5 ms·

Have they answered where do the 25,000 jobs go now?

barry-cotter 8y ago
Virginia, Nashville and to a lesser extent everywhere they’re hiring.
ltc5505 8y ago
They said that the search for a HQ2 will not continue and instead they are focusing on increasing presence in NY, VA, and I think TN. Not sure if the increased presence is 25,000 jobs worth.
- brown9-2 8y ago
  Which makes this whole episode so bizarre - they suddenly changed their mind on the value of having a HQ2 (and 25k jobs in a HQ) completely, after such a long and public buildup? Something is fishy here.
  - dsabanin 8y ago
    Why wouldn’t you think that seeing all the negative public reaction they just decided to go the other way?
    - dashundchen 8y ago
      Because it's not as if they didn't already have a public backlash against the HQ2 search, against their labor practices globally, and even in their hometown Seattle where they dominate. Seeing as the state controls the incentives and the governor and mayor were on board, there was a decent chance they would have gotten the incentives no matter what local opposition was, and eventually the issue would have been dropped. For incentives totaling billions, it's difficult to imagine them dropping the whole thing over some heated meetings with councilpeople and union leaders.
  - dashundchen 8y ago
    Yes, something strikes me as strange about the withdrawl announcment. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the incentives and subsidies were coming from the state, not the city. Cuomo and many majority Democrats in the state Senate were on board. The mayor, DeBlasio was on board. The opposition was driven locally by councilpeople and community activists. Some in state government opposed but I doubt it would have been enough to derail it, especially considering upstate cities have had similar blockbuster subsidy deals given to them (Albany with IBM/nanotech, Buffalo with Tesla/Solar City). It seems like Amazon would be driven to withstand some (likely temporary) public criticism in order to get billions of dollars of incentives. After all, they already faced the same criticism during the HQ2 spectacle and have a lot of same type of backlash in their hometown to begin with. Makes me wonder if there's another story playing out that the public has not heard yet.
    - hguant 8y ago
      It's my understanding that Amazon had a lot of difficulty working with the city's unions, owing to the latter's opposition to Amazon's anti-union stance. The unions had a lot of support from the local councilpersons and community activists you spoke of. Right before the Amazon pull out, there were several meetings between Amazon, labour/union reps, and government officials (according to NPR). It's all a black box, but my guess is that either the unions or Amazon wanted some sort of contractual guarantee the other was unwilling to budge on, and the local governance sided with the unions.
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
  TN as in Tennessee? I thought altanta was the tech hub for that general geographical area.
  - ap24 8y ago
    Amazon has already announced 5,000 jobs going in Downtown Nashville - it came out the same time the split up HQ2 did.
minikites 8y ago
https://twitter.com/akarl_smith/status/1096123735935987712 https://twitter.com/akarl_smith/status/1096123735935987712 If New York was willing to give $3 billion to Amazon, maybe New York can now use that money to hire 25,000 workers.
- downandout 8y ago
  Your comment, along with the tweet you linked to and all other tweets like it, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the deal, resulting from a gross oversimplification of it. New York was never “giving” Amazon even $1. They were simply going to give Amazon a tax discount for a limited period of time, and the estimate was that the tax savings would have been about $3 billion over 10 years. This money is not sitting in a bank account somewhere, ready to be deployed for newly invented government jobs now that it has been saved from the greedy claws of Jeff Bezos. New York was effectively giving Amazon coupons for X% off its New York tax bill. When your local grocery store sends you its weekly ad, and it says “over $500 in savings inside,” do you believe you can walk into the store with the coupons and demand $500 in cash? You may do that, but you should expect a heavy police response. Coupons simply help drive business that the entity issuing them would otherwise not have.
  - minikites 8y ago
    It's interesting that you use retail coupons as an analogy. Are you familiar with the idea of a loss leader? What happens if that revenue isn't earned elsewhere? It's not at all clear that New York would come out ahead on this deal, given the infrastructure costs and Amazon's well known tendency to avoid paying taxes.
    - downandout 8y ago
      I am familiar with the concept of a loss leader, but that has nothing to do with what was happening here. Giving someone a discount on taxes doesn’t mean they don’t pay taxes, or, as your original comment and the tweet you linked to implied, that they were simply handing Amazon $3 billion in cash that was sitting in the bank and can now be diverted to random government projects designed to invent jobs. The $3 billion never existed; it was a long-term estimate of Amazon’s potential tax savings under the deal. Anyway, it’s a moot point. They aren’t going there, and either are the jobs and (discounted) tax revenue that they would have brought with them. If you consider that a win, then you have indeed “won”.

