizard 8y ago
Amazon has created a lot of jobs and caused mind-boggling amounts of economic growth in Seattle, but it is very, very unpopular there. It turns out things are a bit more complicated than "a rising tide lifts all boats". A smaller city than NYC might not have been able to absorb the impact.

ocschwar 8y ago

It's time the Federal government passed a law treating these inducements as taxable income. If communities had to throw money at Washington, DC every time they threw money at Amazon/Foxconn/Apple et cetera, they'd be more redicent about doing it.

vdnkh 8y ago

1) Incentives are not given up front. They are given proportional to the results Amazon has achieved. Amazon must make a report each year detailing their progress before any award is given. 2) The city-level incentives are available to any business. State-level incentives (I think 300m) are not. 3) Amazon has pledged to invest in the local community as part of the deal. There are plans for an elementary school and tech education center. 4) The NYC tech sector is more diverse than SV. 47% of tech workers in NYC are immigrants [0]. Is there any evidence supporting the claim that Amazon will ship in majority groups to displace minorities or immigrants? 5) There is direct investment in tech education for minority groups in the city [1]. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that they will receive a chunk of these jobs in the future. If you support increased diversity in tech, it is inconsistent in your beliefs to not support 25k more tech jobs in NYC. 6) LIC built almost 2.8k rental units last year. [2] I think they have built 6k this year so far. 28k units were built city-wide last year [3] Please tell me what about this is bad. [0] https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/our-immigrant-population-helps-power-nyc-economy/ https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/our-immigrant-population... [1] https://codenation.org/ https://codenation.org/ [2]https://licpost.com/long-island-city-had-more-housing-units-built-in-2017-than-any-other-nyc-neighborhood-with-biggest-pipeline-of-units-to-come https://licpost.com/long-island-city-had-more-housing-units-... [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/amenities-war-breaks-out-in-long-island-city-rentals-1519225200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amenities-war-breaks-out-in-lon...

DevKoala 8y ago
Thank you, this is a good list of clear benefits. I have yet to see such a document that states in an objective manner the negative impact, it's all assumptions.
- kodablah 8y ago
  To be fair, predicting unquantifiable future growing pains will always be presented as an assumption. Also, whether something is a negative impact or not is rarely objective. So asking for contrarian debate on negative impact to be objective is unfair. But yes, there are clear, quantifiable benefits to economic growth.
8y ago

bwb 8y ago

These posts seem to always miss the big picture... like what do they get back in payroll taxes and other perks? How many other companies is this going to bring into the local eco-system over the next 20 years. What does this do to the local real estate and the increase in property taxes? If you were running a business and you had a client that had 25,000 seats, would you give them a discount to become a marquee client that could take your business to the next level? Why are cities any different? Is the end goal of the city to have a higher GDP and better services for the people living in it, or something else? In the USA it seems like the only conversation happening in politics is GDP.

maaaats 8y ago

Race to the bottom between states (and governments) to attract big businesses. Tragedy of the commons. It's also unfair for the smaller players, they never get the same kind of treatment.

jakelarkin 8y ago

the gentrification angle is predictable. people want a generous government sector but don't want the local economic growth thats necessary to keep it afloat. for Amazon its seemingly a PR nightmare versus just quietly leasing some large amount of office space in satellite locations. Hope the incentives are worth it. the interesting thing to me about HQ2 is its also a wealth transfer from future workers to Amazon the company which is facilitated/financed by the local government via taxes. They're selling future worker income/sales tax to the government.

gfodor 8y ago

No opinion on the actual policy, but it infuriates me when the weasel words "paid for" are used in contexts like this. Giving a company or a person a tax write-off is not a "cost" to taxpayers, unless you assume a) the alternative reality was 100% likely and these exemptions had no effect on the final outcome, which is obviously a positive net revenue expectation, and b) saying tax reductions are a "cost" to tax payers implies the taxman by default has a claim on all income and only by the graciousness of politicians do we earn the right to keep any of it.

edoo 8y ago

Going to New York is a political move. They could have set up in the midwest, paid everyone 75% as much as the going rate in NY or silicon valley, and the employees would have 50% more expendable income than they are used to. This wasn't for the employees.

