10 ms·

Closed-door meetings on unions preceded Amazon's withdrawal

83 points by save_ferris 8y ago

chasd00 8y ago
I admit I was pretty shocked. Many people do not realize that Amazon leaving doesn't mean +$3B in their pocket it means $0 and even less than zero in the long term. Also, Amazon wasn't forced to leave by the people, they chose to leave because of a toxic minority voice. The majority of voters wanted Amazon's development. I wouldn't say this toxic minority is scary but they're certainly something to think about going g forward. Finally, seems like I remember tech. on the East Coast was always a losing deal because of unions, taxes, and red tape. Isn't that why silicon valley started in the first place?
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  > The majority of voters wanted Amazon's development. Please provide evidence of this statement. Not wanting to subsidize one of the wealthiest companies in the world, and not wanting to drive up real estate prices even further, isn’t toxic. It’s compromise. Not everyone wants their city flooded with tech jobs and the problems it brings (see: SF and Seattle). Disclaimer: Not an Amazon supporter. They’re a “toxic” corporation.
  - jlksaflkjdsajlk 8y ago
    This seems to be the relevant poll: https://scri.siena.edu/2019/02/12/majority-support-nys-deal-with-amazon/ https://scri.siena.edu/2019/02/12/majority-support-nys-deal-...
  - abnry 8y ago
    It isn't toxic but neither is it compromise. Compromising is when two parties meet in the middle. Amazon left, that's not compromise.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - epistasis 8y ago
    The only poll I'm aware of shows very strong support: https://news.yahoo.com/poll-majority-yorkers-supported-amazon-140324398.html https://news.yahoo.com/poll-majority-yorkers-supported-amazo... >A significant majority (56 percent) of all New Yorkers approved of the plan while 36 percent disapproved. Among New York City residents support was slightly stronger at 58 percent. >Support was most pronounced among minorities: 70 percent of black voters approved while just 25 percent disapproved, and 81 percent of Latinos approved compared to 17 percent who disapproved. Not sure about LIC in particular. I think what the OP is referring to by "toxicity" is the intense hatred and lowered standard for truth that's typical for so much of politics. The idea that the jobs are the problem, rather than the cities' willingness to accommodate newcomers, could also be considered quite toxic. It's been really funny to see Seattle lumped in with SF on these things. Seattle's problems are nowhere near the scale of SF because SF has refused to accommodate even a tiny fraction, whereas Seattle is trying much harder and building up infracsturcture and allowing housing to move forward.
    - geofft 8y ago
      This seems to be a a poll by phone? https://scri.siena.edu/2019/02/12/majority-support-nys-deal-with-amazon/ https://scri.siena.edu/2019/02/12/majority-support-nys-deal-... I don't answer calls from unknown numbers, and I think there are a lot of people like myself. I think there's significant sampling bias in telephone polls - and especially when the results of the poll seem to disagree so sharply with political sentiment as measured in other ways, we should probably be asking more questions about better ways to measure sentiment accurately. (One simple option would have been to put the proposed HQ2 concessions on the ballot last November....)
    - ninth_ant 8y ago
      Large scale corporate welfare projects like this makes for good headlines and often popular with voters and politicians alike. Popular doesn’t mean right though — not in general and not in this case. It will be less splashy in the headlines, but those spaces can now be used for businesses which actually pay taxes.
    - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
- tacomonstrous 8y ago
  >Many people do not realize that Amazon leaving doesn't mean +$3B in their pocket it means $0 and even less than zero in the long term. How is this any less laughable than the position you're chastising? LIC was already booming before the Amazon investment. The idea that Amazon will be replaced by nothing at all is ludicrous.
  - beaner 8y ago
    I dunno if that's accurate. "Lots of development + Amazon" is more than "lots of development." Amazon not being there doesn't necessarily mean there will be more of something else.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      It’s highly likely, though. Supply and demand: less demand for real estate and employees means prices will be lower, which in turn means others will buy more. Economics isn’t a zero-sum game, but neither is it a completely uncorrelated bag of stuff.
      - ineedasername 8y ago
        This view of supply and demand is incomplete. Under your line of thinking there would never be issues of over supply. Which is of course wrong. During the financial crisis there was too much supply of housing that wouldn't be purchased at any price. See farming as an industry where too much supply can result in the need to sell product at a loss. Supply and demand is not some magical system that always balances. Artificial interference and externalities can absolutely throw it into negative-sum territory.
        mikeash 8y ago
        That’s true in general, but we’re talking about 25,000 jobs in a thriving metro area of 20 million people. The situation isn’t anywhere near these extremes.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
