You might wanna read what you quoted from me there. Nothing I said was incorrect.
NY Gov. Cuomo, NYC Mayor DiBlasio run a full page ad in the New York Times begging Amazon to come back to Long Island City
- Thread starter Invisible Cities
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You might wanna read what you quoted from me there. Nothing I said was incorrect.
I don't know how we turned down that many jobs to begin with? I know tons of people in Queens and Brooklyn who were excited to apply there. It's not like it was warehouse jobs. Hell i know people that wanted to cash out in queens once the property went up.
Lol people sure are trying to spin this.
Amazon was trying to build "HQ2" in New York, for a cost of billions of dollars to NYC tax payers + tax breaks and made a non-promise to create 25,000 jobs in 10 years.
Instead they are now doing a bit more modest expansion with no tax breaks and no subsidy. That's exactly what AOC was fighting for.
This makes me wanna barf. Governments crawling on hand and knee to kiss the feet of corporations.
Ah but you didn't account for people who like licking corporate boots.
I feel like you just summed up one of the reasons it was a bad idea. NYC doesn't need more expensive property. Period. Amazon would have spiked property prices without contributing anything tax-wise.
With or without Amazon, NYC prices are always going to be sky high.
Theoretically cash out because people can barely afford houses in NY as it is. Who is going to afford them if they get a price increase?
Yeah, but it would have made Queens ground zero which while already hit by the nature of Astoria being 'cool' and North Brooklyn bleedover, hasn't been nearly hit as hard as BK and Manhattan
You literally just said you know people who were expecting rent to get even higher. Just because it's already high and a strain on people's ability to survive doesn't mean it's fine to just make it even higher. And think of it less as "turning down jobs from Amazon" and more "not paying Amazon for the right to work for them".
LIC has been heading in this make over direction for awhile now and it's needed it.
The thing is, these corporations entice these state and municipal governments to give them massive tax breaks and tax payer money in exchange for "thousands" of new jobs for the local economy. Problem is, there's often no enforcement mechanism in these deals that take away the sweet deals of the company doesn't produce the x amount of jobs they promised and because of that, the amount of jobs actually created is only a fraction of the promised amount. Look at what happened in Wisconsin with FoxConn as a prime example of this.
FoxConn fleeced the state of Wisconsin out of billions for next to nothing.
FoxConn fleeced the state of Wisconsin out of billions for next to nothing.
A while now is the operative term: you had 'luxury' condos there forever that weren't selling built off Jackson for a good five plus years. The waterfront stuff always did good but that was due to 1)Waterfront 2)Finance people having some cash and starting families so they get their starter condo. There's a shitload of new construction in the last five years because its accelerated in NYC, but Amazon would have put that into overdrive.
There's also the argument that the neighborhood wasn't built for a mass amount of residents, the sad little keyfood that was the biggest grocery store there for years points to that.
The E train that's packed to the gills at court square would pretty much explode, lol. In additon to pipes, sewage, etc.
Also, the 'I have friends who were gonna sell property!' you said in another post isn't exactly a positive reason...in that case every property owner should be allowed to he slumlords where property ownership is strictly a mater of money with no impact to the city.
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I remember plenty of people on the left joining the NYPost in attacking Andrew Cuomo when the deal was announced.The when the deal fell apart the people on the right blamed Ocasio Cortez, when many of them opposed the deal too.
I mean people who loves in lic would have been priced out so fast their heads would spin. But who cares if that happens cuz NYC is already expensive!
LIC hasn't been particularly affordable in awhile anyway. It's chock full of $3000-3500 one bedrooms in luxury towers.
From Seattle, tell everyone well give them HQ1. I'm sure everyone won't come to regret the decision in ten years.
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The 25,000 Jobs carrot on the stick is such horseshit and Im glad the people of NY are calling Amazons bluff
We dont need government welfare for market leaders and soon to be monopolies
Fuck that. No amount of jobs is worth taking that bad deal.
We dont need government welfare for market leaders and soon to be monopolies
Fuck that. No amount of jobs is worth taking that bad deal.
Exactly, all these jobs are going to college educated people and Amazon corporate transfers. Unlike the original HQ deal, zero of these jobs will be unionized and zero low-income residents and residents of housing projects will be getting jobs for this. And this is in the "new downtown" of the city that people like AOC would have been opposed to the very creation of.
But yeah...the very fact that people are trying to spin this as a win tells you all you need to know. If the Amazon HQ "defeat" was so perfect in every way, then why are people trying to spin this? This is just another corporate office in Manhattan.
Honestly this is the first negative thing I've seen AOC tweet...she should really be above this. She is acting like she took on Amazon all by herself, and the spin in her tweet is very disappointing considering that the deal was not finalized and the unions were trying to negotiate. People keep forgetting that the whole negotiations around the HQ2 was based around unionized jobs and above minimum wage jobs for public housing residents.
Regardless of what you think about Amazon and the original deal, she had nothing to do with this new office and it is in no way an equivalent to an HQ2. It's a very arrogant tweet on her part.
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People wanted to blame her exclusively for Amazon not coming here, and blame her exclusively for companies "fleeing" NYC...so I'm totally okay with her exclusively counter-trolling and claiming that she was right here.
...because even though it's spin, she was functionally right.