goobynight 8y ago
You say that as if spoiled tech workers are just going to line up to move to Columbus, Ohio where the only company operating at that scale is Amazon. That is, you are going to be locked into working for Amazon to maintain your income level. Not everyone is that mercenary about optimizing their income. Amazon's hiring pool would be limited to midwestern Universities (e.g. Ohio State) + people looking to reduce their cost of living while working for Amazon + some people that prefer the scenery. Less people are optimizing purely based on compensation - CoL than you think. To me, that's why these locales were never really in the running. I'm a native midwesterner and I feel bad for anyone trying to recruit a national audience for a midwestern role. You have to have really good sales skills.
akhilcacharya 8y ago
> They could have set up in the midwest, paid everyone 75% as much as the going rate in NY or silicon valley, and the employees would have 50% more expendable income than they are used to. This wasn't for the employees. SDE's in Detroit, Madison, and Twin Cities are paid exactly the same as the SDEs in Seattle.
- jorblumesea 8y ago
  That is hardly true except for a small select few. Where are you getting your numbers?
  - akhilcacharya 8y ago
    I'm an Amazon new grad. We only have 2 standard salary bands in the US - one for premium regions and one for everywhere else. I know this only because I explicitly asked recruiting and they brought it up in the midpoint intern brown-bag.

patrickg_zill 8y ago

Next time someone defending Amazon tells you that the internet is a level playing field... Point to this.

throwaway427 8y ago
Thanks for the advice patrickg_zill! It happens to me all the time!

nemo44x 8y ago

It's not so much that it's a "bad deal" for NYC but rather that this practice needs to be better regulated if legally possible. It's a policy that both the Libertarians on the right and the Social Democrats on the left can mainly agree on here and could work together to solve which is limiting corporate welfare that pits cities against each other.

m3kw9 8y ago

Or call it an investment as there is a future payoff.

lambdasquirrel 8y ago

Maybe some context would be appropriate. New York has been trying to diversify beyond finance for a long time. The cost per employee is amortized, as stated by others, but it’s almost moot — as if it were a hedge. Amazon has a rep for not retaining many of its engies beyond a year or two. Perhaps the hope is that those folks will go on and bootstrap a real startup economy. NY already has a Google and FB office. Two is interesting but three and you start to have a pattern. If you ask me, it’s worth the bet. $1-2B is cheap change on this level of macroeconomics.

NoblePublius 8y ago

It’s $4800 per hire per year over ten years. Average salary will be $150k. That’s $13.8k of NY state income tax per year and $2500 (at least) of sales tax per year. Seems like a great deal for the NY welfare state.

yumario 8y ago

This type of tax incentives should be illegal. A lot of people argue that NYC still benefits from this deal, but we should not be thinking at a city level. But a country level, does the country benefits from this? No. Has these type of incentives been illegal, Amazon would have to pick a city from the US and the overall US economy would be 1.5 billion richer. The problem with incentives is that presents a "prisoner dilemma" to cities. And overall drives taxes down. Sorry for my English.

trhway 8y ago

still beats the Foxconn deal - $300K per $50K/year job :)

microcolonel 8y ago

The representation of this is a bit extreme here, but this is NY we're talking about. If this is the first thing that you're upset about paying for in NY, you probably have not been looking at the budget.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Let's be clear, the free market this is not. It's yet another perfect example of government gone wild. It's one thing for to use taxpayer monies to create jobs and job opportunity (i.e., education). That's a reasonable expectation within the scope of gov's governing. However, it's another thing for gov to buy jobs - and thus votes - by effectively subsidizing some mega-corporation. If Amazon needs money, that's what Wall Street is for. If Wall Street isn't willing to give Amazon et al money then that's a red flag and taxpayers should naturally stand clear. Some might say, "But without such things Amazon would have to raise prices, and that's not good for consumers." But it's the consumers that paid the __higher__ taxes to supply the subsidy. The difference is, with the latter method the gov gets to skim some off the top. Bottom line: The taxpayer / consumer loses. Politicians and Big Inc win.

NoblePublius 8y ago
Literally the opposite. The tax gains out number the tax breaks 3 to 1. Each one of these $150k jobs will net NY state $13.8k of income tax per year and (at least) $2500 of sales tax. The tax break per job is $4800 per year (the $48k figure you may have seen is over ten years).
- peteretep 8y ago
  Plus the construction spend + attracting tech people et al
- ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
  Still not free market though.
  - endtime 8y ago
    How is not free market for polities to compete for attractive employers?
    - airstrike 8y ago

andjd 8y ago

In comparison, over the next 10 years, the MTA is projected to spend 6 billion extending the 2nd avenue subway a mere 1.5 miles to 125th st. I don't know that I approve of the incentives to bring Amazon to NYC, but I suspect New Yorkers will see a better rate of return on that investment than on other government excesses.

