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You are addressing the quote: > You don't need to be the State's Budget Director to know that a nine to one return on your investment is a winner. I think you

You are addressing the quote: > You don't need to be the State's Budget Director to know that a nine to one return on your investment is a winner. I think you are here making a moral argument of sorts. Why is it morally better to get 100% of nothing than to participate in a project with incentives that give you 9 times return plus create 24-40k jobs? I simply don't see a viable argument that this was morally right, and wonder what argument you have that the facts we know support this proposition. So far the opponents have not provided a "morally better" alternative to provide Queens with 25-40k jobs, unionized secure jobs for vast amounts of families, and a tax base necessary to invest in Queens that has received very little investment in decades. They have "hopes and dreams", but destroy the only path we had to get there. Due to this we can't improve the offerings of progressive government services for the people living in Queens. Real kids, families, elderly and youth seeking opportunity is affected by this. These facts seems to show conclusively that this what the activists achieved was morally wrong.

icelancer 8y ago
> Why is it morally better to get 100% of nothing than to participate in a project with incentives that give you 9 times return plus create 24-40k jobs? Because people who rail against deals like this take zero responsibility for any of the consequences. It's all of the fun moral policing and none of the downside. It's great to be an activist.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  In fairness, the real reason, at least in NYC... is that they never end up in a situation where they get 100% of nothing. Google and Amazon have thousands of jobs in NYC, and they will move thousand more there in the future. For these people in NYC, they don't know the consequences of not having loads of places to work. For them, it really is a situation of "Heads we win! Tails we win slightly less!".
  - afiori 8y ago
    Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief
    - speedplane 8y ago
      > Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief The problem of the deal wasn't the mechanics, it was how it was sold to the public. A competition putting cities against cities, negotiated without any public input, a large tax break to one of the richest companies in the world, choosing already popular cities rather than really investing in a newer one. Amazon could have definitely closed this deal if they pitched it properly.
      - afiori 8y ago
        Maybe, but as it is pointed out many times here and in the open letter this was basically a replay of Brexit. another commenter said that his mom believed the city would give amazon 3 billions up front. the public approved of the deal, the only demographic to disapprove was the internet. 70% of local residents approved of the deal. that is a lot.
        bobthepanda 8y ago
        I'm skeptical of any polling for the issue, mostly because polls have huge issues with data collecting and getting a representative sample, particularly on things like local issues. Depending on * how the question was framed ("Do you think the second headquarters of Amazon will be a positive?" vs. "Do you think the deal with Amazon will be positive?" vs. "Do you think tax breaks for Amazon are good?") * how informed the voter was required to be; people are notoriously uninformed and uninterested about anything that isn't a presidential election * how residents were contacted (was it a landline poll? mail? survey on the street? online? because these all have different populations to be accounted for) * who counts as a valid resident for the survey? someone who lives in Buffalo? someone who lives in Westchester? someone who lives in Manhattan? someone who lives in Flushing? etc. Polls predicted that AOC would lose her race, and that clearly didn't happen.
- graycat 8y ago
  Yup. To get attention the activists want their shocking stories told, and to get eyeballs and ad revenue the media wants shocking stories to tell. See my more general response along these lines in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19236564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19236564
bobthepanda 8y ago
> and a tax base necessary to invest in Queens that has received very little investment in decades. In what alternate universe is this? Queens is hardly Camden or Detroit. The neighborhood in question has 40+ story office and residential towers sprouting up like weeds. Queens is at a record low employment rate ever since this started getting tracked at the county level: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYQUEE1URN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYQUEE1URN. And there are similar statistics for the metro area. It is unclear to me that New York City needs to throw any tax credits for jobs when we are running probably very close to full employment.
- asabjorn 8y ago
  This is about diversifying the economy away from real estate and wall street. It is also about bringing high-paying jobs to Queens, and encourage the kind of investment that brings. From what I understand developers started building in anticipation of Amazon coming there, and that investment is now in question.
  - bobthepanda 8y ago
    The area has been built up with skyscrapers over the past decade, well before HQ2 had even been announced. Development in New York is not so quick that you could shovel a project through in the four months after the announcement. New York's economy is plenty diverse. There's real estate and Wall Street, sure, but there's also legal services, advertising, media, health, education (NYC has the largest student population in the country), hospitality, tourism, etc. This is no one company town like Gary.
    - asabjorn 8y ago
      So you are saying Queens is in a great place and we do not need to create much more opportunity there?
      - bobthepanda 8y ago
        There's certainly no need to beg for it.
ec109685 8y ago
Amazon jobs aren’t unionized, nor secure.
- afiori 8y ago
  it was required as part of the grant

