Ocasio-Cortez cheers as Amazon reportedly reconsiders NY HQ after fierce opposition

[Newman]

Reported by FOX News:

Amazon is reconsidering opening part of its second headquarters in New York after fierce opposition from lawmakers, according to a new report. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seemed elated by the news story.

The Washington Post, which is also owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, reported the Seattle-based tech giant is reconsidering the plan and has not leased or purchased any office space for the project. The report cited two people familiar with the company's thinking.

“The question is whether it’s worth it if the politicians in New York don’t want the project, especially with how people in Virginia and Nashville have been so welcoming,” one person familiar with the company’s plans told the Post.

This may merely be public negotiating, time will tell. I think Nashville would be a better choice, but we'll see.

AOC has chimed in:

Ocasio-Cortez, who has been extraordinarily negative towards Amazon, which has promised 25,000 jobs and over $27.5 billion in tax revenue in 25 years, tweeted that "everyday people" can "effectively organize against creeping overreach of one of the world’s biggest corporations."

According to a December Quinnipiac University poll, 57 percent of New York City residents support Amazon’s arrival in the region, compared to just 26 percent who oppose the deal, Fox Business reported.

I'd be a little leery of moving into a town whose mayor says there's plenty of money out there, "it's just in the wrong hands."

But that's just me.

[Tom Servo]

Actually, I think this is a good thing. If the people are that upset, then it's good Amazon is reconsidering. I agree that somewhere like Nashville would be a better fit, and it would help the city grow (assuming that's what THEY want).

I'm not sure if AOC and I are cheering for the same reasons, though. It's time to stop giving these handouts to these corporations, it's basically a form of corporate welfare, and one that does not always pay off.

[Lady Marva]

corporate welfare, and one that does not always pay off.

Bets the people who get jobs don't think that.

[Tom Servo]

Bets the people who get jobs don't think that.

Like all those people working for Foxconn in Wisconsin?

[Newman]

Actually, I think this is a good thing. If the people are that upset, then it's good Amazon is reconsidering. I agree that somewhere like Nashville would be a better fit, and it would help the city grow (assuming that's what THEY want).

I'm not sure if AOC and I are cheering for the same reasons, though. It's time to stop giving these handouts to these corporations, it's basically a form of corporate welfare, and one that does not always pay off.

I've often thought the sports stadiums giveaways were scandalous, so I won't prejudge this one.

Despite my misgivings about DeBlasio.

[Celeste Chalfonte]

What companies like Amazon and Google need to do is think ahead and grow their own. Go into an economically struggling area, partner with local educational facilities, and train the local talent (as determined by aptitude testing) for the well-paying tech jobs. Instead of importing well-paid techies from elsewhere, who then drive up the cost of living without creating significant opportunity for locals to benefit from better wages, train! Raise all boats.

[Newman]

What companies like Amazon and Google need to do is think ahead and grow their own. Go into an economically struggling area, partner with local educational facilities, and train the local talent (as determined by aptitude testing) for the well-paying tech jobs. Instead of importing well-paid techies from elsewhere, who then drive up the cost of living without creating significant opportunity for locals to benefit from better wages, train! Raise all boats.

I worked for years in an "economically struggling area," and while your formula sounds like an "everybody wins" slam dunk, there are some ferocious challenges. Two things occur to me off the bat.

First, in an economically struggling area, "local talent" isn't sitting around waiting for good luck. Local talent, however measured, gets going to wherever the hell it needs to go. Where I worked, those who had aptitude and aimed at professions requiring it, left. There were no jobs for lawyers to speak of, for example, and hanging up a shingle couldn't generate enough paying work to live on. It makes for a very formidable challenge for those involved with the people remaining. Where were their role models for high achievers?

Second, to think ahead and grow their own, to not be the elephant in the room that demagogues love to demonize, companies like Amazon and Google would have to be fast-growing small cap enterprises, before they're behemoths.

Trouble is, of course, small cap start-ups and such don't have the resources to last out a long-term plan such as you suggest. They can't hang in there with an economically struggling area for the generation or two it could take to see things change. They have to go to places where talent is plentiful and resources are ample.

Milton Hershey, for example, the founder of Hershey's Chocolate, was a great philanthropist who was indeed far-sighted. Among other things he established Hershey, Pennsylvania, from dirt, as a town for his company and for the local area. It was a roaring success. But he didn't do this when he was a small cap start-up.

I'm curious if you have specific ideas when you write that companies should "partner with local educational facilities."

[Novaheart]

I worked for years in an "economically struggling area," and while your formula sounds like an "everybody wins" slam dunk, there are some ferocious challenges. Two things occur to me off the bat.

