5 ms·

If you're talking about the 2nd Ave stub, yeah, it was crazy expensive but it's serving 200K passengers a day, alleviating crowding on the Lex (entire Lex is li

If you're talking about the 2nd Ave stub, yeah, it was crazy expensive but it's serving 200K passengers a day, alleviating crowding on the Lex (entire Lex is like 1.3m), and UES to Times Square is hella faster. Anyway, for me it hinges on how much special treatment Amazon got, $100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard, would have been a huge anchor tenant for NYC tech and LIC, so much smoke blown on both sides it's hard to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . If they want to sell and support AWS to bigcos in NYC they are going to need a major presence regardless, not sure how much sense it makes for their other businesses to have a big HQ in NYC.

RobertoG 8y ago
"[..]$100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard,[..]" It's possible to be both at the same time.
onionsoup 8y ago
They are also aggressively expanding into display ads, and the epicenter of the display ads ecosystem is in NYC. A lot of the hiring in tech they do in NYC was for ads positions.
lallysingh 8y ago
$100k in taxes is maybe 6.5 yrs of a tech worker's state income (using 6.85% state income tax @ 220k/yr). That's before other taxes, like property (directly or indirectly through rent), sales, etc. They don't need 25k jobs to support AWS clients in NYC. It's not like they're supporting on-site installations.
- sbov 8y ago
  Usually 1 job means 1 person-year worth of work. So 6.5 years of a tech worker would usually mean 6.5 jobs. The jobs also tend to include things like construction workers, etc. So if you hire 500 people to build the place over 2 years that's 1,000 jobs created.
wefarrell 8y ago
Tax abatements like this are a serious antitrust issue as well. Smaller competitors don't have the political clout to get tax breaks like this, will have to pay more, will pass those costs onto customers, and won't be as competitive.

RobertoG 8y ago

"[..]$100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard,[..]" It's possible to be both at the same time.

onionsoup 8y ago

They are also aggressively expanding into display ads, and the epicenter of the display ads ecosystem is in NYC. A lot of the hiring in tech they do in NYC was for ads positions.

lallysingh 8y ago

$100k in taxes is maybe 6.5 yrs of a tech worker's state income (using 6.85% state income tax @ 220k/yr). That's before other taxes, like property (directly or indirectly through rent), sales, etc. They don't need 25k jobs to support AWS clients in NYC. It's not like they're supporting on-site installations.

sbov 8y ago
Usually 1 job means 1 person-year worth of work. So 6.5 years of a tech worker would usually mean 6.5 jobs. The jobs also tend to include things like construction workers, etc. So if you hire 500 people to build the place over 2 years that's 1,000 jobs created.

wefarrell 8y ago

Tax abatements like this are a serious antitrust issue as well. Smaller competitors don't have the political clout to get tax breaks like this, will have to pay more, will pass those costs onto customers, and won't be as competitive.