- wolco 8y ago
  Small businesses will make up that 3B and more. This is New York not a small company town. Why put all your eggs in one basket?
  - yostrovs 8y ago
    Why compare your fantasy to reality?
    - geofft 8y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean. NYC being a thriving city with lots of employers and lots of growth even without the special concessions to Amazon is obvious to everyone. (Even Google, for instance, announced significant additional investment on top of their existing presence just a few days ago.) The effects of Amazon HQ2 are now a firm hypothetical. Is that what you mean by fantasy and reality?
  - ineedasername 8y ago
    What makes you think LIC wouldn't have seen both if Amazon stayed? Your line of thinking amounts to "the fewer big inevestments there are, the more smaller investments will make up for it."
    - wolco 8y ago
      There is limited space in New York. Amazon would have taken up more space and given less tax output. The offshoot businesses have even more limited space. Why would New York give away so much? If they decided downtown Buffalo is the hq the state should have thrown money at them because that would change the area and provided space for many offshoot businesses. Win-Win
      - ineedasername 8y ago
        That's a good point that the net gain would be greater in an area like Buffalo. I can see how it's a less desirable locale from Amazon's point of view though. On your other point though, I though Amazon was building their own space, so that problem would be minor. Also, Google is eating progressively more space that already exists, so I'd view their expansions in NYC as a larger issue of taking up very limited space. Regardless of any of that though, I think Amazon brought it on themselves by making the whole process a year long spectacle for, I suppose, marketing issues or something, but it backfired.
- Bjartr 8y ago
  What makes the minority voice toxic as opposed to merely dissenting?
  - bagacrap 8y ago
    Less "toxic" than "vocal". The vocal minority often wins in politics (see: gun owners).
    - justtopost 8y ago
      Gun owners have facts, and guns. Most are very quiet unless pressed (For their Opinion -edit). The vocal minority is the anti gun crowd, as you just exibited.
      - happytoexplain 8y ago
        It's disheartening how one-sided you made a post that is ostensibly criticising the opposite one-sidedness of another post.
        futureastronaut 8y ago
        You have to love the undertone of violence to gun rights though: > Most are very quiet unless pressed. "hint hint we'll shoot ya dead!" Uh, that's why we're anti-gun, thanks for clarifying.
        justtopost 8y ago
        Wow, glad you read threats into everything. Pressed for their opinion, as it is clearly unpopular in public. Again, acting in bad faith.
        dorchadas 8y ago
        I dunno. I think it was very easy to read threats into your opinion. I mean the fact that you specifically mentioned 'gun owners have facts, and guns' at the very beginning led me to believe you were insinuating that anyone who disagrees with your 'facts' would be met by said guns.
- kome 8y ago
  perhaps they didn't want to repeat the errors of the past... https://assets.pando.com/_versions/2014/03/12867224113_6375f14535_b_featured.jpg https://assets.pando.com/_versions/2014/03/12867224113_6375f...
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  Is that something PG said? I don’t think unions killed Wang or DG?
- rmrfrmrf 8y ago
  Did you read the article? The implication is that union discussions caused the pullout, not the "toxic minority voices". It's more evidence of Amazon's relentless exploitation of labor.
  - gpm 8y ago
    > It's more evidence of Amazon's relentless exploitation of labor. That's one interpretation. Another interpretation is it's more evidence of the inefficiencies and corruption created by the current unions. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
    - rmrfrmrf 8y ago
      Im not one for centrist truth synthesis. The only people who are against unions are those who are trained to be.
      - dwaltrip 8y ago
        > The only people who are against unions are those who are trained to be. It hurts your credibility to fail to acknowledge any legitimate critiques.
        ileri62 8y ago
        It hurts your credibility to be unable to take position. Don't play the mastermind when in reality you're too scared/dumb to see the truth. Centrists truly are the worst
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        dwaltrip 8y ago
        Ah yes, you have correctly identified the chief drivers of my political viewpoints: fear and stupidity. Very well then, it looks like our work here is done.
- geofft 8y ago
  > Many people do not realize that Amazon leaving doesn't mean +$3B in their pocket it means $0 and even less than zero in the long term. I don't think that logic makes sense. The absence of Amazon doesn't mean that the land is razed and the earth salted. It means other companies, without the $3B in concessions, can grow there instead. They could be other giant tech companies, they could be small businesses, they could be anything, but someone is likely to move forward with the land. It may or may not be $3B, but it certainly will be more than zero in the short term and the long term.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    And, this is particularly relevant in New York City, where there's not much land and a lot of demand for what's there. If this was rural Nevada, we'd be having a different discussion.
