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> I'd argue NYC rejected Amazon. Over 60% of NYC residents who had an opinion supported Amazon. Over 70% of Long Island residents supported them. This is a vic

> I'd argue NYC rejected Amazon. Over 60% of NYC residents who had an opinion supported Amazon. Over 70% of Long Island residents supported them. This is a victory for some well organised political activists but to cast it as a victory for NYC is a bit much. At the very least it makes NYC a less likely competitor to the Bay Area. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/amazon-winners-and-losers.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/am... > The Bay Area: NYC is no longer such a fierce competitor at the macro level, with the potential to become the new center of gravity for the tech world. The Bay Area can breathe a bit more easily now, at least as long as clustering remains the name of the game. Yet this one is double-edged, because it also means the Bay Area has less incentive to solve its rather pressing problems and dysfunctions. https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1096137477188976646?s=21 https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1096137477188976646?s=21 > The most prominent voices of opposition to the Amazon deal have been local pols in Queens, but that doesn't align with public opinion. The Quinnipiac poll showed strongest support for the subsidy package in Queens (55-39) and the Bronx (54-37). https://poll.qu.edu/new-york-city/release-detail?ReleaseID=2589 https://poll.qu.edu/new-york-city/release-detail?ReleaseID=2... > Support for the Amazon relocation in general ranges from 51 - 29 percent in Manhattan to 64 - 21 percent in The Bronx. > Queens voters support 55 - 39 percent the $3 billion incentive package to attract Amazon.

hannasanarion 8y ago
>At the very least it makes NYC a less likely competitor to the Bay Area. Nonsense. If the bay area were a competitor, that's where Amazon would have wanted put their new HQ, not New York. Amazon doesn't have an HQ in San Francisco. Nevermind the fact that New York has been experiencing a tech boom for the last decade or more, with Apple, Facebook, and Google all buying campuses similar in scale to Amazon's proposed one, and without demanding bribes from the state before doing so.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  The point was that NYC was potentially a competitor to Amazon if they could get a major “tech” company as a kind of anchor tenant bringing tens of thousands of (rich from salary and stock) people to NYC. It has already surpassed Boston as the second city in the US and world if you want to raise VC or hire people who have experience in startups, companies that aim for super high growth for multiple years. The fact that NYC doesn’t have it together enough to keep Amazon after it won it means that while it may be better run than the Bay Area there’s room for somewhere else to come from behind and overtake NYC, maybe even the Bay though that would be the work of decades probably. Boston pissing away it’s advantage to Silicon Valley took decades.
- akhilcacharya 8y ago
  > with Apple, Facebook, and Google all buying campuses similar in scale to Amazon's proposed one, and without demanding bribes from the state before doing so. All of those companies are orders of magnitude smaller than Amazon. Also for the record Amazon has a pretty big presence in SFBA (Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, SF proper).
- cthalupa 8y ago
  Apple, Facebook, and Google all meet the requirements for the Excelsior Jobs Program ( https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program ) which is where 2.5 billion of the 3 came from for the Amazon deal. I have no personal knowledge of whether or not the three are utilizing it, but it would seem unlikely to me that three smart businesses would not be taking advantage of some easy to quality for tax credits, which means it's likely they are taking 5/6ths of the same amount of tax breaks that Amazon was planning to.
C1sc0cat 8y ago
Yes I thought it was "machine" politics at work looking at it from the outside. That's machine in the American political sense BTW
crispyambulance 8y ago
> Over 60% of NYC residents who had an opinion supported Amazon. Well, now might be the time to remember that we don't have democracy by referendum. We elect representatives who listen and make decisions. If enough of that 60% got up off their asses and did the legwork, the result might have been different. Instead all they had was just an "opinion". Sorry, but that's not enough.
intsunny 8y ago
> Over 60% of NYC residents who had an opinion supported Amazon. Over 70% of Long Island residents supported them. This is a victory for some well organised political activists but to cast it as a victory for NYC is a bit much. Its a bad idea to be dismissive of the rejection levels. While support for Amazon was 57% overall in NYC, rejection of the financing ranged from 52-37%, support for NYC being more involved was at 79%. Those are sizeable numbers, even more so if a percentage of those people felt like they had much to lose. NYC doesn't need to compete with the Bay Area. That is a Bay Area obsession. NYC needs to compete with London, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, and other Alpha++/Alpha+ cities. Those cities are much more than tech hubs. NYC is doing just fine.

hannasanarion 8y ago

>At the very least it makes NYC a less likely competitor to the Bay Area. Nonsense. If the bay area were a competitor, that's where Amazon would have wanted put their new HQ, not New York. Amazon doesn't have an HQ in San Francisco. Nevermind the fact that New York has been experiencing a tech boom for the last decade or more, with Apple, Facebook, and Google all buying campuses similar in scale to Amazon's proposed one, and without demanding bribes from the state before doing so.

barry-cotter 8y ago
The point was that NYC was potentially a competitor to Amazon if they could get a major “tech” company as a kind of anchor tenant bringing tens of thousands of (rich from salary and stock) people to NYC. It has already surpassed Boston as the second city in the US and world if you want to raise VC or hire people who have experience in startups, companies that aim for super high growth for multiple years. The fact that NYC doesn’t have it together enough to keep Amazon after it won it means that while it may be better run than the Bay Area there’s room for somewhere else to come from behind and overtake NYC, maybe even the Bay though that would be the work of decades probably. Boston pissing away it’s advantage to Silicon Valley took decades.
akhilcacharya 8y ago
> with Apple, Facebook, and Google all buying campuses similar in scale to Amazon's proposed one, and without demanding bribes from the state before doing so. All of those companies are orders of magnitude smaller than Amazon. Also for the record Amazon has a pretty big presence in SFBA (Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, SF proper).
cthalupa 8y ago
Apple, Facebook, and Google all meet the requirements for the Excelsior Jobs Program ( https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program ) which is where 2.5 billion of the 3 came from for the Amazon deal. I have no personal knowledge of whether or not the three are utilizing it, but it would seem unlikely to me that three smart businesses would not be taking advantage of some easy to quality for tax credits, which means it's likely they are taking 5/6ths of the same amount of tax breaks that Amazon was planning to.

C1sc0cat 8y ago

Yes I thought it was "machine" politics at work looking at it from the outside. That's machine in the American political sense BTW

crispyambulance 8y ago

> Over 60% of NYC residents who had an opinion supported Amazon. Well, now might be the time to remember that we don't have democracy by referendum. We elect representatives who listen and make decisions. If enough of that 60% got up off their asses and did the legwork, the result might have been different. Instead all they had was just an "opinion". Sorry, but that's not enough.

intsunny 8y ago

> Over 60% of NYC residents who had an opinion supported Amazon. Over 70% of Long Island residents supported them. This is a victory for some well organised political activists but to cast it as a victory for NYC is a bit much. Its a bad idea to be dismissive of the rejection levels. While support for Amazon was 57% overall in NYC, rejection of the financing ranged from 52-37%, support for NYC being more involved was at 79%. Those are sizeable numbers, even more so if a percentage of those people felt like they had much to lose. NYC doesn't need to compete with the Bay Area. That is a Bay Area obsession. NYC needs to compete with London, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, and other Alpha++/Alpha+ cities. Those cities are much more than tech hubs. NYC is doing just fine.