First, in an economically struggling area, "local talent" isn't sitting around waiting for good luck. Local talent, however measured, gets going to wherever the hell it needs to go. Where I worked, those who had aptitude and aimed at professions requiring it, left. There were no jobs for lawyers to speak of, for example, and hanging up a shingle couldn't generate enough paying work to live on. It makes for a very formidable challenge for those involved with the people remaining. Where were their role models for high achievers?

Second, to think ahead and grow their own, to not be the elephant in the room that demagogues love to demonize, companies like Amazon and Google would have to be fast-growing small cap enterprises, before they're behemoths.

Trouble is, of course, small cap start-ups and such don't have the resources to last out a long-term plan such as you suggest. They can't hang in there with an economically struggling area for the generation or two it could take to see things change. They have to go to places where talent is plentiful and resources are ample.

Milton Hershey, for example, the founder of Hershey's Chocolate, was a great philanthropist who was indeed far-sighted. Among other things he established Hershey, Pennsylvania, from dirt, as a town for his company and for the local area. It was a roaring success. But he didn't do this when he was a small cap start-up.

I'm curious if you have specific ideas when you write that companies should "partner with local educational facilities."

There is undoubtedly a formula that addresses your concerns.

So if Amazon builds in Pittsburgh, it will draw people from DC who are sick of paying $800,000 for a WWII tract home as well as people from Ohio and West Virginia who might be delighted to live in a WWII tract home. The country is only 3000 miles wide. A PRogress Belt could gird the nation with as little as six outposts. Pittsburgh has lots of infrastructure and actually has a lot going for it, except that it isn't coastal.

[scott]

What companies like Amazon and Google need to do is think ahead and grow their own. Go into an economically struggling area, partner with local educational facilities, and train the local talent (as determined by aptitude testing) for the well-paying tech jobs. Instead of importing well-paid techies from elsewhere, who then drive up the cost of living without creating significant opportunity for locals to benefit from better wages, train! Raise all boats.

Wouldn't that just create a company town and cause resistance from the NIMBY crowd? Publix tried that and while George Jenkins is royalty today he was not popular with the farmers back in the 1960s.

[Newman]

Amazon made it official today. It's pulling out of NY.

Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren celebrate Amazon canceling New York headquarters amid backlash

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is taking a victory lap after delivering the goods in her fight against Amazon.

Democratic 2020 hopeful Elizabeth Warren also celebrated the decision....

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Others aren't as thrilled:

Cuomo slams Ocasio-Cortez, others, as Amazon ditches New York

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo lambasted politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others over Amazon's decision to leave New York City. Opponents of the deal with the tech giant had "put their own narrow political interests above their community," he said.

"[A] small group [of] politicians put their own narrow political interests above their community -- which poll after poll showed overwhelmingly supported bringing Amazon to Long Island City -- the state's economic future and the best interests of the people of this state," Cuomo said in the statement, which did not mention Ocasio-Cortez or other lawmakers by name. "The New York State Senate has done tremendous damage. They should be held accountable for this lost economic opportunity."

NYC Mayor William De Blowhard (sp?) threw the blame on Amazon:

"You have to be tough to make it in New York City. We gave Amazon the opportunity to be a good neighbor and do business in the greatest city in the world," de Blasio said in the statement. "Instead of working with the community, Amazon threw away that opportunity. We have the best talent in the world and every day we are growing a stronger and fairer economy for everyone. If Amazon can’t recognize what that’s worth, its competitors will.”

We'll see.

Amazon HQ2 defeat is a win for Queens activists but a ‘facepalm’ for tech leaders

Amazon’s decision to drop plans for a New York City headquarters was so abrupt that its own employees had been meeting with local leaders just hours earlier to move the commitment forward. Now that the deal is off, New York tech leaders are trying to figure out what it means for the city’s tech scene.

The decision to leave New York has been disappointing for local tech leaders like Julie Samuels, who runs Tech:NYC, a nonprofit that helps grow tech companies in the city. “This is terrible for New York. You’re talking about tens of thousands of jobs that were going to be in New York City that now aren’t,” Samuels says.

Amazon’s cancellation of move to NYC is catastrophic and could hurt far-left Dems at polls
Doug Shoen.

Amazon would have created more than 25,000 jobs in New York City with an average annual salary of over $150,000. The company said that within 15 years it could have employed as many as 40,000 workers in the city in 8 million square feet of office space. It would have invested over $2.5 billion in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens.

Piffle.

But it’s hard to see how depriving as many as 40,000 workers and their families of salaries averaging more than $150,000 per year will save them from “corporate greed” and “worker exploitation.”

Democrats have traditionally positioned themselves as the advocates for workers and job creation. If the new position of those on the far left of the party is to oppose any government incentives that will bring jobs to an area that will be a major change and could hurt Democrats at the polls.