  - ardy42 8y ago
    It might even be better for us in the long run. Instead of Amazon sucking up more talent in the NYC area, that talent is available to some other company (or companies) that can compete (nationally) with Amazon for it. The land isn't either barren or occupied by Amazon crabgrass. Different things can grow there.
    - autokad 8y ago
      I'm a data scientist in Seattle and there was a very strong possibility I was going to go over to NYC. now thats not going to happen. Instead, (for example NYU data science grads) are going to be moving to the west coast, being much more unavailable to other companies in the NY area.
      - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
        You're acting like there's a dearth of job opportunities in New York without Amazon. This just isn't the case, even compared to the west coast. I work at a small graphic/web design agency. My bosses moved from Los Angeles (where they grew up) to New York in order to start the business, because they believed there would be more opportunities here. Now, this was a decade ago, and maybe had they tried they would have done fine in California, but it's not nearly as clear cut as you're making it out to be.
- mc32 8y ago
  The next election cycle will be interesting in how it plays out. Will upstate blue bloods prevail or the new progressives/socialists prevail and possibly return NYC to the 80s when overtaxation drove business out into NJ and other places. I really think thd next cycle has the potential of being a referendum on socialist/progressives versus blue Dems. Bezos is a Dem ally but thd socialists see him as a billionaire to be vilified and taken down on behalf of the downtrodden.
- deogeo 8y ago
  > even less than zero in the long term. And what are the long term consequences of cities competing against each-other for corporate favor?
- RickJWagner 8y ago
  I see it as a loss to NYC, too. High paying jobs (by the bucket-load) bring a ton of benefits to the community.
- smrtinsert 8y ago
  Go back to Silicon Valley then. As an east coast dev i could care less if Amazon came here. The less we have tomdo with their awful business practices the better.
- hodgesrm 8y ago
  Rather than a "toxic minority" don't you think it might be that a segment of people were put off by backroom deals, large future subsidies, and Amazon's proven reluctance to help develop community infrastructure in Seattle?
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    > Amazon's proven reluctance to help develop community infrastructure in Seattle? You'd be reluctant to develop community infrastructure if your "community" had no qualms about arbitrarily deciding to take more of your property, by force, year over year.
- kerng 8y ago
  The scale of NYC is just very different. It's not like Seattle or SF. Amazon there or not doesn't really make a big dent.
- benologist 8y ago
  I think this was a foreseeable reaction to the wealthiest company in the world owned by the richest man in the world demanding legalized kickbacks while their not-employees piss in bottles and eat off food stamps. It's not a vocal minority treating Amazon unfairly at all, it's Amazon treating everyone unfairly and there's a lot of historical precedence for that backfiring. There's also precedence for Amazon to convert as much of their workforce into non-employees dependent on 2nd jobs and 3rd jobs so their supposedly high paying jobs probably weren't going to last anyway. They're not in the business of creating high paying jobs, they pay highly while they must.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  > Finally, seems like I remember tech. on the East Coast was always a losing deal because of unions, taxes, and red tape. Isn't that why silicon valley started in the first place? There's a strain of thought that says that part of the reason tech is able to grow so wildly and create so much value is that it's too new to have been fully integrated into the wider, corrupt system of having profits from innovation regulated away and profits from regulatory capture built up. As you point out, California has historically been a refuge from things like this: Its distance from the historical seats of institutional power on the east coast (and the cultures of corruption that grew out of them) has provided an alternative for industries like Hollywood, Silicon Valley, etc. I don't entirely know how I feel about this theory, but it's certainly self-consistent. Obviously, California isn't magically immune to the rent-seeking BS that sunk its hooks into other regions of the country a century ago, and as it becomes a more clearly dominant part of the economy, this is probably a temporary state of affair (anyone who's been in tech for longer than a decade has noticed how the rest of society suddenly woke up and went "oh shit, there's a lot of money over there, better start paying attention"; you can still find people throughout the industry with oldschool tech culture and values, but at least IME they're drowned out by the recent entrants chasing the money)
  - WAthrowaway 8y ago
