Democrats Criticize The Amazon HQ2 Bidding War
- Thread starter AaronB
- Start date
Actually we do know the effects of big companies coming to cities and regions. See the depressed wages thread.
How else will the job creators bless us lowly mortals with jobs. Honestly, it's a little late for handwringing about this particular race for the bottom when it's absolutely the norm.
I do feel like I'm finally reaching my breaking point with supporting Amazon with my business. Makes me feel scummier and scummier these days especially being more conscious about how often/much I spend there.
I do feel like I'm finally reaching my breaking point with supporting Amazon with my business. Makes me feel scummier and scummier these days especially being more conscious about how often/much I spend there.
And leads to a spike in apartment and housing prices as 50,000 new employees move to an area....
The Baltimore warehouse/distribution center still has 5000+ employees I believe. That was a number I seem to recall around the holidays Someone still has to work along with robots. They don't and can't do everything.
Also this is a headquarters they are building. Any of the DC metro locations wouldn't need any outside workers to fill it up with the existing population already in place. Metro areas with a high populations would fill up the headquarters easily. Smaller metro areas like Raleigh, Austin would probably need outside workers brought in.
Also fine with me, I have no problem with my city growing. I find it's healthy for the economy
They're not wrong; the idea that we should give tax incentives and handouts to giant corporations that already get plenty of handouts just to have them build an office is absurd.
Do you honestly believe that Amazon pays its white collar employees similarly to its warehouse workers? These will be high-paying jobs with good benefits.
What is the solution though? Obviously local governments are still going to want to compete to get those jobs. If you don't allow them to negotiate per-company deals, then they are just going to universally offer tax breaks like Texas or Kansas do.
Oh trust me, I know.
I mean the people actually around here. I dont think they are the type to read message boards.
Okay, that makes sense, that being said, I hope the hoops cities jump through to get Amazon hq, is justified by what Amazon gives to their respective cities.
Nobody has to do any of this, the governments chose to do that, and governments are elected by the people. Most cities in the US and Canada didn't make offers they felt were not in their own favor.
Put pressure on your local government to change its dumb zoning laws so more housing can be built to meet demand instead of constraining the supply for the sake of NIMBYs.
Thousands of new shitty jobs most likely. Not worth the negatives they'll bring.
What are the negatives that they'll bring? I think bringing more jobs and people to the city is a really good thing.
And there's the rub. Businesses will always go on a race to the bottom, because that's human nature. The role of government here is to set the limit, which the bidding process can kind of undercut.
But megacorps have so much power I can understand how hard they are to resist. Which is why we need high echelons of government to set a hard limit and step in when businesses take it too far.
Jennifer Government is a fun little corporate dystopia novel I'd recommend. I'd say it's good satire, but it's less and less outlandish given the direction we seem to be marching.
You think higher rent and more traffic aren't negatives? Not to mention driving up rent prices in the surrounding cities.
So the solution is to have less people, because more people brings traffic? How about the government invests in transportation and traffic reduction? Other cities succeed at it, and they don't have to turn away businesses and jobs to do so.
Nah I'm fine with more people. Just not more people brought in by a corporation that's gonna try to pay them as little as possible. Oh I'd love that too but we certainly don't need Amazon to do that. That said if they were just moving to NYC and people weren't falling over themselves to roll out the welcome wagon I wouldn't care. It's that combined with the negatives they're gonna bring that makes it gross.
Rent is based on the desirability to live in an area, so bringing lots of jobs somewhere will also increase that. Otherwise you'd always be against a low unemployment rate, as a high one will lower rent. also a population increase is what the mayor and his office will use to gain funding for affordable housing.
Property value increasing is a sign of a healthy economy. As a home owner, I welcome that.
Fair enough my preferences lie elsewhere. I'm broke enough as it is I don't need more of my money going towards rent.
Totally agree with the Democrats on this. Selling out your city and state for an HQ that might bring in less value than the incentives being offered is just sick. It's crazy the position cities will increasingly be put in as wealth pools at fewer and fewer mega-companies
No city is being forced to do anything, though. They are willingly bending the knee. If you have a problem its with the cities themselves, I dont see how Amazon is at fault. I don't think there's anything unfair at all about whats going on.