Leftist ideology always pretends to represent the proletariat, the urban poor, etc. Yet somehow their policies always end up worsening conditions for those very people, and in full bloom, slaughtering them by the millions.

[Lady Marva]

Oh well. The Dems get what they want. Continued poor people with no jobs.

[scott]

Democrats won't be happy until New York is transformed into Detroit.

[Billy Jingo]

That is some serious apostasy for the Market idolaters.

[Newman]

Is Andrew Cuomo of a sudden one of the "Market idolaters"?

I confess it's fun to watch the governor get hoisted on his own petard. I think De Blasio is simply clueless. Michael Goodwin recaps the story, but at the end points out that conservatives are in neither camp.

Democrats are tearing themselves apart over Amazon

Democrats are fighting mad — at each other. For once, President Trump is not the prime target of their rage.

Amazon’s decision to scrap plans for an HQ2 campus in New York sent the circular firing squad into action. The blue-on-blue attacks pit the far left against the far, far left in yet another front of the party’s civil war.

In addition to sharp differences about a Green New Deal, taxes, socialism, Medicare-for-all and open borders, Dems are now split over how and whether government should work with the private sector to create jobs and boost the tax base.

The more moderates, a very relative term in this showdown, eagerly engaged in a form of crony capitalism. The $3 billion in tax incentives that Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio offered Amazon included $500 million to subsidize the salaries of construction workers.

The officials argued that the public “investment” would pay huge dividends because Amazon promised to create 25,000 new jobs, many of them high-paying. Politicians often describe these arrangements by saying the government will “partner” with the firms, which always reminds me of how the *Mafia likes to “partner” with businesses.

At any rate, Cuomo and de Blasio forgot that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her socialist ilk tend to see capitalism in any form as evil. Her side didn’t want Amazon to get taxpayer help and demanded instead that it be forced to contribute millions to schools and subways.

At the heart of their argument is a narrow view of private rights, one that believes government should use its immense power to make it nearly impossible for companies to operate unless they fund the pols’ social-justice and climate-change boondoggles.

When the clash is a binary one like this one, the so-called moderates clearly have a more reasonable view. After all, incentive-based private-sector growth has been a guiding principle of urban development for decades as officials override the thicket of laws and regulations they create to lure new buildings and jobs.

Naturally, the sweetheart deals *often involve pay-to-play campaign contributions to the pols from *developers, lawyers and lobbyists. Too often there is also outright thievery of the kind that marks most big developments under Cuomo and de Blasio.

Libertarian-leaning conservatives are of a mind that government should tend the infrastructure and other resources, but leave bribing big corporations with tax payer money and special breaks out of the picture.

The inevitable result of such bribery is cronyism and corruption.

Goodwin closes with a reference to The Strand bookstore.

Before they get too far out on the leftists’ ledge, the presidential hopefuls ought to study the Amazon debacle, especially the destructively unfair playing field it exposed. The company’s competitors and start-ups in various sectors endure crushing taxes and inflated *labor and regulatory costs that would have been set aside for Amazon. How is that fair?

Consider the case of the famous Strand Book Store in Manhattan, a survivor despite how Amazon has cannibalized book sales. City officials wanted to landmark its store, a costly proposition for the owners, about the time Amazon got its *incentive offers.

Strand owner Nancy Bass Wyden connected the dots lining up against her and in favor of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos.

“The richest man in America, who’s a direct competitor, has just been handed $3 billion in subsidies,” Wyden complained. “I’m not asking for money or a tax rebate. Just leave me alone.”

Being left alone is no longer an option in New York and other blue states. The only question is whether the government will become your partner — or shut you down unless you bend to its will.

[Adam]

I'm not sure if AOC and I are cheering for the same reasons, though. It's time to stop giving these handouts to these corporations, it's basically a form of corporate welfare, and one that does not always pay off.

Actually, you are cheering for the same reasons: neither of you understood how this was supposed to work.

No one was giving any sort of handout to Amazon here. This deal was a reduction of taxes contingent upon Amazon paying in about $27B to the state's coffers, then they would qualify for the $3B reduction in taxes. In other words, it was essentially a 10% volume discount on taxes. So no, there was no "handout" here. New York stood to gain a huge amount of tax revenue right when they are bleeding like crazy.

Now that Another Obsequious Communist has run them off, they will instead be gaining $0 in tax revenue from Amazon. And that silly bint actually went out and crowed about how they could now use that $3B that she had "saved" to renovate subways and fix potholes and whatever. Oh well. Actually, by her own "logic," AOC should be on the side of giving Amazon $3B anyway, since they are unwilling to work in New York.



The econ department at Boston University must be so very proud.