    Your Hollywood origin story is a myth. Many of the first companies out there were Edison's. https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ssgzn/did_filmmakers_flee_to_hollywood_to_escape_patent/ddis3ve/ https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ssgzn/did_fi...
- jklowden 8y ago
  No, that’s not “why” Silicon Valley got started. And you’ll note that neither taxes nor unions are especially rare in California. Silicon Valley owes its existence to Stanford University and the Department of Defense. Spending on research, and on technology at such places as Hewlett-Packard gave the Valley its start.
- iak8god 8y ago
  This is still one of the beneficial places in the country for Amazon to have a new HQ, but NY will be just fine without Amazon there. Why should NY have to bribe one of wealthiest organizations in the world with billions of dollars to set up shop there?
timwis 8y ago
This website blocks visitors from Europe because of GDPR...
- m0skit0 8y ago
  Use a VPN or proxy?
- the_duke 8y ago
  Use outline.com
- dcplogic 8y ago
  That's plain incompetency. Similar incompetency at latimes.
- segfaultbuserr 8y ago
  Use web.archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20190216180058/https://www.newsday.com/news/region-state/amazon-labor-1.27345235 https://web.archive.org/web/20190216180058/https://www.newsd...
- syntheticcdo 8y ago
  Regulations have repercussions.
- navbaker 8y ago
  It also throws up a banner unless you disable your ad blocker.
blameUnions 8y ago
Meh. Blame the unions. Except, Amazon doesn’t need to get bigger. As a company, Amazon isn’t an essential part of my life, nor do I necessarily want them to become such a thing.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
I don't get it...the politicians in power wanted it and so did the people https://news.yahoo.com/poll-majority-yorkers-supported-amazon-140324398.html https://news.yahoo.com/poll-majority-yorkers-supported-amazo... . Of course Amazon wasn't expecting a 100% "please come here" vote.
- rmrfrmrf 8y ago
  The thing about polls is that you can throw out the ones you don't like.
r2215 8y ago
Friends don’t let friends work at Amazon
wolframhempel 8y ago
There seems to be some confusion between Tax-breaks and subsidies. The three Billion that AOC and Co suggest will now be available for other investments would not have been money given to Amazon, it would have been money that Amazon would have paid less in taxes, while still paying a reduced tax rate. No Amazon = 0 Taxes. (It is worth noting that Amazon would still have claimed other subsidies made available to all companies in the state of NY - however now claiming a plus of 3 Billion is simply incorrect. More so, even with the 3 Billion tax break I don't think there is an argument that Amazon would have been a net-negative - quite the opposite in fact)
- geofft 8y ago
  > No Amazon = 0 Taxes. That's not true for a few reasons: - Amazon will still be growing in New York, as confirmed by their press release: "There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams." They just won't get the benefits of the HQ2 deal. So, they'll still be paying taxes. - Other companies will be able to move in to the land and hire the people that Amazon would have hired. They're not the only employer in town. Those companies will pay taxes, which will go to the same government coffers, even if the money doesn't come from Amazon.
  - wolframhempel 8y ago
    - Sure, but this question is about the specific HQ2 deal. There's some amount of Amazon in most US cities. - I've seen the second argument a few times, including this page, but I don't quite get it. These companies haven't moved in yet, leaving Queens as one of the economically weaker areas of NY. Why would they move in now that Amazon doesn't? What changed for them?
    - CPLX 8y ago
      Long Island city, which is literally 800 yards from midtown Manhattan, also known as the most successful and robust central business district in the history of world civilization, has exploded with growth over the last 10-20 years, and luxury apartment skyscrapers and employment centers have been sprouting literally as fast as construction workers can put up the scaffolding.
loraa 8y ago
People who hate working will always chase jobs away.
futureastronaut 8y ago
They never would have backed out if Cuomo changed his first name to Amazon as he suggested.
spenrose 8y ago
https://twitter.com/ritholtz/status/1096449884180434945 https://twitter.com/ritholtz/status/1096449884180434945 The whole thread is worth reading (note he links to a counter-argument at the end).
jorblumesea 8y ago
I think it's ironic that Bezos is a Libertarian, with a capital L, and his company and values very much reflect this. But, then they try to lean on local and state governments for hand outs and incentives. Then his company throws a fit when they don't get everything they want, despite apparently espousing free market tenants and ideas. It just feels very hypocritical to the extreme, from a political/philosophical standpoint. It also feels like they just want the system to always work in their favor, wherever, whenever. Which seems unrealistic and borderline childish.
freewizard 8y ago
I guess even in November, this was probably a stretchy decision for Amazon to have 2 HQ2s and one in NYC to begin with, hence not a surprise it changes decision once it sensed more friction politically and the overall economy trend is great since Nov anyway.