Virginia, Nashville and to a lesser extent everywhere they’re hiring.

They said that the search for a HQ2 will not continue and instead they are focusing on increasing presence in NY, VA, and I think TN. Not sure if the increased presence is 25,000 jobs worth.

brown9-2 8y ago
Which makes this whole episode so bizarre - they suddenly changed their mind on the value of having a HQ2 (and 25k jobs in a HQ) completely, after such a long and public buildup? Something is fishy here.
- dsabanin 8y ago
  Why wouldn’t you think that seeing all the negative public reaction they just decided to go the other way?
  - dashundchen 8y ago
    Because it's not as if they didn't already have a public backlash against the HQ2 search, against their labor practices globally, and even in their hometown Seattle where they dominate. Seeing as the state controls the incentives and the governor and mayor were on board, there was a decent chance they would have gotten the incentives no matter what local opposition was, and eventually the issue would have been dropped. For incentives totaling billions, it's difficult to imagine them dropping the whole thing over some heated meetings with councilpeople and union leaders.
- dashundchen 8y ago
  Yes, something strikes me as strange about the withdrawl announcment. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the incentives and subsidies were coming from the state, not the city. Cuomo and many majority Democrats in the state Senate were on board. The mayor, DeBlasio was on board. The opposition was driven locally by councilpeople and community activists. Some in state government opposed but I doubt it would have been enough to derail it, especially considering upstate cities have had similar blockbuster subsidy deals given to them (Albany with IBM/nanotech, Buffalo with Tesla/Solar City). It seems like Amazon would be driven to withstand some (likely temporary) public criticism in order to get billions of dollars of incentives. After all, they already faced the same criticism during the HQ2 spectacle and have a lot of same type of backlash in their hometown to begin with. Makes me wonder if there's another story playing out that the public has not heard yet.
  - hguant 8y ago
    It's my understanding that Amazon had a lot of difficulty working with the city's unions, owing to the latter's opposition to Amazon's anti-union stance. The unions had a lot of support from the local councilpersons and community activists you spoke of. Right before the Amazon pull out, there were several meetings between Amazon, labour/union reps, and government officials (according to NPR). It's all a black box, but my guess is that either the unions or Amazon wanted some sort of contractual guarantee the other was unwilling to budge on, and the local governance sided with the unions.
tomatotomato37 8y ago
TN as in Tennessee? I thought altanta was the tech hub for that general geographical area.
- ap24 8y ago
  Amazon has already announced 5,000 jobs going in Downtown Nashville - it came out the same time the split up HQ2 did.

minikites 8y ago

https://twitter.com/akarl_smith/status/1096123735935987712 https://twitter.com/akarl_smith/status/1096123735935987712 If New York was willing to give $3 billion to Amazon, maybe New York can now use that money to hire 25,000 workers.

downandout 8y ago
Your comment, along with the tweet you linked to and all other tweets like it, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the deal, resulting from a gross oversimplification of it. New York was never “giving” Amazon even $1. They were simply going to give Amazon a tax discount for a limited period of time, and the estimate was that the tax savings would have been about $3 billion over 10 years. This money is not sitting in a bank account somewhere, ready to be deployed for newly invented government jobs now that it has been saved from the greedy claws of Jeff Bezos. New York was effectively giving Amazon coupons for X% off its New York tax bill. When your local grocery store sends you its weekly ad, and it says “over $500 in savings inside,” do you believe you can walk into the store with the coupons and demand $500 in cash? You may do that, but you should expect a heavy police response. Coupons simply help drive business that the entity issuing them would otherwise not have.
- minikites 8y ago
  It's interesting that you use retail coupons as an analogy. Are you familiar with the idea of a loss leader? What happens if that revenue isn't earned elsewhere? It's not at all clear that New York would come out ahead on this deal, given the infrastructure costs and Amazon's well known tendency to avoid paying taxes.
  - downandout 8y ago
    I am familiar with the concept of a loss leader, but that has nothing to do with what was happening here. Giving someone a discount on taxes doesn’t mean they don’t pay taxes, or, as your original comment and the tweet you linked to implied, that they were simply handing Amazon $3 billion in cash that was sitting in the bank and can now be diverted to random government projects designed to invent jobs. The $3 billion never existed; it was a long-term estimate of Amazon’s potential tax savings under the deal. Anyway, it’s a moot point. They aren’t going there, and either are the jobs and (discounted) tax revenue that they would have brought with them. If you consider that a win, then you have indeed “won”.