SomeHacker44 8y ago

As a born and long time NYC resident... I am so unhappy about this, I cannot even tell you. Why can't we put $2B in the MTA's pocket? Or schools? Or healthcare? Or affordable housing? Or almost anything other than Bezos's pocket? I did vote against Cuomo even as I helped flip our one NYC Republican district to Democrat, so I did everything I could as a voter. We need a law/constitutional amendment preventing this sort of thing. Companies are abusing governments with these tactics and deals. I was also against our government's subsidies of the two NYC stadiums (Yankees and Mets) and arena (Nets).

tim333 8y ago
They are not putting $2bn into Bezos's pocket. Rather they are receiving several times that in new tax revenue and maybe out of that they will put some into the MTA or similar.

wnevets 8y ago

Seems way more effective for NY to just give these people the money directly.

refurb 8y ago

The only way you could say it costs NJ $48,000 per job is if you assumed that Amazon would have chosen them for HQ2 anyways, which is obviously not the case. Saying it costs $48,000 per job is no different than when production companies claim piracy costs $1B+ per year (or some other ridiculous figure). That assumes all the people that would have pirated the movie would have paid full price otherwise.

robertsd247 8y ago

I do not necessarily have a problem with the government shelling out taxpayer funds to attract employers, but this is highway robbery.

zeko1195 8y ago

I wonder what would make people happy. Amazon should have opened their HQ2 in Bangalore. They wouldn't face this much criticism there and people would welcome it.

musgrove 8y ago

This is such a disingenuous, low-insight, clickbait headline.

mychael 8y ago

The worst part is that people read headlines like this and think that this is what capitalism is. (Hint: this is not capitalism, this is crony capitalism and corporatism).

htk 8y ago
Worse yet is people making up their minds about a subject only by reading a headline. I don't know if you did this, but it appears so.

Dowwie 8y ago

Have you ever worked with a former employee of Google or Amazon? Evidently, they don't relocate every time they change jobs. The entire economy gains as new talent arrives and stays.

plasticchris 8y ago

They say the average is $150k - do they mention the median?

jdoliner 8y ago

The article is very disingenuous about this being a "cost" to tax payers. It's a tax break, it's not extra money that's going to be added to NY's tax bill, it's taxes that Amazon theoretically would have had to pay if they decided to build their offices there and didn't have the tax break. There are some other real costs to tax payers in the form of subsidies, but they're much smaller than the 1.5 billion figure quoted here. If you consider the fact that Amazon is going to probably pay much more in taxes over the lifetime of their offices in NY then it seems like a reasonable deal for their government to make.

dang 8y ago
Ok, we replaced "taxpayers to pay" with "state tax break" above.
- iplusplus 8y ago
  If you're going to ban me permanently, I believe it would be fair to vouch my replies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702 I'm sorry things have deteriorated between us to this point, but you have been acting strangely and using your position in ways that do not fit the whole point of HN, which is pursuit of intellectual gratification. Someone had to call you on it. And predictably, you are now trying to frame me as if I have harassed you, when I merely mocked you.
- shawn 8y ago
  My replies countering your arguments still are not vouched. Do you consider your position so weak that it can’t withstand a debate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18454702 (I would ask the community to please vouch them, but you’ve made it clear that you will vouch “the good ones,” not the community.)
oculusthrift 8y ago
in economics it’s considered the same thing. either way it adds to less net income for then govt.

simplysimple 8y ago

crony capitalism at it's "finest". What a joke, of course - it's ok when New York elites do it but it's evvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiil when Donald Trump wants to give tax breaks to all Americans.

drchickensalad 8y ago
Literally nobody has claimed giving tax breaks to the 90% of Americans is evil. Your comment appears sololy meant to be inflammatory and promote low quality conversation.
- simplysimple 8y ago
  Wrong. Chuck Schumer called it a "one-two gut punch to the middle class". Nanci Pelosi called it "simply theft — monumental, brazen theft — from the American middle-class and from every person who aspires to reach it". And that is only if the tax cuts are not renewed in 2027 - which the democrats voted against making them permanent.

sxp62000 8y ago

I was so sure Amazon was going to move to Hudson Yards in Manhattan, but Long Island City seems like a smarter decision. More trains.

