4 ms·
It's insane how some loud politicians were able to rile up opposition by framing the AMZN deal in isolation, as if this was the first and only time New York off
by listenallyall 8y ago
It's insane how some loud politicians were able to rile up opposition by framing the AMZN deal in isolation, as if this was the first and only time New York offered financial incentives to massive, profitable companies.
Atlantic Yards, Hudson Yards, 1WTC, MetroTech, Yankee Stadium... all of these projects, and many more, were negotiated and ultimately included large financial incentives or subsidies by various governments to the developers and to the big business tenants.
Virtually every big bank has, at some point, threatened to move out of NYC, or at least large quantities of back-office, technology and operations staff. It's all to get tax benefits and concessions from the city and state governments.
The idea that every other NYC business is paying their "fair share" and Amazon was expecting, or getting, special treatment, is ludicrous.
- gipp 8y agoPretty sure the opposition is opposed to those as well...
- listenallyall 8y agoWithout them, "the opposition" would likely be living in a city without Yankee Stadium or Barclays Arena, with a huge hole in the ground in Lower Manhattan, no High Line, a dilapidated Central Park, and most importantly, a whole bunch of their employers having waved bye-bye in the 1990s-2000s. Come to think of it, lots of "the opposition" would never have even moved to NYC had their job been located in Charlotte, or Kansas City, or Connecticut. It's easy to look at New York City today and just assume its always been a clean, safe, prosperous megalopolis with strong business activity, and therefore it always will be. However, that perspective would be very wrong.
- gipp 8y agoI have no strong conviction about the merits of their view, really. I'm just pointing out that painting them as hypocritical in regards to the Amazon deal, as in your original post, is not really well-founded.
- listenallyall 8y agoSorry, but it is entirely hypocritical to benefit from tax subsidies in all kinds of ways, such as being employed by a company receiving large tax credits/incentives, taking the mortgage interest deduction, enjoying parks and recreational activities funded by other people's taxes, and certainly, use of the great, yet heavily subsidized, NYC subway/bus system. I'm sure residents of Syracuse and Rochester love helping to pay for the NYC Subway (/s) and they also would have warmly welcomed Amazon (not /s) http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/mta-funding
- m_ke 8y agoAmazon did it to themselves by turning this HQ2 search into a circus. It's pretty clear that they knew where they wanted to go from the start and tried to use this as leverage to squeeze out as much out of NYC and DC as possible. It's also obvious that they're using HQ2 to build up political leverage in Seattle. As a software engineer who lives and grew up in Queens it would have been nice to have amazon in new york but we don't really need them. LIC is growing fast and we'll have no problem getting someone else to come in and take the space that amazon would have occupied.
- listenallyall 8y ago>> LIC is growing fast Don't you realize much (most?) of LIC's growth is from businesses attracted to the area by various pre-existing government incentives, such as: Commerical Expansion Program (tax abatements), Accelerated Sales Tax Exemption Program, Commercial Revitalization Program (property tax abatements), Commercial Rent Tax Special Reduction, Energy Cost Savings Program, Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program, Industrial Business Zone Relocation Tax Credit, NYCIDA Commercial Office Space Incentives, Open Industrial Uses Sales Tax Exemption Program, Qualified Emerging Technology Company Incentives (tax reductions), Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (tax credits), Sales Tax Exemption for Manufacturers https://www.nycedc.com/service/financing-incentives https://www.nycedc.com/service/financing-incentives Whatever arrangements or incentives were made to build Cornell Tech, keep in mind that in addition, all donations to Cornell's $7 billion endowment are tax-deductible. I will take a wild guess that it is almost exclusively very rich people who benefit the most from this deduction.
- m_ke 8y agoYes, fully aware of it. I'm actually working out of an incubator that's part of another tax incentive program (START-UP NY https://esd.ny.gov/startup-ny-program https://esd.ny.gov/startup-ny-program) and am not against most economic development programs.
- CalChris 8y agoSorry but being opposed to this incentive targeted exclusively and non-competitively at Amazon, #4 in market cap, does not mean being opposed to incentives.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]