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My god, you're bitter for a startup founder! As a veteran founder myself, I'd be excited: this brings talent to fuel my startup, this brings interactive infrast

by asah 8y ago

My god, you're bitter for a startup founder! As a veteran founder myself, I'd be excited: this brings talent to fuel my startup, this brings interactive infrastructure, etc. Amazon and Google are not regular employers: your startup pays outlets in taxes and mooches off infrastructure. The big companies find that with real profits. Finally, $48k/employee is peanuts to a big city startup, and typically that kind of money is available from accelerator/etc programs.

chiefalchemist 8y ago
> " this brings talent to fuel my startup," Yes it brings talent. But that doesn't mean such people are startup talent. It's also going to drive up demand for housing (read: the cost of housing). So for those __not__ employed by one of these, the question becomes: how much __startup-centric__ talent are they driving __out__ of your area? Long to short, the market is being manipulated, and it's being manipulated by the government. The gov created the house bubble and the student loan bubble. If there are examples of the gov manipulating the market and that ending well for taxpayers, I'd like to read about it.
CPLX 8y ago
We're literally giving New York tax money to the richest man in the world, who lives somewhere else, instead of spending it on the subway, or parks, or schools, or literally anything. If you're not outraged you're not paying attention. As it happens I don't have a Silicon Valley venture backed profitless startup, I have a company that gets paid money to do work and makes a healthy profit. I've paid very considerable taxes in NYC for 20 years. Now, literally, they are handing them to Jeff Bezos in exchange for nothing. That area of LIC would just be something else instead. We don't need these guys to bring "talent" this is literally New York City, a giant magnet that has drawn the most talented people on the planet for at least a hundred years. Cuomo is an obvious crook and has been since conception, and this deal sucks. I see no reason not to point that out.
- Digital-Citizen 8y ago
  Richard Wolff in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTth4Rb25H4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTth4Rb25H4 does a good job of concisely making the points on just how bad a deal this is for New York and Virginia (which are together funding over half of the costs of this project -- $5.5B versus Amazon's $5B according to the New York Times) -- and all for an estimated 2,500 jobs in New York. Here's what he said: This is a shocking display. What they are calling a government-private partnership is nothing of the sort. It's a public subsidy to Amazon. The New York Times reported $5 billion in this project will be invested by Amazon. $5.5 billion dollars will be invested by New York and Virginia. That is a subsidy of over 50% of the cost of this project. We the taxpayers will be either paying higher taxes to fund this private company, among the richest in the world, or, if we don't get our taxes raised, the government will deliver fewer services to us because it has given this enormous subsidy to a company. $5 billion from Virginia and New York where Mr. Bezos, the owner of Amazon, is himself the owner of $160 billion. He didn't need it, the company doesn't need it. We are being asked to subsidize. All of the profits will go to the private companies and their shareholders. We, the public, will be funding more than half of this project. Shame is what Mr. DeBlasio ought to feel rather than posing in the PR as if he has delivered something. [...] The projected number of jobs in the New York area from this is 2,500. That's a very small number and will have no effect on the unemployment problem of this city [New York City] it's just too small and that's not a surprise [...] because the kind of work Amazon does is highly automated; it uses machines for 90% of what it does. And half of the people it's likely to have working in New York will be brought in from other parts of the Amazon empire.
  - brownbat 8y ago
    Fascinating link. In it, Amazon lists the FAA first in its list of access to key stakeholders. They must be really serious about drone delivery...
  - ojbyrne 8y ago
    Isn’t the projected number of jobs 25,000?
    - Digital-Citizen 8y ago

by asah 8y ago

chiefalchemist 8y ago

> " this brings talent to fuel my startup," Yes it brings talent. But that doesn't mean such people are startup talent. It's also going to drive up demand for housing (read: the cost of housing). So for those __not__ employed by one of these, the question becomes: how much __startup-centric__ talent are they driving __out__ of your area? Long to short, the market is being manipulated, and it's being manipulated by the government. The gov created the house bubble and the student loan bubble. If there are examples of the gov manipulating the market and that ending well for taxpayers, I'd like to read about it.

CPLX 8y ago

We're literally giving New York tax money to the richest man in the world, who lives somewhere else, instead of spending it on the subway, or parks, or schools, or literally anything. If you're not outraged you're not paying attention. As it happens I don't have a Silicon Valley venture backed profitless startup, I have a company that gets paid money to do work and makes a healthy profit. I've paid very considerable taxes in NYC for 20 years. Now, literally, they are handing them to Jeff Bezos in exchange for nothing. That area of LIC would just be something else instead. We don't need these guys to bring "talent" this is literally New York City, a giant magnet that has drawn the most talented people on the planet for at least a hundred years. Cuomo is an obvious crook and has been since conception, and this deal sucks. I see no reason not to point that out.

Digital-Citizen 8y ago
Richard Wolff in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTth4Rb25H4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTth4Rb25H4 does a good job of concisely making the points on just how bad a deal this is for New York and Virginia (which are together funding over half of the costs of this project -- $5.5B versus Amazon's $5B according to the New York Times) -- and all for an estimated 2,500 jobs in New York. Here's what he said: This is a shocking display. What they are calling a government-private partnership is nothing of the sort. It's a public subsidy to Amazon. The New York Times reported $5 billion in this project will be invested by Amazon. $5.5 billion dollars will be invested by New York and Virginia. That is a subsidy of over 50% of the cost of this project. We the taxpayers will be either paying higher taxes to fund this private company, among the richest in the world, or, if we don't get our taxes raised, the government will deliver fewer services to us because it has given this enormous subsidy to a company. $5 billion from Virginia and New York where Mr. Bezos, the owner of Amazon, is himself the owner of $160 billion. He didn't need it, the company doesn't need it. We are being asked to subsidize. All of the profits will go to the private companies and their shareholders. We, the public, will be funding more than half of this project. Shame is what Mr. DeBlasio ought to feel rather than posing in the PR as if he has delivered something. [...] The projected number of jobs in the New York area from this is 2,500. That's a very small number and will have no effect on the unemployment problem of this city [New York City] it's just too small and that's not a surprise [...] because the kind of work Amazon does is highly automated; it uses machines for 90% of what it does. And half of the people it's likely to have working in New York will be brought in from other parts of the Amazon empire.
- brownbat 8y ago
  Fascinating link. In it, Amazon lists the FAA first in its list of access to key stakeholders. They must be really serious about drone delivery...
- ojbyrne 8y ago
  Isn’t the projected number of jobs 25,000?
  - Digital-Citizen 8y ago