83 points by save_ferris 8y ago

I admit I was pretty shocked. Many people do not realize that Amazon leaving doesn't mean +$3B in their pocket it means $0 and even less than zero in the long term. Also, Amazon wasn't forced to leave by the people, they chose to leave because of a toxic minority voice. The majority of voters wanted Amazon's development. I wouldn't say this toxic minority is scary but they're certainly something to think about going g forward. Finally, seems like I remember tech. on the East Coast was always a losing deal because of unions, taxes, and red tape. Isn't that why silicon valley started in the first place?

toomuchtodo 8y ago
> The majority of voters wanted Amazon's development. Please provide evidence of this statement. Not wanting to subsidize one of the wealthiest companies in the world, and not wanting to drive up real estate prices even further, isn’t toxic. It’s compromise. Not everyone wants their city flooded with tech jobs and the problems it brings (see: SF and Seattle). Disclaimer: Not an Amazon supporter. They’re a “toxic” corporation.
- jlksaflkjdsajlk 8y ago
  This seems to be the relevant poll: https://scri.siena.edu/2019/02/12/majority-support-nys-deal-with-amazon/ https://scri.siena.edu/2019/02/12/majority-support-nys-deal-...
- abnry 8y ago
  It isn't toxic but neither is it compromise. Compromising is when two parties meet in the middle. Amazon left, that's not compromise.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- epistasis 8y ago
  The only poll I'm aware of shows very strong support: https://news.yahoo.com/poll-majority-yorkers-supported-amazon-140324398.html https://news.yahoo.com/poll-majority-yorkers-supported-amazo... >A significant majority (56 percent) of all New Yorkers approved of the plan while 36 percent disapproved. Among New York City residents support was slightly stronger at 58 percent. >Support was most pronounced among minorities: 70 percent of black voters approved while just 25 percent disapproved, and 81 percent of Latinos approved compared to 17 percent who disapproved. Not sure about LIC in particular. I think what the OP is referring to by "toxicity" is the intense hatred and lowered standard for truth that's typical for so much of politics. The idea that the jobs are the problem, rather than the cities' willingness to accommodate newcomers, could also be considered quite toxic. It's been really funny to see Seattle lumped in with SF on these things. Seattle's problems are nowhere near the scale of SF because SF has refused to accommodate even a tiny fraction, whereas Seattle is trying much harder and building up infracsturcture and allowing housing to move forward.
  - geofft 8y ago
    This seems to be a a poll by phone? https://scri.siena.edu/2019/02/12/majority-support-nys-deal-with-amazon/ https://scri.siena.edu/2019/02/12/majority-support-nys-deal-... I don't answer calls from unknown numbers, and I think there are a lot of people like myself. I think there's significant sampling bias in telephone polls - and especially when the results of the poll seem to disagree so sharply with political sentiment as measured in other ways, we should probably be asking more questions about better ways to measure sentiment accurately. (One simple option would have been to put the proposed HQ2 concessions on the ballot last November....)
  - ninth_ant 8y ago
    Large scale corporate welfare projects like this makes for good headlines and often popular with voters and politicians alike. Popular doesn’t mean right though — not in general and not in this case. It will be less splashy in the headlines, but those spaces can now be used for businesses which actually pay taxes.
  - seanmcdirmid 8y ago
tacomonstrous 8y ago
>Many people do not realize that Amazon leaving doesn't mean +$3B in their pocket it means $0 and even less than zero in the long term. How is this any less laughable than the position you're chastising? LIC was already booming before the Amazon investment. The idea that Amazon will be replaced by nothing at all is ludicrous.
- beaner 8y ago
  I dunno if that's accurate. "Lots of development + Amazon" is more than "lots of development." Amazon not being there doesn't necessarily mean there will be more of something else.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    It’s highly likely, though. Supply and demand: less demand for real estate and employees means prices will be lower, which in turn means others will buy more. Economics isn’t a zero-sum game, but neither is it a completely uncorrelated bag of stuff.
    - ineedasername 8y ago
      This view of supply and demand is incomplete. Under your line of thinking there would never be issues of over supply. Which is of course wrong. During the financial crisis there was too much supply of housing that wouldn't be purchased at any price. See farming as an industry where too much supply can result in the need to sell product at a loss. Supply and demand is not some magical system that always balances. Artificial interference and externalities can absolutely throw it into negative-sum territory.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        That’s true in general, but we’re talking about 25,000 jobs in a thriving metro area of 20 million people. The situation isn’t anywhere near these extremes.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
wolco 8y ago
Small businesses will make up that 3B and more. This is New York not a small company town. Why put all your eggs in one basket?
- yostrovs 8y ago
  Why compare your fantasy to reality?