icelancer 8y ago

> Why is it morally better to get 100% of nothing than to participate in a project with incentives that give you 9 times return plus create 24-40k jobs? Because people who rail against deals like this take zero responsibility for any of the consequences. It's all of the fun moral policing and none of the downside. It's great to be an activist.

bilbo0s 8y ago
In fairness, the real reason, at least in NYC... is that they never end up in a situation where they get 100% of nothing. Google and Amazon have thousands of jobs in NYC, and they will move thousand more there in the future. For these people in NYC, they don't know the consequences of not having loads of places to work. For them, it really is a situation of "Heads we win! Tails we win slightly less!".
- afiori 8y ago
  Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief
  - speedplane 8y ago
    > Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief The problem of the deal wasn't the mechanics, it was how it was sold to the public. A competition putting cities against cities, negotiated without any public input, a large tax break to one of the richest companies in the world, choosing already popular cities rather than really investing in a newer one. Amazon could have definitely closed this deal if they pitched it properly.
    - afiori 8y ago
      Maybe, but as it is pointed out many times here and in the open letter this was basically a replay of Brexit. another commenter said that his mom believed the city would give amazon 3 billions up front. the public approved of the deal, the only demographic to disapprove was the internet. 70% of local residents approved of the deal. that is a lot.
      - bobthepanda 8y ago
        I'm skeptical of any polling for the issue, mostly because polls have huge issues with data collecting and getting a representative sample, particularly on things like local issues. Depending on * how the question was framed ("Do you think the second headquarters of Amazon will be a positive?" vs. "Do you think the deal with Amazon will be positive?" vs. "Do you think tax breaks for Amazon are good?") * how informed the voter was required to be; people are notoriously uninformed and uninterested about anything that isn't a presidential election * how residents were contacted (was it a landline poll? mail? survey on the street? online? because these all have different populations to be accounted for) * who counts as a valid resident for the survey? someone who lives in Buffalo? someone who lives in Westchester? someone who lives in Manhattan? someone who lives in Flushing? etc. Polls predicted that AOC would lose her race, and that clearly didn't happen.
graycat 8y ago
Yup. To get attention the activists want their shocking stories told, and to get eyeballs and ad revenue the media wants shocking stories to tell. See my more general response along these lines in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19236564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19236564

bobthepanda 8y ago

> and a tax base necessary to invest in Queens that has received very little investment in decades. In what alternate universe is this? Queens is hardly Camden or Detroit. The neighborhood in question has 40+ story office and residential towers sprouting up like weeds. Queens is at a record low employment rate ever since this started getting tracked at the county level: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYQUEE1URN https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYQUEE1URN. And there are similar statistics for the metro area. It is unclear to me that New York City needs to throw any tax credits for jobs when we are running probably very close to full employment.

asabjorn 8y ago
This is about diversifying the economy away from real estate and wall street. It is also about bringing high-paying jobs to Queens, and encourage the kind of investment that brings. From what I understand developers started building in anticipation of Amazon coming there, and that investment is now in question.
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  The area has been built up with skyscrapers over the past decade, well before HQ2 had even been announced. Development in New York is not so quick that you could shovel a project through in the four months after the announcement. New York's economy is plenty diverse. There's real estate and Wall Street, sure, but there's also legal services, advertising, media, health, education (NYC has the largest student population in the country), hospitality, tourism, etc. This is no one company town like Gary.
  - asabjorn 8y ago
    So you are saying Queens is in a great place and we do not need to create much more opportunity there?
    - bobthepanda 8y ago
      There's certainly no need to beg for it.

ec109685 8y ago

Amazon jobs aren’t unionized, nor secure.

afiori 8y ago
it was required as part of the grant