Because they're taking advantage of the situation. Yes the cities should be criticized for this as they end up losing money when you compare the revenue brought in to what some of them are offering. It's similar with sports stadiums, tax payers shouldn't be paying for businesses to build facilities to bring jobs. Amazon does NOT need the tax breaks and neither do the Dallas Cowboys.
I didn't say which party shares the larger blame, the bidding procedure is in this case rather informal and the cities are definitely at fault here, no question about it. Amazon is at fault, as much as they are actively seeking a process which directly wastes money (the stupid PR gags to get their attention) and leads to tax breaks that they really don't lead. Now, they are acting in their logical self-interest, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't call them out on it.
Of course the much larger blame is on the cities and their inept leaders, and the people in those cities should speak about this mess as well.
Im sorry I remained unconvinced that this is their problem. People should stop bending over if you want companies to stop taking advantage.
My day job involves working at the mayors office and often trying to get federal funding from Congress for various city projects.
However most of my income is from real estate investments.
The quoted Democrat in the article isn't blaming Amazon, though. He is saying the cities should collectively bargain.
Brownville. I don't live in Bronxville. That's my grams address and I moved out not to long ago XD I still reflexively say her address first. Now I feel like a child again XD
I wish I could put an edit note
Partly, I'm in favor of a healthy economy, safe neighborhoods and better living conditions for the city. I'm not really in favor of driving people out of their neighborhoods. It's the only reason I work for the mayor's office. I work on affordable housing projects that can help accomplish both of these things.
Ah, cool. Not too familiar with areas outside of the city limits, but I'm always curious what part of the area NYers are from.
Oh ok, Brooklyn. Not really a neighborhood I see mentioned much at work, hope the city is able to lower rent there somehow.
I'm lucky enough in that worse comes to worse I can always go back to her house. But...ugh I moved out for a reason. But honestly I really wouldn't care if not for the rolling out the welcome wagon. That just adds an extra layer of sleaze to it all. Amazon wouldn't be willing to move anywhere unless it knew it was gonna benefit to begin with. Why people want to act like corporations are giving them charity for moving there is beyond me. Let alone adding more incentives. They're already incentivized. That's why they want to build here to begin with.
Oh yeah that was directed more at the people in this thread.
Not really. Their job is to do whats best for them. Its expected of them honestly. Usually the people you elect serve as the check against stuff like this. If it was a big enough issue you would hear an uproar. But again people only see $$ when things like this come around.
What's best for them is bad for the people of this country. This corporate apologism I know is rife within libertarian ranks but man is it a bummer. Companies need to take responsibility for their actions.
Serious question, do you care more about what happens to a corporation that helped make the richest man in the world or the people currently suffering in the US below the poverty line? With the money they're outlining, they can help a ton of people and Amazon will still be able to build its facility.
The people we elect have failed us consistently and need to be ousted but most people don't care about Amazon and its tax breaks so here we are.
Personally I don't think NYC should be begging for anything. Amazon should be the one thrilled about locating in the city and that should be that. I still think bringing over thousands of new jobs would be a general benefit for New York. Getting our unemployment rate even lower would be a really great way to increase wages in the long run (and yes, I saw the report on Amazon's impact on other locations).
I agree with you about the begging but I'll have to agree to disagree to increasing the wages bit. I'm a pessimist however :P
Its not about caring about Amazon. This happens all the time with smaller companies. I want whats best for my city. If the people decide its Amazon then so fucking be it. Of course I don't want anything given to them that would make this an upside down transaction in the long haul but so what if it takes tax breaks to beat out other cities in a better position to recieve them?
Bottom racing should be outlawed at the federal level. But that will never happen with the current people in power.
Well it would take much more than Amazon to do that. We basically need to form an economy where employee retention is important. If the unemployment rate is high, workers are seen as desperate and far more disposable. The lower we bring the unemployment rate, the more power the individual worker will have. We're pretty far from that being the case with lower wage jobs though. Hopefully one day.
This is the arrogance of NYC. Why would they be happy about locating there when they can get everything it offers in a multitude of cities at a lower cost even before any incentives?
At some point we really do need to do something to restrict cities' and states' ability to essentially bribe companies for jobs. Everyone wastes a whole bunch of money, and we all end up with businesses locating themselves more for tax considerations than for the actual qualities of the location. I get that these mayors all pretty much have to play the game if they're going to get these big investments, but the states really should come together to all pass laws to end the game, and just let businesses choose their locations based on actual economic concerns instead of bribes.