chiefalchemist 8y ago

For those believing that subsidizing Amazon is net gain: "After the Retail Apocalypse, Prepare for the Property Tax Meltdown" https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/property-tax-dark-store-theory-retail-apocalypse-walmart/574123/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/11/property-tax-dark-sto...

rustcharm 8y ago

Compare that to SF's roughly equivalent payment per homeless person https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-record-241-million-on-homeless-6808319.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-spends-recor...

bestbabysupport 8y ago

Amazon helps us to get goods but we need best reviews. I recently came across BestBabysupport (https://bestbabysupport.com https://bestbabysupport.com), which includes nice reviews of, say, different car seats or different strollers, and can let you know which one is a good. Every mother dreams that her child will grow up healthy and strong. But while this is only a dream you must take care that your kid has the right stroller. And what a happiness is to realize that your child is comfortable in the stroller that you have chosen for him.

dqpb 8y ago

The title here is curiously different from the source: NY state tax break is $48k per Amazon HQ job vs NY taxpayers to pay $48,000 per Amazon HQ job I don't think those are equivalent statements.

candybar 8y ago

I think people are, if anything, underestimating how good this is for the tech scene in NYC and for New York in general, at least from a fiscal perspective. LIC is increasingly well-developed but mostly as a residential area. It's not Manhattan and doesn't really have top-tier employers. The tech scene in NYC is almost entirely concentrated in Manhattan, with the exception of maybe a tiny tech scene in parts of Brooklyn, which Queens (which Long Island City is part of) is not generally hip enough to have. This adds a top-tier employer with lots of high-paying jobs in a new location without displacing any of the existing tenants occupying prime office space in Manhattan. It also doesn't worsen the rent situation substantially where it's the worst. Rent is high everywhere but Queens has more supply, way more potential supply and is overall better positioned to deal with the additional demand than Manhattan or Brooklyn. Also, this isn't obvious to people who aren't familiar with NY but while LIC is easy to get to from most parts of NYC, it's just far enough that you probably wouldn't want to live in New Jersey, while that isn't as true of many parts of Manhattan. This definitely makes the location more attractive from the perspective of New York State, who doesn't capture the state tax from those that commute from New Jersey. Also, you can't usually hire that many people by poaching people from other companies and they need a balance of junior and senior hires so lots of them will have to come from outside, at least on a net basis. This will include highly-compensated senior transfers from their other offices (to maintain the corporate culture, etc), will include new graduates (many of them would have gone elsewhere) and new immigrants who would've gone anywhere for the job. This also creates additional economic demand which will boost overall spending, creates an upward pressure on tech salaries which will add to the tax base. Also because Amazon does churn through people, this has the potential to bring many more people than 25K that come to NYC for Amazon and stay around to do other things. Ex-Amazonians as a group are also probably a good group to have around for any tech scene. There's been a need for an alternative to Silicon Valley and this actually moves the needle in a significant way to positioning NYC that way. Combined with Google's plan for expansion, recent arrival of several SV tech companies and the natural advantage of being already the world's capital of finance, media, fashion, etc, at a time when tech is increasingly central not to its own industry but to every industry, this squarely puts NYC in contention.

oculusthrift 8y ago

akvadrako 8y ago

This is a much better deal than Wisconsin gets with Foxconn. They are paying between $219.000 and $587.000 per job. https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/aug/11/melissa-sargent/wisconsin-offering-pay-taiwan-tech-firm-foxconn-1-/ https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/aug/11/...

deleted 8y ago

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twblalock 8y ago

$48k per Amazon HQ job is about the the annual federal income tax of a software engineer at Amazon, and it's 4-5 years of New York state income tax. This assumes an annual total compensation somewhere around $200k. Some people will tell you that such a compensation is not realistic, but at Amazon it is common for mid- to senior-level engineers to make at least that much. Altogether it is not a total sellout on the part of New York, at least not after 5 years. Ideally some of those Amazon engineers will leave Amazon to join other companies or start their own, which will be good for New York.

tantuyu 8y ago

Let us hope that the residents of the Queensbridge Houses housing projects get some employment opportunity out of their new neighbor AMAZON HQ2.... As one of the residents put it in the NYT: “Not everyone here has a Ph.D., but anyone eager to work should be able to get job,” he said. “It can’t be nothing but a plus.” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/nyregion/amazon-queens-queensbridge-houses.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/nyregion/amazon-queens-qu...

aussieguy1234 8y ago

If this isn't welfare, what is?