  - geofft 8y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean. NYC being a thriving city with lots of employers and lots of growth even without the special concessions to Amazon is obvious to everyone. (Even Google, for instance, announced significant additional investment on top of their existing presence just a few days ago.) The effects of Amazon HQ2 are now a firm hypothetical. Is that what you mean by fantasy and reality?
- ineedasername 8y ago
  What makes you think LIC wouldn't have seen both if Amazon stayed? Your line of thinking amounts to "the fewer big inevestments there are, the more smaller investments will make up for it."
  - wolco 8y ago
    There is limited space in New York. Amazon would have taken up more space and given less tax output. The offshoot businesses have even more limited space. Why would New York give away so much? If they decided downtown Buffalo is the hq the state should have thrown money at them because that would change the area and provided space for many offshoot businesses. Win-Win
    - ineedasername 8y ago
      That's a good point that the net gain would be greater in an area like Buffalo. I can see how it's a less desirable locale from Amazon's point of view though. On your other point though, I though Amazon was building their own space, so that problem would be minor. Also, Google is eating progressively more space that already exists, so I'd view their expansions in NYC as a larger issue of taking up very limited space. Regardless of any of that though, I think Amazon brought it on themselves by making the whole process a year long spectacle for, I suppose, marketing issues or something, but it backfired.
Bjartr 8y ago
What makes the minority voice toxic as opposed to merely dissenting?
- bagacrap 8y ago
  Less "toxic" than "vocal". The vocal minority often wins in politics (see: gun owners).
  - justtopost 8y ago
    Gun owners have facts, and guns. Most are very quiet unless pressed (For their Opinion -edit). The vocal minority is the anti gun crowd, as you just exibited.
    - happytoexplain 8y ago
      It's disheartening how one-sided you made a post that is ostensibly criticising the opposite one-sidedness of another post.
      - futureastronaut 8y ago
        You have to love the undertone of violence to gun rights though: > Most are very quiet unless pressed. "hint hint we'll shoot ya dead!" Uh, that's why we're anti-gun, thanks for clarifying.
        justtopost 8y ago
        Wow, glad you read threats into everything. Pressed for their opinion, as it is clearly unpopular in public. Again, acting in bad faith.
        dorchadas 8y ago
        I dunno. I think it was very easy to read threats into your opinion. I mean the fact that you specifically mentioned 'gun owners have facts, and guns' at the very beginning led me to believe you were insinuating that anyone who disagrees with your 'facts' would be met by said guns.
kome 8y ago
perhaps they didn't want to repeat the errors of the past... https://assets.pando.com/_versions/2014/03/12867224113_6375f14535_b_featured.jpg https://assets.pando.com/_versions/2014/03/12867224113_6375f...
selimthegrim 8y ago
Is that something PG said? I don’t think unions killed Wang or DG?
rmrfrmrf 8y ago
Did you read the article? The implication is that union discussions caused the pullout, not the "toxic minority voices". It's more evidence of Amazon's relentless exploitation of labor.
- gpm 8y ago
  > It's more evidence of Amazon's relentless exploitation of labor. That's one interpretation. Another interpretation is it's more evidence of the inefficiencies and corruption created by the current unions. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
  - rmrfrmrf 8y ago
    Im not one for centrist truth synthesis. The only people who are against unions are those who are trained to be.
    - dwaltrip 8y ago
      > The only people who are against unions are those who are trained to be. It hurts your credibility to fail to acknowledge any legitimate critiques.
      - ileri62 8y ago
        It hurts your credibility to be unable to take position. Don't play the mastermind when in reality you're too scared/dumb to see the truth. Centrists truly are the worst
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        dwaltrip 8y ago
        Ah yes, you have correctly identified the chief drivers of my political viewpoints: fear and stupidity. Very well then, it looks like our work here is done.
geofft 8y ago
> Many people do not realize that Amazon leaving doesn't mean +$3B in their pocket it means $0 and even less than zero in the long term. I don't think that logic makes sense. The absence of Amazon doesn't mean that the land is razed and the earth salted. It means other companies, without the $3B in concessions, can grow there instead. They could be other giant tech companies, they could be small businesses, they could be anything, but someone is likely to move forward with the land. It may or may not be $3B, but it certainly will be more than zero in the short term and the long term.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  And, this is particularly relevant in New York City, where there's not much land and a lot of demand for what's there. If this was rural Nevada, we'd be having a different discussion.
- ardy42 8y ago
  It might even be better for us in the long run. Instead of Amazon sucking up more talent in the NYC area, that talent is available to some other company (or companies) that can compete (nationally) with Amazon for it. The land isn't either barren or occupied by Amazon crabgrass. Different things can grow there.