This is NYC, everyone is coming here to set their companies up. Everyone always has, and everyone always will...and if they don't, they're too poor or too well-paid by municipalities racing to the bottom to give tax incentives (like in this example) to do it. Trust me, some other companies will be smart enough to embed themselves into all that sweet-ass LIC space, and they'll do it with less crazy incentives too.
...because even though it's spin, she was functionally right.
This is NYC, everyone is coming here to set their companies up. Everyone always has, and everyone always will...and if they don't, they're too poor or too well-paid by municipalities racing to the bottom to give tax incentives (like in this example) to do it. Trust me, some other companies will be smart enough to embed themselves into all that sweet-ass LIC space, and they'll do it with less crazy incentives too.
So I can maybe afford to retire one day? My house is small & nearly 100 years old - I'm not wealthy.
The "housing is an investment" mentality. Rather than housing being, you know, housing. No wonder we have a homelessness crisis.
You're factually wrong about this. Amazon was always refusing for any of the new jobs working directly for Amazon to be Union. They are too worried that once Amazon workers in NY organized that the others facing the terrible working conditions elsewhere would follow their lead. Bezos and other rich liberals want no accountability.
Only the temporary construction jobs to build the building and a handful of 3rd party contracted custodial services were going to be Union.
This was one of the main reasons that AOC and others refused to give Amazon whatever they wanted with no strings attached. And she did play a significant part in scuttling the bad deal; one only needs to look at the physical billboards, commercials and vitriol on Twitter directed at her to see this.
That's the point, though. She doesn't have to do anything to get Amazon to bring more jobs to NYC. DiBlasio and Cuomo don't have to do anything either. All of the bowing and scraping for those 25,000 fantastical jobs was disgraceful and had no actual enforcement. Letting Amazon expand on its own dime literally just saves NY billions of dollars. AOC is unambiguously right on this.
The 25k jobs figure was always a pipe dream and anyone seriously peddling that should know that I know of a bridge in Brooklyn that's for sale.
Further, there was never any guarantee that those jobs or the ones now in Manhattan are going to NYC locals. Much like with Prudential in Newark, jobs aren't given out to locals, they're inevitably won by transplants, whether they be commuters or people who move to NYC for those gigs.
Amazon is a Goliath of a company run by the world's richest man. He could afford to build HQ2 in LIC if he wanted to all on his own. No one would stop him from doing so, clearly. But he wants the extra grease from the local government to do so. Fuck him.
Further, there was never any guarantee that those jobs or the ones now in Manhattan are going to NYC locals. Much like with Prudential in Newark, jobs aren't given out to locals, they're inevitably won by transplants, whether they be commuters or people who move to NYC for those gigs.
Amazon is a Goliath of a company run by the world's richest man. He could afford to build HQ2 in LIC if he wanted to all on his own. No one would stop him from doing so, clearly. But he wants the extra grease from the local government to do so. Fuck him.
I'm with you. Unless you are working in tech, I'm not sure if the expansion by Amazon, Google, Facebook etc in Seattle has made the city any better.
It's worse than that - he wants these cities to grovel before him, palms up and full of cash. AOC and others rightfully called out this rich people welfare for what it is.
You're still going to get a pretty penny for it when you do just for the land alone. Think of what you're saying here. You want a boost funded by taxdollars to a company that could even afford a moonbase.
....are we really attack fellow posters who want the value of their house to rise?
i don't want the taxcuts, i do want the jobs. bonus - as a lead dev myself, it would probably have boosted my wages as well by making the area even more competitive.
"easier to get angry than get informed" mentality
you really have no perspective between the middle class & the wealthy huh
you want your wages and wealth to go up at the cost of the area around you being less affordable for people that can't afford property, dude. your solidarity is with the rich.
Here's my perspective:
You're the gullible fool in the middle. Sure, the rich and wealthy are getting welfare and that means many poor people are going to suffer, but your contribution to the debate is "shit, I want Amazon so my house price raises".
And as a fellow privileged middle class guy, we absolutely are FYGM.
Essentially you're giving some pretty selfish reasons for supporting something that would have a wide impact on many people, especially people with less than you.
You're kind of summing up why it would be bad for the neighborhood
Lol I love how you are skipping over the billions of tax dollars that NYC people would have to pay and billions of tax dollars that Amazon would never pay to NYC. No-one but Amazon stopped Amazon from building HQ2 in NYC and they only stopped it because they didn't get the tax breaks.
Imagine bitching a fit because a company that banks over 10billion dollars a year didn't get to come in and leech off residents of your city.
Yup, when they don't care about the rest of the neighborhood while doing it.
'maximizing value' is how we got in this mess of corrupt capitalism, be it corporate welfare to maximize shareholder value, or a taxpayers funding a megacorporation's move so the local landowners can get rich
bad news, housing is already to the point where people can't afford it. forgive me for wishing we all enjoy the same property value growth as previous generations.
i believe sans-taxbreaks it would have a net positive on the region. as long as citizens don't subsidize it, it would great to have a job hub like that in queens.
Here's my perspective:
You're the gullible fool in the middle. Sure, the rich and wealthy are getting welfare and that means many poor people are going to suffer, but your contribution to the debate is "shit, I want Amazon so my house price raises".
And as a fellow privileged middle class guy, we absolutely are FYGM.
i don't think you understand the picture you posted, but OK. if amazon came to queens sans tax breaks, how am i advocating for welfare for the rich?