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Comment by thinkling | Hacker News Reader

I suspect having a good talent pool, good infrastructure, and a responsive city government is worth more to the company than a few billion dollars in tax breaks.

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This is a very bad idea .. there is no need for so many people to sit in one place and terrible for housing and commute. Amazon should come up with a better idea .. this is so not like Amazon.

Isn’t it more efficient for cities to have density like this? For example, you could triple the city busses to a specific location during work hours, a many-to-one relationship rather than many-to-many.

Only if affordable housing is enabled through policy. Otherwise Amazon is just creating a company town bubble within a town, driving up housing costs with the salaries they pay their workers.

see: Cupertino

Given that amazons core business started from tax arbitrage (sales and use tax avoidance), this is exactly what you should expect from Amazon.

I hope they flip the table, declare all proposals inadequate and build their own damn town. Negotiate directly with a state or the feds for land and do everything the way they want it.

If Musk can die on Mars, Bezos can damn well own a county.

Cute idea, but they've said their #1 priority is to be somewhere where talent wants to live, ideally complementary with Seattle:

> “Not everybody wants to live in the Northwest,” Wilke said. “It’s been terrific for me and my family, but I think we may find another location allows us to recruit a different collection of employees.”

https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazons-second-headquarters-wo...

I don't think most tech talent, MBAs, or finance workers want to live in Newville.

Most of newer development in Texas has been basically Newville. And growth there has been high and steady for a while now.

Newville is a great place to live. Brand new infrastructure, good schools, and the kind of stores that cater to People Like Us. Sure, it's not the most exciting sort of place, but it's great for kids and families. And Big City is only two hours away, easily close enough when you want something different.

Right, but if Amazon pre-selects from a menu of the former, then cause a competitive bidding war for tax breaks from compliant cities then that's even better from Amazon's perspective isn't it? I personally disagree with the approach, but I would guess that's why the search was publicized.

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