  - autokad 8y ago
    I'm a data scientist in Seattle and there was a very strong possibility I was going to go over to NYC. now thats not going to happen. Instead, (for example NYU data science grads) are going to be moving to the west coast, being much more unavailable to other companies in the NY area.
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      You're acting like there's a dearth of job opportunities in New York without Amazon. This just isn't the case, even compared to the west coast. I work at a small graphic/web design agency. My bosses moved from Los Angeles (where they grew up) to New York in order to start the business, because they believed there would be more opportunities here. Now, this was a decade ago, and maybe had they tried they would have done fine in California, but it's not nearly as clear cut as you're making it out to be.
mc32 8y ago
The next election cycle will be interesting in how it plays out. Will upstate blue bloods prevail or the new progressives/socialists prevail and possibly return NYC to the 80s when overtaxation drove business out into NJ and other places. I really think thd next cycle has the potential of being a referendum on socialist/progressives versus blue Dems. Bezos is a Dem ally but thd socialists see him as a billionaire to be vilified and taken down on behalf of the downtrodden.
deogeo 8y ago
> even less than zero in the long term. And what are the long term consequences of cities competing against each-other for corporate favor?
RickJWagner 8y ago
I see it as a loss to NYC, too. High paying jobs (by the bucket-load) bring a ton of benefits to the community.
smrtinsert 8y ago
Go back to Silicon Valley then. As an east coast dev i could care less if Amazon came here. The less we have tomdo with their awful business practices the better.
hodgesrm 8y ago
Rather than a "toxic minority" don't you think it might be that a segment of people were put off by backroom deals, large future subsidies, and Amazon's proven reluctance to help develop community infrastructure in Seattle?
- microcolonel 8y ago
  > Amazon's proven reluctance to help develop community infrastructure in Seattle? You'd be reluctant to develop community infrastructure if your "community" had no qualms about arbitrarily deciding to take more of your property, by force, year over year.
kerng 8y ago
The scale of NYC is just very different. It's not like Seattle or SF. Amazon there or not doesn't really make a big dent.
benologist 8y ago
I think this was a foreseeable reaction to the wealthiest company in the world owned by the richest man in the world demanding legalized kickbacks while their not-employees piss in bottles and eat off food stamps. It's not a vocal minority treating Amazon unfairly at all, it's Amazon treating everyone unfairly and there's a lot of historical precedence for that backfiring. There's also precedence for Amazon to convert as much of their workforce into non-employees dependent on 2nd jobs and 3rd jobs so their supposedly high paying jobs probably weren't going to last anyway. They're not in the business of creating high paying jobs, they pay highly while they must.
wutbrodo 8y ago
> Finally, seems like I remember tech. on the East Coast was always a losing deal because of unions, taxes, and red tape. Isn't that why silicon valley started in the first place? There's a strain of thought that says that part of the reason tech is able to grow so wildly and create so much value is that it's too new to have been fully integrated into the wider, corrupt system of having profits from innovation regulated away and profits from regulatory capture built up. As you point out, California has historically been a refuge from things like this: Its distance from the historical seats of institutional power on the east coast (and the cultures of corruption that grew out of them) has provided an alternative for industries like Hollywood, Silicon Valley, etc. I don't entirely know how I feel about this theory, but it's certainly self-consistent. Obviously, California isn't magically immune to the rent-seeking BS that sunk its hooks into other regions of the country a century ago, and as it becomes a more clearly dominant part of the economy, this is probably a temporary state of affair (anyone who's been in tech for longer than a decade has noticed how the rest of society suddenly woke up and went "oh shit, there's a lot of money over there, better start paying attention"; you can still find people throughout the industry with oldschool tech culture and values, but at least IME they're drowned out by the recent entrants chasing the money)
- WAthrowaway 8y ago
  Your Hollywood origin story is a myth. Many of the first companies out there were Edison's. https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ssgzn/did_filmmakers_flee_to_hollywood_to_escape_patent/ddis3ve/ https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5ssgzn/did_fi...
jklowden 8y ago
No, that’s not “why” Silicon Valley got started. And you’ll note that neither taxes nor unions are especially rare in California. Silicon Valley owes its existence to Stanford University and the Department of Defense. Spending on research, and on technology at such places as Hewlett-Packard gave the Valley its start.
iak8god 8y ago
This is still one of the beneficial places in the country for Amazon to have a new HQ, but NY will be just fine without Amazon there. Why should NY have to bribe one of wealthiest organizations in the world with billions of dollars to set up shop there?

timwis 8y ago

This website blocks visitors from Europe because of GDPR...

m0skit0 8y ago
Use a VPN or proxy?
the_duke 8y ago
Use outline.com
dcplogic 8y ago
That's plain incompetency. Similar incompetency at latimes.
segfaultbuserr 8y ago
Use web.archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20190216180058/https://www.newsday.com/news/region-state/amazon-labor-1.27345235 https://web.archive.org/web/20190216180058/https://www.newsd...
syntheticcdo 8y ago
Regulations have repercussions.
navbaker 8y ago
It also throws up a banner unless you disable your ad blocker.

blameUnions 8y ago

Meh. Blame the unions. Except, Amazon doesn’t need to get bigger. As a company, Amazon isn’t an essential part of my life, nor do I necessarily want them to become such a thing.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

I don't get it...the politicians in power wanted it and so did the people https://news.yahoo.com/poll-majority-yorkers-supported-amazon-140324398.html https://news.yahoo.com/poll-majority-yorkers-supported-amazo... . Of course Amazon wasn't expecting a 100% "please come here" vote.

rmrfrmrf 8y ago
The thing about polls is that you can throw out the ones you don't like.

r2215 8y ago

Friends don’t let friends work at Amazon

wolframhempel 8y ago

There seems to be some confusion between Tax-breaks and subsidies. The three Billion that AOC and Co suggest will now be available for other investments would not have been money given to Amazon, it would have been money that Amazon would have paid less in taxes, while still paying a reduced tax rate. No Amazon = 0 Taxes. (It is worth noting that Amazon would still have claimed other subsidies made available to all companies in the state of NY - however now claiming a plus of 3 Billion is simply incorrect. More so, even with the 3 Billion tax break I don't think there is an argument that Amazon would have been a net-negative - quite the opposite in fact)

geofft 8y ago
> No Amazon = 0 Taxes. That's not true for a few reasons: - Amazon will still be growing in New York, as confirmed by their press release: "There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams." They just won't get the benefits of the HQ2 deal. So, they'll still be paying taxes. - Other companies will be able to move in to the land and hire the people that Amazon would have hired. They're not the only employer in town. Those companies will pay taxes, which will go to the same government coffers, even if the money doesn't come from Amazon.
- wolframhempel 8y ago
  - Sure, but this question is about the specific HQ2 deal. There's some amount of Amazon in most US cities. - I've seen the second argument a few times, including this page, but I don't quite get it. These companies haven't moved in yet, leaving Queens as one of the economically weaker areas of NY. Why would they move in now that Amazon doesn't? What changed for them?
  - CPLX 8y ago
    Long Island city, which is literally 800 yards from midtown Manhattan, also known as the most successful and robust central business district in the history of world civilization, has exploded with growth over the last 10-20 years, and luxury apartment skyscrapers and employment centers have been sprouting literally as fast as construction workers can put up the scaffolding.

loraa 8y ago

People who hate working will always chase jobs away.

futureastronaut 8y ago

They never would have backed out if Cuomo changed his first name to Amazon as he suggested.

spenrose 8y ago

https://twitter.com/ritholtz/status/1096449884180434945 https://twitter.com/ritholtz/status/1096449884180434945 The whole thread is worth reading (note he links to a counter-argument at the end).

jorblumesea 8y ago

I think it's ironic that Bezos is a Libertarian, with a capital L, and his company and values very much reflect this. But, then they try to lean on local and state governments for hand outs and incentives. Then his company throws a fit when they don't get everything they want, despite apparently espousing free market tenants and ideas. It just feels very hypocritical to the extreme, from a political/philosophical standpoint. It also feels like they just want the system to always work in their favor, wherever, whenever. Which seems unrealistic and borderline childish.

freewizard 8y ago

I guess even in November, this was probably a stretchy decision for Amazon to have 2 HQ2s and one in NYC to begin with, hence not a surprise it changes decision once it sensed more friction politically and the overall economy trend is great since Nov anyway.